Her Nature

A short excerpt from “Desire Moving Through, or Five Steps in a Journey to the Beginnings of Relation”, by Tausif Noor

Let us walk, together.

To say that the transdisciplinary practice of Ashwini Bhat, spanning ceramic sculptures and installations, videos, and performance, is deeply entangled with the artist’s respect for the natural world—that is, the organic, the non-human, and the more-than-human—is to speak one partial truth. With this truth, we can begin to understand how Bhat’s walks along her local Northern California landscape—through towering thickets of redwoods and across forest floors once scorched by flames, now teeming with new life—embedded themselves deep into the folds of her abstract ceramic sculptures and across the skin of their sinuous forms and textured surfaces. Tracing this path alongside Bhat, we expand the possibility of understanding the self in its expanded field, a “self that touches all edges,” to quote Wallace Stevens. Read the full essay.

Images: John Janca and Anil Rane

Self Portrait, Yakshi (Bird of Paradise), 26 / 10/ 6 inches

Self Portrait, Yakshi (California Poppy), 22.5 / 7 / 4.5 inches

Self Portrait, Yakshi (Calla Lilly), 23 / 6 / 5 inches

Self Portrait, Yakshi (Poppy Pod), 25 / 6 / 6 inches

Self Portrait, Yakshi (Silver Lupine), 24 / 6 / 6

Fabulae series, 16 / 15 / 13 inches

Fabulae series, 18.5 / 13 / 13 inches