Manu Saluja

Manu Saluja’s work fuses the urban landscape of New York City with narratives of its complex and diverse people, reflecting on themes of cultural identity, femininity, and social perception. Rather than portray a sanitized version of her native city, it’s “wear and tear” becomes a backdrop for these narratives. In painting both the iconic and the ordinary, Saluja looks to reimagine people and spaces as sublime. 

Winner of the 2019 BP Portrait Travel Award, her resulting paintings were exhibited at London’s National Portrait Gallery and the Aberdeen Art Gallery in Scotland in 2020. Saluja’s large scale portraits have been exhibited at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, The Reach Museum in British Columbia, and the Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art in Wisconsin. 

She has had two solo shows, and work in numerous group shows both nationally and internationally. Her work hangs in both public and private collections in the US, Canada, London, Scotland, and India including Columbia University, St. Joseph’s University, and the Stobart Collection. 

Her work has been featured in Realism Today, American Art Collector, Fine Art Connoisseur, Artists & Illustrators, the Huffington Post, and Fast Company Design. 

Saluja holds a B.A. in Psychology from Barnard College. She went on to study with John Frederick Murray privately and at the School of Visual Arts, receiving her BFA in 1997. She is currently Adjunct Professor of Painting at the New York Academy of Art where she received her MFA in 2013.

Born in Brooklyn in 1971, and a long time resident of Queens, Saluja currently lives and works in Long Island, NY.

* This statement has been provided directly by the artist in association to their 16^th International ARC Salon entries. This content has not been edited for typos or grammatical errors and has not been vetted for accuracy.