Richi Bhatia

Richi's work pacifies the equilibrium of self and the shared morality it encounters. A parlance between the intimate and the imagined, the works explore materials and mediums intricately rendered as evasive portraits that sit atop an oasis of time.1. The works exude an effeminate quality fraught with prudent composure. There is a sense of labour that is captured within the works, woven with an effervescence that emerges from the sporadic composition-making. There is a sense of vulnerability that lends itself into the works; her work unfolds more like a conversation rather than a distilled artwork. It relays more as you delve deeper into the intimacy of her mark- making, the uidity in her rendered forms, the incisions and protrusions, her use of text...One senses a quiet catharsis tucked away beneath the surface. The tactility inherent in domestic virtue draws an interesting parallel with the tactile nature of creating art in her works.We may not have enough love but we can always shop, is a series of sculpture that draws its root from my mother’s kitchen and the time she spend with her while she’s baking. The edibles prepared within her intimate space - gradually transitions itself as a social object, creating a temporal material memory for its consumer within a passage of time. The delish becomes the form here. The form in turn becomes a signifier of co – dependency and the mass suggestion that uses producing and consuming as a purpose within itself. We are endlessly bombarded by messages telling us that our every need can be satis ed by material increase making people think they are what they possess. 

As a contradictory act - these forms, are also an attempt to freeze the conversations and time. In a way pulling it out of its temporality and further stages of transition. 

Richi's work pacifies the equilibrium of self and the shared morality it encounters. A parlance between the intimate and the imagined, the works explore materials and mediums intricately rendered as evasive portraits that sit atop an oasis of time.1. The works exude an effeminate quality fraught with prudent composure. There is a sense of labour that is captured within the works, woven with an effervescence that emerges from the sporadic composition-making. There is a sense of vulnerability that lends itself into the works; her work unfolds more like a conversation rather than a distilled artwork.

Richi Bhatia completed her Bachelors in Painting from Surat School of Fine Arts, Veer Narmad South Guj. University, Surat (2013); Masters in Painting from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Vadodara (2015). She got a Diploma in Curatorial Studies of Modern and Contemporary Indian art, Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai (2018). She took up a theory module When Was Contemporary, BICAR, under Prof. Rohit Goel (2019). 

Bhatia is the recipient of the prestigious Nasreen Mohammedi Scholarship, (2013). A Gold Medallist for her Masters in Painting from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Vadodara (2015). 

Bhatia was one of the Visiting Artist Fellows for  Laxmi Mittal and family South Asia Institute, Harvard University (2020); Artist in residence at space 118, Mumbai (2017); Artist in Residence at the Blueprint Studio, Vadodara (2015); She was one of the representative of M.S. University at Jenesys 2.0 Cultural Exchange Program, Japan (2013). 

She recently had her performance – presentation warehouse 51, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, 2022; Making Space :10 years of space 118, curated by Saloni Doshi, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, 2019; She’s part of Seprations Geography, an ongoing project by Daak Vaak (India) and Mandarjazail (Pakistan).