Closing Program: This Fire That Warms You by Tsohil Bhatia
With a performance and a viewing of Bhatia’s new video work
Date: Thursday, December 12, 2024
Time: 6:00–9:00 pm
Join us in the gallery on Thursday, December 12th from 6–9 pm for a closing program to mark the final week of This Fire That Warms You, a solo exhibition by Tsohil Bhatia, mentored by Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo). The event will include a viewing of Bhatia’s new video work, as well as a performance by the artist and a reception.
Refreshments will be served. The event is free, and all are welcome.
Still from Tsohil Bhatia’s new video work. Photo courtesy the artist.
About the Exhibiting Artist:
Tsohil Bhatia (b. New Delhi, India) is an artist, homemaker, and educator currently based in Lenapehoking, now known as New York City. They received an MFA at the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University (2020), and their practice thinks through sculpture, performance, and the kitchen. Bhatia’s work emerges from contemplations about the latencies of mundane objects, rituals, and images—bringing together the complexities of the everyday, and of the body’s relationship with time and the space it inhabits. In some of their recent work, they have counted their breath, measured a day’s worth of water from a leaky faucet, mapped light from a window, collected and evaporated water from the five oceans, intuitively counted the seconds of a clock, and swum towards a setting sun. They are a co-founder of Red Flower Collective, a communal eating and food research collective that hosts free and affordable multicourse meals in NYC. Bhatia has been awarded residencies at Fire Island Artist Residency (2024), Center for Book Arts (2022), Oxbow Summer Residency (2021), Chautauqua Artist Residency (2021), 1 Shanthi Road Residency, and HH Art Space (India). Their work has been shown at the University of British Columbia, Twelve Gates Arts, Queer Arts Festival, Franconia Sculpture Park, Hair+Nails, and the Warhol Museum. They are represented by Blueprint.12 Gallery (India).
About the Exhibition Mentor:
Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo (b. 1989, Dallas, TX), widely known by the moniker Puppies Puppies, expands ideas around the readymade by imbuing ubiquitous and everyday objects, signifiers, and actions with a personal and political charge. She has, for example, reconfigured antibacterial gel dispensers, toilet bowl liquid, and the color green, as well as the acts of sleeping, peeing, and taking a pill in installations and performances that challenge ableist frameworks of artistic and capitalist production. Many of Puppies Puppies’ exhibitions have also included actionable components: a GoFundMe campaign to support a friend’s transition fund, free HIV testing and counseling, and a working shower available for use by the public. Kuriki-Olivo asserts that life can be viewed as its own form of endurance practice, especially for those whose very survival is at stake, including trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people of color.