Roma Devanbu’s use of intricate pattern reflects her ongoing fascination with the human compulsion to make things and decorate them. In this, her third solo show at Axis Gallery, Devanbu contrasts these patterned elements with representational passages such as hands that hold on or let go of the objects, relationships, and ideas of our making.

A chronic, but mostly manageable, hoarding disorder gives Devanbu a measure of personal expertise when it comes to understanding attachments to things and to the meanings these objects hold. Devanbu explores these ideas in new drawings and paintings, as well as in interactive work which invite gallery goers to engage with the perpetual hoarder’s dilemma -- Keep, Toss, Give Away, or Sell?

Roma Devanbu has a BFA from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. She spent a year studying Asian Art History at the University of Baroda, Gujarat, India. Then returned to the States to earn an MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Devanbu has lived in Davis for more than 20 years. She is a studio resident at Verge Center for the Arts in Sacramento.