N. Dash uses natural and manmade materials such as earth, pigments, graphite, fabric, string and found objects to construct conscious and intuitive abstractions, which draw on bodily movements and energy meridians, ecological systems, and other subtle or intangible structures. Writing in ArtReview on the occasion of N. Dash’s 2023-24 solo show and Water at Site Santa Fe, Ross Simonini notes that “N. Dash’s work begins literally with earth: a thin layer of it spread on jute like a paste. This substrate is then hung on the wall as a painting, raising the ground to eye level as if the artist were tilting the world 90 degrees. Here the viewer can visually meet the ignored material at our feet, which is, in fact, the most important substance of our lives: our food is grown from it, our bodies are made of its fruits and when we die we will sink back into it. At the same time, N. Dash’s works also refuse the ideological purity of nature, free of human touch. Almost every work contains human artifacts – plastic netting, cardboard packing-corners, Styrofoam blocks, plastic water bottles – much of it the detritus of a functioning artist’s studio. N. Dash refers to these elements as “provisional architecture”, bits of material that seem to turn canvases into structural forms. As I looked upon the paintings I began to think of them as the panels of some speculative adobe monolith, standing alone, in a desert of the future.” Though her works are in dialogue with the lineages of post-Minimalism, Land Art, and Arte Povera, rather than mining those art-historical precedents, they arise from an ethic of elevating the overlooked, marginal, or unseen. By subtly blending diverse plant, mineral, and synthetic matter, N. Dash invokes visible and invisible forms of movement and pattern—bodily meridians, architectural circulation, and environmental flux – conjuring connectivity rather than separation.
