Hemali Bhuta (b. 1978, Mumbai) creates site-responsive sculptural interventions that embrace entropy, using materials and processes susceptible to decay and disintegration to challenge the conventional material and temporal conditions of a work of art. Stressing process over form, her materials and gestures of making reflect an engagement with the domestic and the everyday, the sacred and the magical. She has an ongoing engagement with nature, as both a material source and an artistic tool, using strategies like sedimentation and excavation, ageing and curing, as ways of introducing an intangible quality like time into a recalcitrantly present sculptural entity.
Bhuta holds a diploma in painting from L.S. Raheja School of Art, Mumbai, and a postgraduate diploma from Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara. Some of her most recent solo shows are Aha! at Project 88 Mumbai, 2022; and the epic did not happen!, Gallerie Ceysson & Benetiere, New York, 2021; Artist’s Rooms: Hemali Bhuta, Jameel Art Centre, Dubai, 2019; and Subarnarekha, Centre international d’art et du passage, ile de Vassiviere, Beaumont-du-Lac, 2017. Additionally, she has been part of various international exhibitions including Natasha, Singapore Biennale, Singapore, 2022; No Linear Fucking Time, BAK, Netherlands, 2021-2022; October Salon, Cultural Centre of Belgrade, Belgrade, 2018; and An Atlas of Mirrors, 5th Singapore Biennale, Singapore, 2016. Bhuta is the co-founder of CONA Foundation/CONA Projects, an artist-run space currently functioning out of Goa. She lives and works in Goa.