Vadodara’s art community was shaken this week by the sudden passing of Kajal Chaudhary, a 22-year-old artist from Valsad and a first-year master’s student at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University. On Monday afternoon, Kajal tragically lost her life after an accidental electrocution on campus while preparing for her work.
In her short yet deeply promising practice, Kajal had begun carving out a singular space in contemporary painting. Her works revealed a delicate poetics of overlapping forms, where figures dissolved into soft stains, and pigments bled gently into fabric. She was drawn to the quiet persistence of repetition and the subtleties of lingering marks, gestures that spoke of both intimacy and distance.
For Kajal, painting was about uncovering the fragile boundaries between inner emotional states and outward appearances. Through her layering, she gave form to what often goes unseen: the invisible threads of tenderness, solitude, and connection that bind human relationships. Her paintings carried a suspension of time, urging those who encountered them to pause, linger, and feel.
It is particularly devastating that Kajal’s life ended in the very space where she was shaping her vision as an artist. In seeking to prepare her practice with quiet dedication, she was taken away before she could fully unfold her remarkable promise.
Kajal leaves behind not only grieving peers and teachers but also a body of work that, though still in its beginnings, holds an enduring resonance. In her absence, her gentle explorations of presence and absence acquire an even more poignant weight—offering viewers a final gift, a way to sit still with the beauty and uncertainty she so sensitively conveyed.
The group exhibition Kajal Chaudhary was part of titled “She carries the quiet” is On view till 31st October at Art and Charlie, Bandra
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