Resonances

Resonances is the first monograph by transdiscplinary artist Ashwini Bhat and traces her long-term personal survey of California’s ecology in this time of climate change, shifting habits, and devastating forest fires. Coming from a background in literature and classical Indian dance, Bhat works in sculpture, ceramics, installation, and video, and performance, developing a unique visual language that explores the intersections between body and nature, self and other. Her work shows the influence of syncretic shrines and rituals and non-logocentric and non-Western metaphysical concepts of empathy for the non-human. Bhat sees her work, in part, as an act of mapping and remapping consciousness, contributing to a spiritual or psychological archive, with an emphasis on the transformative aspects of place.This monograph weaves a comprehensive selection of images of Bhat's work with newly commissioned essays by Leah Ollman, Glenn Adamson, Jenni Sorkin that contextualize her practice in relation to the worlds of poetry, ceramic craft, and Californian art history, respectively. These longer essays are interspersed with shorter texts by Chava Maeve Krivchenia, Padma Dorje Maitland, and Tausif Noor that focus on Bhat's recent exhibitions, new chapters in this ongoing body of work. Resonances is co-published with the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.