Ashwini Bhat

After thirty-five years in Southern India, transdisciplinary artist Ashwini Bhat now lives and works in the foothills of Sonoma Mountain, California. Coming from a background in literature, translation, and classical Indian dance, Bhat works in clay and bronze, often creating large-scale installations using sculpture, video, text, and performance. She has developed a unique visual language to explore 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 “more-than-human.” 

Bhat is a 2024 John S. Knudsen Prize winner and a 2023 United States Artists fellow. She has also received the Howard Foundation Award for Sculpture, and the McKnight Foundation Residency Fellowship. Her work is exhibited nationally & internationally and can be seen in collections at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, Crocker Art Museum, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Newport Art Museum in USA; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in India; Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park in Japan; FuLe International Ceramic Art Museum in China; and in many private collections. Her sculpture also has been widely reviewed and featured in Hyperallergic, BOMB Magazine, Dovetail Mag, Art and Cake, Los Angeles Review of Books, Bay Nature, PinUp Magazine, New City Mag, American Craft Council, Alta Journal, Brooklyn Rail, Lana Turner: a Journal of Poetry and Opinion, and Riot Material. She is represented by Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles, USA, and Project 88, Mumbai, India. 

Programs:

• Marcus Exhibition When the World is Beautifully Strange (2025)