Alive 2019, clay, feldspar, and natural ash, 11.5 x 14 x 13 cm. Photo by Jurate Veceraite / Cavin Morris Gallery Beginning is the End is the Beginning 2019, clay, underglaze, glass and garnet media, 20 x 7.5 x 19 cm. Photo by Jurate Veceraite / Cavin Morris Gallery Beginning is the End is the Beginning 2019, clay, underglaze, glaze, and paint, 18 x 19 x 11.5 cm. Photo by Jurate Veceraite / Cavin Morris Gallery Processual Minerality 2017, clay and glaze, 14 x 20 x 6 cm, wild clay, glaze. Photo by Ashwini Bhat Processual Minerality 2017, clay and glaze, 14 x 20 x 6 cm. Photo by Ashwini Bhat Processual Minerality 2017, clay and glaze, 14 x 20 x 6 cm. Photo by Ashwini Bhat Compass Rose 2018, clay, slip, glaze, and thread, 609 x 457 cm, wall installation. Photo by Ashwini Bhat Honoo no Mori 2017, clay, underglaze, and glaze, 213 x 61 x 61 cm. Photo by Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Japan
Ashwini Bhat: Selected works, 2017-2020
I’m not interested in creating a perfect object — if what defines an object is our removal from it. Instead, I’m searching for gestural links that emphasize what we share with the non-human world, how we are related not only to animals, but to trees, for instance. The awareness of our relatedness has ethical implications as we recognize that we, ourselves, are not masters set apart from everything else, but living communities of different organisms affected even by the inanimate world. I want my art to materialize a personal environment in which the suggestively biomorphic volumes of my sculptures, or my photographs and films, engage the viewer — so tactile apprehension leads to recognition, to contemplation, and to moments of exhilaration. If I’m not making art with some awareness of what is at stake in our time, I wouldn’t want to be an artist.