Samanta Batra Mehta has developed a distinctive idiom that is characterized by an intricate intertwining of the human form and nature, realized as black and white drawings. Here, nature/landscape becomes a metaphor for the body and vice-versa, and alludes to an array of narratives surrounding germination, nourishment, degradation, trespass, plunder, colonization and transgression. These drawings appear in Mehta’s works, where antiquarian objects such as vintage radio sets, old photographs and historical maps are carefully re-purposed with their delicate overlay. Her photographic prints too, which are constructed by a layering of images collected over years of travel, have elements of drawing juxtaposed as cut-outs akin to a digital lattice. These interventions serve to re-contextualize Mehta’s chosen subjects, unfolding their metaphoric potential as well as ascribing them with alternate meanings. Mehta was born in New Delhi in 1975. She has degrees in Economics and Information Systems from St Xavier's College, Mumbai and the London School of Economics, London. She has attended various courses in art-making classes and workshops including the year-long Aesthetics of Indian Visual Art at Mumbai University and Summer School in Life Drawing and Painting at the Central St. Martins, London. She has also been trained in traditional Byzantine icon-making at the Prosopon School of Iconology, New York. Mehta’s work has been exhibited at various venues including Queens Museum of the Arts and Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York; Hunterdon Museum and Visual Arts Center, New Jersey; and Taubman Museum of Art, Virgina. In 2010 she was invited to make a 24-foot long site-specific mural at the Salon Du Dessin Contemporain, held at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris. Mehta’s works are included in private collections in all over the world including the prestigious Fondazione Fotografia Cassa di Risparmio di Modena in Italy. She was also awarded the 2014 Painters & Sculptors Grant by the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Mehta lives and works in New York.