Diptej. S. Vernekar was born on28th may 1991 in Goa in a small village Kumbharjuva.
He completed his Masters in Fine Art programme at the Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad and Bachelors in the Goa College of Art, in 2012. He have participated in the State Art Exhibition of Goa in the student category in the years 2009, 2010 and 2011 and in these won the third place for his sculpture in 2009, and third place for his painting in 2010.
Besides, he has also participated in the National Exhibition of Painting by the Camel Art Foundation in 2010 as well as the National Exhibition by Artnext at Delhi, Hyderabad and Kolkata in 2012. In December 2013, he was a part of a collaborative work for Trash Art Festival an initiative of the City Corporation of Panjim, Goa. The objective of this work was to use discarded material and trash to create a work of public art. This was well received. Along with this currently he worked with theater arts students of SN school, University of Hyderabad, with Digital secnography for a piece called ‘physicosis 4.48’ and a site specific work titled ‘A part of extension and existence’. He was also awarded the Kala Sakshi award by the Kala Sakshi Memorial Trust, New Delhi in 2013.
His current body of work that is about material culture, desires, beliefs and ironies of life which forms as multiple layers of our life. Through his practice he tries to question between this different layers and the sense of in-between’s being from a lower class background. Mostly this body of work is in the form of paintings, videos and installations. His installations almost always involve some sort of sound and video projection. Moreover, they usually have kinetic mechanisms that he makes himself which are drawn from his experience of working as an automotive technician for popular art forms in Goa as a 14 year old to finance his education. Using of this local technique or local inventions in his works he finds the works brings him close to my own realities which itself builds a sort of association to it. While he still pursue painting.