After thirty-five years in Southern India, Ashwini Bhat now works in the California Bay Area. Coming from a background in literature and classical Indian dance, Bhat uses ceramic sculptures, installations, video, and text to develop a unique visual language exploring the intersections between body and nature, self and other. In her practice, she draws from her upbringing in a rural agrarian community. Her work shows the influence of syncretic shrines and rituals, along with non-logocentric and non-Western metaphysical concepts of empathy for the nonhuman. She sees her work, in part, as an act of mapping and remapping consciousness, contributing to a spiritual or psychological archive, with an emphasis on the transformative aspects of place.

She has 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 Newport Art Museum, Brown University’s Watson Institute, New Bedford Historical Society; Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park (Japan); FuLe International Ceramic Art Museum (China); Daugavpils Mark Rothko Centre (Latvia); and in many private collections. Her sculpture also has been widely reviewed and featured in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Bay Nature, PinUp Magazine, Newcity, American Craft Council, Alta Journal, The Brooklyn Rail, Lana Turner: a Journal of Poetry and Opinion, Riot Material, Ceramic Art and Perception, Ceramics Ireland, New Ceramics, Caliban, Crafts Arts International, The Studio Potter, Logbook, and Ceramics Monthly. Bhat is represented by Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles.