Art as conversation.
With roots in Dubai, and having lived in eight cities across four continents before settling in Sydney, Australia, Amena Bandukwala became acutely aware of the ways voices and cultures overlap. Though each language is distinct, she recognised that beneath the surface people share strikingly similar thoughts, emotions, and inner landscapes. This awareness continues to shape her monochromatic mark making, which seeks to connect the familiar and the unfamiliar through a personal visual language.
Over the past two decades, Amena has developed a body of work that functions as an ongoing conversation with her viewers. Rooted in inner dialogue and lived experience, her practice combines intuitive markings, asemic writing, and movement to draw people closer, then reveal hidden layers within. Her work reflects a confluence of influences and perspectives. Her marks appear at once frivolous and deliberate, ardent yet contemplative.
In a world saturated with noise, Amena is deeply attuned to the challenge of distinguishing one’s own voice from the influx of external narratives. Her works ask: How do we locate our true selves amid the chaos of conflicting stories?
To hold space for this inquiry, her palette is intentionally subdued and monochromatic. By limiting colour, she avoids distraction and keeps the dialogue open. Her gestural markings, recognisable yet abstract, suggest an independent personal language, void of literal meaning yet charged with familiarity, bridging the distance between artist and viewer.
Her process balances consideration with experimentation. Beginning on a blank surface, she allows her materials to guide her, while embracing the slow, deliberate rhythm of her practice. Each mark is final, each pause meaningful. Drawing on her background as an interior designer, she brings a keen sense of texture, form, and spatial harmony to her compositions, where negative space plays as vital a role as mark making
In offering restraint within a visually saturated world, Amena creates works that become spaces of quiet reflection. To fully encounter them requires leaning in, pausing, and paying attention. Only then does the larger picture emerge. This shift in perception invites viewers to consider the relationship between their inner and outer worlds, and to engage in meaningful dialogue with themselves and others.
Create meaningful space for
reflection and conversation
