statement   Priya Nadkarni is a practicing artist currently living in New Jersey. She has a BFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University where she graduated with the status of Magna Cum Laude. Nadkarni studied Printmaking and Contemporary Art among other various disciplines. Her art work uses a range of vocabulary including performance, audio and text. Nadkarni was recognized for her artistic abilities with the Giza Daniels-Endesha award in 2008. Priya Nadkarni’s work engages in the deconstruction and the reconstruction of an identity. She is obsessively introspective. Her work is adamantly feminist and race conscious, as well. Nadkarni intentionally submits to stereotypes in order to dismiss them. She can be ambiguous, and at times even absurd, in her confessions, but this is meant for the viewer to question ideas of normality. Social normality is dictated by those in privileged positions, and that imposition is exactly what she is confronting. As a woman of color who makes introspective work, she refuses to succumb to the art world's demand for an exotified vocabulary. She empowers her position by rejecting the expectations that are thrust upon her ethnicity by others. But she asks, is it possible to not be considered exotic, to be considered normal or standard, if you are a person of color?