Details
Siji Krishnan’s paintings invite viewers into a world where memory, myth, and daily life intertwine. Working primarily on delicate rice paper, she builds up translucent layers of watercolor and oil to reveal figures, landscapes, and hidden details. Her images often feel dreamlike—ponds shimmering with light, grasses bending in the rain, or figures dissolving into their surroundings—suggesting the ways that identity, home, and belonging are shaped by both what we see and what lies beneath the surface.
The exhibition The Secret Place brings together recent works from Krishnan’s Los Angeles debut, alongside five new large paintings created in her studio in Kerala, India. In these new works, Krishnan replaces her more figurative elements with water, plants, and sky. The natural world of her home—backwaters, monsoon rains, and village ponds—becomes a central motif, a site of both refuge and transformation. Themes of fertility and motherhood, community, and renewal flow through her practice, informed by her experiences of raising a child and the shifting boundaries between self and environment.
Krishnan’s art asks us to look slowly and closely. Small details emerge—an animal, a flower petal, a shadow of a figure—like secrets discovered over time. Both intimate and expansive, her paintings transcend cultural and geographic boundaries, embodying the Upanishadic (ancient Indian sacred philosophical texts) philosophy vasudhaiva kutumbakam: “the world is one family.”
Siji Krishnan (b.1983) was born in Kerala, India and is currently based in Kochi, India. She received her MFA from Sarojini Naidu School of Fine Arts, Hyderabad, and a BFA from Raja Ravi Varma College at the University of Kerala. In 2019, Krishnan was an artist-in-residence at Koganecho Art Center in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan. Her work has been collected by numerous public institutions throughout the world including the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; and the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, India, among others. Most recently, Krishnan has exhibited work in the National Gallery of Victoria Triennial, the Moscow Biennale of International Contemporary Art, and the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, as well as solo exhibitions at Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke in Mumbai. In 2024, Krishnan opened her first solo exhibition at Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles, CA.
Artist Talk
On October 10, 2025, SLOMA’s Chief Curator Emma Saperstein led a conversation with The Secret Place artist Siji Krishnan to open the exclusive member preview of the exhibition. SLOMA members get exclusive early access to our newest exhibitions.
Videography by Slava Narozhnyi. Missed an artist’s talk? Check out SLOMA’s online video archive!
Exhibition Highlights
Related Programming
Friday, Oct 10 at 6 PM: Member Preview of Siji Krishnan: The Secret Place. SLOMA members are invited to tour the exhibition before the general public and meet the artist at an exclusive after-hours reception. Not a SLOMA member yet? Join us!
Monday, Dec 8 at 5 PM: Members of SLOMA’s Museum Circle and their guests are invited to join a guided curatorial tour of the exhibition, led by SLOMA’s Chief Curator Emma Saperstein. Not a Museum Circle member yet? Join us!
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