Divvya’s skill in nurturing this participation dynamic is what makes her art curation exciting.

Divvya’s approach to presenting Art is experiential.

She focuses on the viewers, their contact with the art and how they are going to navigate through the art before them. This is integral to her approach.

She says, “ It is important to ask that which others may perceive as inconsequential or basic, such as—what is the artist thinking, feeling, hating, loving, when creating the works. Why did the artist create this art, choose this medium, and this form? Who is the viewer? What do they perceive ‘art’ to be? ”

To get an appreciation of the driving forces of the creative ethos from a different perspective, Divvya studied at the University of Durham, UK, where she received her Joint Bachelors in Psychology and Sociology (2005).

She then traveled abroad and in India, meeting artists on their home ground, observing how they and their creations affected the lives of others around them.
To consolidate her knowledge and experience with modern techniques and current practices of the international art world, three years later (2008), she went on to obtain her Masters in Contemporary Art at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London, UK.

Divvya’s intense exposure and immersion in the arts had left her with a driving need to explore fundamental aspects of the creative process. A key dynamic that is central to her approach to presenting the Arts is an examination of the question—“what is the difference between the creative act, and the act of creation?”

What is striking to Divvya most is the internal-external dynamic of the process. The act of creation is a subtle realization, she feels, by the creator-the artiste; whereas the creative act is open to judgement and appreciation.

“The Creative Act,” Divvya says, “is where art is being created for an audience, and because of its need to be appreciated and judged, the Creative Act is not complete without that very audience.”

These questions of presentation—the battle-equation-relationship between the artiste and audience is constantly calling out to be addressed by Divvya in her curation.
Divvya was drawn to explore the depths of human creativity from a young age. The foundations for Divvya’s talents were developed at RENSA (the RenooNirula School of Art) in New Delhi where she studied functional and creative art.

By the age of 11, she had also completed her bachelor of arts in Vocal Hindustani Music through the GandharvaMahavidyalay, played the demanding lead role in JyotsnaShourie’sBharatnatyam dance production of Alice in Wonderland, and appeared in numerous dramatic roles on the Delhi stage through Steven Marrazi’s ‘Teamwork’ initiative. Simultaneous with her fine arts and performing arts studies Divvya achieved excellence in scholastics and athletics.

Her student leadership qualities were recognized with her appointment as the first-ever Head Girl of the International School at Bangalore (T.I.S.B.), where she continued her artistic development in adapting, producing, directing and acting in a Bharatnatyam style dance-drama and a modern French play. These were based on the Mahabharata epic of Savitri and Satyavan, and Jean Genet’s Les Bonnes (The Maids).

Today, Divvya’s list of questions that she asks of herself, the artist, the artwork and the viewer is constanly changing and an outcome of her enthusiasm, love and dedication to the Arts.

The success of her approach comes from the additional ability to recognize and elegantly illustrate the very Arts she questions in light of its psychological and social context.