Ashwini Bhat

From southern India, transdisciplinary artist Ashwini Bhat lives and works in the foothills of Sonoma Mountain, California. Coming from a background in literature and classical Indian dance, Bhat works in sculpture, ceramics, installation, and video, developing a unique visual language exploring the intersections between body, nature, self, and other. Her practice draws from her rural agrarian community upbringing. Her work is influenced by syncretic shrines, rituals, and non-Western metaphysical concepts of empathy for the nonhuman. Bhat’s work, in part, is an act of (re)mapping consciousness, contributing to a spiritual or psychological archive, with an emphasis on the transformative aspects of place.

Bhat is a 2024 John S. Knudsen Prize winner from the Crocker Art Museum and is a 2023 United States Artists fellow. She has also received the Howard Foundation Award for Sculpture, the McKnight Foundation Residency Fellowship, and the Julia Terr Fellowship. Her work is exhibited nationally and internationally and can be seen in collections at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Newport Art Museum, Brown University’s Watson Institute, New Bedford Historical Society (USA); Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and Hyatt Sculpture Garden in Chennai (India); Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park (Japan); FuLe International Ceramic Art Museum (China); Daugavpils Mark Rothko Centre (Latvia); and in many private collections.

In 2023, Bhat became a certified naturalist at the Fairfield Osborne Preserve, a research site for Sonoma State University’ Center for Environmental Inquiry. She is represented by Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles, USA, and Project 88, Mumbai, India.