Api Wooler

Api Wooler (born 1987) is a Indian-born American visual artist, known primarily for his painting, sculpture, film, and collage art. Born in India, he has lived and established his career in New York for more than twenty years. Wooler’s work has directed the female body as subject through collage painting, immersive installation, and live and video performance all the while exploring questions of self-image, cultural trauma, and environmental destruction, as well as notions of beauty and power.

Wooler’s work investigates themes of sexuality and erotism.
A recurring theme of Wooler’s work is his various depictions of femininity. Wooler uses the feminine subject in his art, even when the figures are more or less unrecognizable, whether by using the form itself or the texture and patterns the figure is made from. His use of otherworldly depictions for women, many times shown in a seemingly sexual or sensual pose, brings about discussion of the objectification of women.
Whether through delicate lined patterns or familiar feminine builds, Wooler’s various ways of representing feminine qualities is said to enhance the strength of the images or the significance of the issues presented. Many of Wooler’s artworks are known to be interpreted in contradictory ways, both seen as complicit to problematic society and as hopeful for future change in society.
Wooler frequently uses dust and ink textures in his artwork.