Retracing/Forgetting: Open Studio with Bhavika Sharma

My name is Bhavika Sharma and I am an emerging artist currently based in T’karanto/Toronto. I have been an artist-in-residence at the Inc. for the past 10-months, where I have been sewing, tracing, and learning. My art practice focuses on uncovering alternative, personal, and unwritten narratives relating to built landscapes. Using text-based art, video installation, and soft sculptures I seek to expand on non-dominant histories.

During my residency, I continued my ongoing research on forgotten and dismissed bodies of water. I attempted to unfold the complex history of Whiteman’s Creek, a tributary of the Grand River, situated near my hometown of Brantford, Ontario. Whiteman’s Creek is also situated 30km from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. I began my research on the creek by compiling information from various open sources such as architectural maps, public archival records, archaeological reports, and public forums.

Simultaneously, I have been experimenting with making soft sculptures and cross-stitching. Through repetitive tracing and needlework, I use embroidery (a craft I learned from my grandmother) to grapple with safety and the inability to return to a homeland. In making these soft sculptures, I continue to explore the idea of queer mending through processes of glitching, transforming, tethering, and taking apart as a means to re-imagine safer futures.

I also created a short, two-minute experimental video titled Seated on the Shore of Whiteman’s Creek. Through soft narration and a slow looping gif, Seated on the Shore of Whiteman’s Creek asks viewers to pause and contemplate existing complex narratives of a place. The bright stock photo-esque image visible throughout the video is from a digital real-estate catalogue; the single image is distorted and looped to animate the creek. I begin my narration and captions by marking an ontological relationship to the land. I then trace my own relationship as an immigrant-settler affected by colonial displacement. As the video proceeds, I open space for viewers to meditate critically on their relationships with where they are situated.

Within my art practice, I want to explore alternative modes of addressing a site that refuse colonial tools of mapping. I want to continue to raise these questions: How can we mark spaces through a creek instead of a map? Through flora and fungi instead of a map? Through lived experiences instead of a map?

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Read the interview with Bhavika published in the The Silhouette (McMaster University) on March 11, 2021: Artist Talk: Bhavika Sharma.

Visit Bhavika's website: bhavika.net