Global Ethnic Majority Artist Residency — Janhavi Sharma

Janhavis is an India-born, Nottingham-based multidisciplinary artist who explores the intersections of memory, food, gender, and ecology in her work. She employs photography, film and digital media, which encompasses remembering, misremembering, and even forgetting information. Her practice incorporates sculptural and installation-based methods to disrupt the conventional consumption of digital media. She traces the ecological and socio-political trajectories of the materials and processes she studies.

The works Janhavi developed during her residency represent a new chapter in her artistic progression as an NTU graduate. She begins with ‘Poison Berries,’ a photographic series in which the artist placed orange poison berries growing in her backyard on archival and newly produced photographs. In her work, these little orange beads cover people’s faces, spill over familiar objects, or fade gently over landscapes and portraits—sometimes in abundant quantities, occasionally sparse and strategically placed. As Janhavi explains, berries represent a dual nature of memory and nostalgia; on the one hand, they are alluring, but on the other, they can be harmful if overindulged. ‘Poison Berries’ gains new depth when considering the transnational nature of Janhavi’s practice and her immigrant experience after moving from India to the UK. However, the understanding of berries as symbols of nostalgia and longing—either for landscapes or people represented in the photos—does not have to be pessimistic. The accompanying poetry by Meher Manda reflects on berries attracting various species of birds as food, mirrored in Janhavi’s photos by the berries resting in spaces where birds naturally nest or even forming the shape of a bird. This alternative understanding of something dangerous yet nourishing for other beings adds a new layer to the artwork, creating a space for interpreting the multilayered relationships between humans, nature, and other species.

The relationship between nature and humans resurfaces in ‘Angnaa,’ a video projection in which performers’ bodies are placed within an imaginary garden made of soil and microgreen sprouts. The word ‘Angnaa’ refers to a courtyard garden within a house, a woman’s body, and the concept of imperishability. This artwork intertwines the seasonal essence of nature's changes with the ritualistic routines of women tending to the garden. Just as the bodies that nurture the garden breathe, rest, and remember their routines, so does the soil, creating a tender choreography between the two. One of the most intriguing qualities of ‘Angnaa’ is its play with scale—miniature humans are situated within the microscopic garden of sprouts. This shift in perspective serves as a creative commentary on the power dynamics inherent in the human-nature relationship, questioning humanity's drive toward domination over nature’s rhythms and instead fostering a relationship based on care.

Finally, ‘Loom,’ exhibited as part of the BACKLIT Members Show in 2024 and ‘Mirrors, Windows: Portals’ in WHERE, is part of Janhavi’s ongoing investigations into silk production modes, studied through the local history of mulberry silk farms from her hometown, as well as the broader socio-economic and ecological frameworks of silk farming. A deconstructed loom, made from a collection of terracotta frames and tiles, becomes a canvas for a series of archival images of Janhavi’s female family members wearing silk sarees. Some images are multiplied, while others are distorted, playing into Janhavi’s recurring theme of memory and the potential for it to slip into dreamy fiction. Similar to ‘Angnaa,’ in ‘Loom,’ Janhavi explores small format photography, not only embracing the idea of photographs as personal and intimate objects but also engaging with the art historical lineage of domestic artworks and crafts traditionally executed at a small scale by women. Interestingly, silk itself is present in the work in deconstructed form—the threads tied around the frames are made from her mother’s saree, passed down from her mother. The cross-generational and hereditary nature of the material underscores the durability of silk, and the gesture of passing it down from woman to woman connects the artwork to contemporary discourse on sustainability and the implications of materials made from or with animal bodies, such as leather or wool.

Janhavi’s work lies at the intersection of herstory, archive, fiction, holistic sustainability, and ecology. Her insight into the entanglements of intimate histories and relationships between humans and nature reminds us of the preciousness of intimate memories and their role in shaping our understanding of grand narratives of the surrounding world, such as history or ecology. By using small-format photography and sustainable materials, Janhavie encourages a re-evaluation of how we engage with the historical modes of representation, prompting us to reflect on our connections to heritage, memory, fiction and the environment. Through her practice, she invites us to reconsider not only the impact of our individual histories but also the collective stories that bind us to each other and the earth, creating a shared existence.

Written by Marta Marsicka