From Loring Knoblauch’s review for Collector Daily:
Sharma’s towering images combine the crispness of photography with the fantastical imaginings of traditional mythological paintings. Maa Laxmi perches in a lotus flower dripping a cascade of gold coins, Maa Durga rides a tiger, and Maa Kali wields a bloody sword and wears a belt of severed heads. Each deity holds symbolic objects, makes detailed hand gestures, and sits against an elaborately colored and often ornate backdrop. For the most part foregoing the digital manipulations of Photoshop, Sharma has built up these staged images with meticulous, painstaking attention to physical specifics, from cast rubber arms to styrofoam waves, creating flames and peacocks with equal dexterity. Each photograph is a carefully crafted, formal spectacle, both a respectful vision of a god or goddess in all his or her glory and a tangible object with an imposing presence. Her images bringing a modern freshness to a classical aesthetic.
View Manjari Sharma’s series, “Darshan”
Browse all of Manjari Sharma’s work at ClampArt