Part of #ThisIsNotABuffet
Is physiognomy the only way to receive a person? Richi Bhatia shares an informal iteration of the performative piece Hamlet without the Prince, a work in progress, followed by a group discussion on beauty and inclusivity. This will be an opportunity to engage with the artist and her practice and begin a wider conversation around her interest in social norms and femininity.
The artist addresses her experience with LPP since her early teenage years - Lichen Planus Pigmentosus - a skin condition that leaves black spots all over the skin and body. She encountered and experimented with fish scales as a medium while in university, and in working with them, observed how some discarded scales had black marks on them while some were shiny. ‘They resonated and became synonymous with my own skin. I slowly started to collect, clean and process them extensively. Fish scales as a medium and form became a depiction of self-portrait within my practice at large.
Biography
Richi Bhatia’s practice floats between live art, installation, photography and sculpture. A multidisciplinary experimentation with both medium and form is integral to the nature of her practice. Bhatia’s work traverses extreme intuitive practices to protracting processes trying to interrogate identity in its varied surroundings, that find its root from an autobiographical context. Being a visual artist, her struggle has always led in a survey of evaluating the role of personal history against the set or standard notions of the society we live in. She is interested in the images and physiognomy - questioning representation, appropriation and the systems of belief.
Apart from Richi’s artistic practice over the past years (pre-pandemic), she has actively worked towards research and curatorial projects with Bodhana Arts and Research Foundation for the retrospective of the artist Prabhakar Barwe, Inside the Empty Box; and The Guild Art Gallery towards the retrospective of the artist Sudhir Patwardhan, Walking through the Soul City, Sudhir Patwardhan: A Retrospective curated by Nancy Adajania at National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai.