Jai Chuhan: Small Paintings

Small Paintings presents the gestural, intimate and hauntingly beautiful paintings by Jai Chuhan. The book showcases the pieces created for her solo exhibition of the same name at Qrystal Partners in London in the summer of 2023.

Chuhan often paints lonely figures in indistinct rooms in works that explore love and alienation. They evoke psychological tensions between agency and subjection, the familiar and the unreal. Her practice engages deeply with histories of painting as she navigates transculturalism and the female gaze.

Donald Ryan, co-founder of Qrystal Partners, contributes a foreword contextualising the exhibition and delineating Chuhan's key artistic concerns. In her essay, Hannah Marsh, Assistant Curator of Contemporary British Art at Tate Britain, ruminates on the ideas of being seen, holding space and how Chuhan's art speaks on its own terms.