Aastha Patel (b. 1996) is a visual artist from Mumbai, currently based in London ,UK. She completed her masters in photography at Royal College of Art, London.
In Material Bodies Aastha explores our body’s relationship to photography, materiality and sculpture. She is interested in how images can be transformed into sculptural objects, expanding the realm of photography into a physical experience. Her playful experimentation with materials and textures allows her to see the body in different perspectives. In this exhibition she plays with collages, quilting, soft sculptures, ceramics, digital and analogue photographic processes and alternative printing methods. She associates fabrics and textiles with a certain idea of skin and by extension, kinship. A second skin that can be sculpted and moulded.
She photographs landscapes and people alike, observing how the bodily forms interact with the environment around them. May it be the subject’s relationship to the studio or to natural rock formations, water bodies or even the microscopic and macroscopic worlds.
In her work she wants to achieve a certain lightness of being. Her works speak of non dualism (advaita-) and transformation (vivarta-) to understand our relationship to our inner and outer worlds, creating space for healing and meditation.