POSSESSED, New Work by Roma Devanbu

At Axis Gallery  625 St Street, Sacramento CA 95811

May 2nd through June 1st 2025

Second Saturday Reception May 10th, 5-8pm

ABOUT “POSSESSED”

Roma Devanbu is a compulsive maker and collector of things. But she is not alone in her possession of these traits.

In grand and humble museums world wide Devanbu has stood, awed, before the magnitude of made and collected things on display - paintings and sculptures, yes, but also blown glass perfume bottles, inlay armour, tea cups, reliquaries, patterned tiles, turned ivory fancies and jewel encrusted broaches in the shape of insects.

Here she finds the boundless evidence that humans are possessed by a drive to mold, chip, carve, glue, weave, sew, paint and decorate objects, which are then obsessively gathered, studied, contemplated, and shared, ultimately inspiring our desire to make and collect more.

An appreciation for this personal, and fundamentally human, compulsion to make and collect is the underlying theme of  “Possessed” and it is in the context of this cycle that Devanbu has created the 2 and 3D mixed media pieces and photographs included in the exhibition.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Roma Devanbu earned a BFA at Carnegie-Mellon University, an MFA from Pratt Institute and spent a year studying Asian Art History at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in India. She was a tenured professor of Fine Art at Bergen Community College in New Jersey, before relocating with her husband, Prem Devanbu, and their daughters, to Davis, California. Devanbu is an exhibiting member artist at Axis Gallery, and a studio resident at Verge Center for the Arts, Sacramento. Her work is included in corporate collections and private collections in the US and abroad and is on permanent public display in many Northern California hospitals.

As a committed “Art Pilgrim”, Devanbu has found inspiration in museums, galleries and sites of art historic importance worldwide (32 countries and counting).