Mohit Shelare (b. 1992, Nagpur) is an artist based in India. His practice develops from a rethinking of impurity as a philosophical ground. Engaging waste and toxins as emergent commons of the contemporary world, his work situates these materials not as excess but as constitutive of an ontological shift. Moving across drawing, performance, text, moving image, objects, and conversational settings, Shelare’s practice unfolds beyond conventional notions of environment, elaborating non-sensory modes of living that unsettle historical fictions of impurity while reconfiguring the very systems of thought through which the world is imagined.
Shelare has exhibited at Watermans, London; Ashkal Alwan, Beirut; FICA, Delhi; Kunst(Zeug)Haus, Switzerland; CAMP Studio, Mumbai; and the Kochi-Muziris Student Biennale, Kerala. He has been awarded and supported by the Prince Claus Seed Award (Netherlands), Inlaks Fine Art Award (India), Regional Art Assembly (Australia), Five Million Incidents (India), Generator Experimenter (Kolkata), and India Foundation for the Arts (Bengaluru). He currently teaches as visiting faculty at the National Institute of Design.