UNSPOKEN.UNSAID

UNSPOKEN.UNSAID
JAI JUNG BAHADUR MITCHELL

For Press: Jai Mitchell – English
                   Jai Mitchell – German

Jai Mitchell’s works have a special pull. At first glance, the paintings exhibited here may appear dark and scary. Deep within however, they are a closer study of an inner unspoken world.
Their apparent darkness challenges the viewer to break through it. It is difficult to confront Jai’s paintings without scrutinising them in detail and trying to get to the bottom of their emphatic strokes. They move, crystallising into an unwonted pain, insisting to a intenser magnitude on the symbolic of the Unspoken, of the Unsaid.

Jai’s images breathe – on the surface and somehow deeply. Through and through. The vocabulary of his strokes emerges from pain: he transforms it into visual memory. These works become clues to understanding the unspoken, working from a subconscious impulse using all that is left to use; both in the inner and outer world.

By using less colors, Jai Mitchell makes sure that the materiality of the color reveals its own quality and naturally turning the eyes more to the character of the work. A self-taught artist, constantly expressing with forms, lines, color- (as much that he can see) and materials, ultimately, it is the „expression“ that is the most formative element of Jai’s art.

I survived that childhood through a mix of avoidance and endurance. What I didn‘t know then and do know now, is that avoidance and endurance can be the entryway to forging meaning. After you‘ve forged meaning, you need to incorporate that meaning into a new identity. You need to take the traumas and make them part of who you‘ve come
to be, and you need to fold the worst events of your life into a narrative of triumph, evincing a better self in response to things that hurt. – Dr. Andrew Solomon, Journalist, text from the Ted Talk, 2014*

Through art, Jai came to realize that the paths that lead to fear, anxiety, depression, and hopelessness are not dead ends. With the right tools and support, those paths could lead to creative breakthroughs. Staying close to his innercall, his way has become his goal. Rediscovering art through an art therapy, he puts through gently – „imagine a bird being born from a broken egg!!“

Art is personal and personal is social and political.

The exhibition UNSPOKEN.UNSAID is dedicated to the memory of his dear sister, Rana Mitchell who recently passed away in the month of August. She had dreamt, that she was an elephant. And elephants have a long memory, like Children. And Jai has painted the elephant for her.

Born in 1972, Jai Mitchell is a self-taught artist. He lives and works in Washington DC. When he is not painting, he spends his time as the head coach of a para-rowing team: The Capital Adaptive Rowing Program. He is also an award-winning filmmaker with film degrees from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the New York Film Academy. He won the grand prize at the RAF Film Festival in Croatia.

2019, Works for a Book: The Reckoning: Book One: The Anointed Angel Comes which released on March 5, 2020 and 4 Books, signed by the writer and the artist are also available during the exhibition.

in the Press/in der Presse: Tagesspiegel – Jai Mitchel stellt bei Under The Mango Tree aus

*Our sincere thanks to Dr. Andrew Solomon. Journalist, Ted Talk, 2014