“5 Questions” is an ongoing series by the School of Art that asks alumni who are transforming art, culture, and technology about their current work and time at Carnegie Mellon.
For “This Fire That Warms You,” Tsohil Bhatia’s recent solo exhibition in New York City, the artist transformed CUE Art Foundation into a living kitchen, complete with cooking, decay, and evolving sculptures. The show, initially scheduled for six weeks, extended to three and a half months — time Bhatia used to turn the gallery into a studio and produce eight additional works. The new programming included communal meals hosted by Red Flower Collective, a food research collective Bhatia co-founded in 2021. Here, Bhatia reflects on how the show took shape, the blurring of artistic and domestic spaces in their practice, and what it means to reimagine the possibilities of an MFA studio.
1
How did the kitchen become a central focus within your practice?
CMU was the first time I had a studio, and I really did not like having one. I didn’t know what to do there. One of the things that I really missed in a studio was that you couldn’t cook. A studio practice in general feels like it’s so divorced from an eating practice. Since I’ve moved to New York, I’ve tried to figure out if I need a studio, because I just prefer to work from home. The enmeshment between an art practice and a domestic practice have never been separate for me, and because of this, the kitchen actually started to become my studio.
I didn’t even realize that was my art practice until this show happened. The most generative moment was when I put up four shelves in my kitchen with all of my pantry items, and I was standing in front of it, just rearranging it for a few hours, making sure everything was practically placed, but also worked visually. My roommate came out of her room and was like, what’s going on? I said I just made a new painting, and that was the moment where I started to see that something was happening there, that I didn’t make performance anymore, but I was working with objects, and I was thinking of them like a painting, like a very sculptural thing.
2
What is the relationship between sculpture and performance?
A lot of the sculptures are made in relationship to a body. Like with the shelves, that is the highest that my arm can reach. The hanging chandelier in the show with pots and pans is designed with a potential performance in mind, which never happened, but if I lie down flat under it, I wanted it to cover all of me. A word that has come up a lot during this show is latency — something that is yet to be uncovered, yet to be seen. The show was lit is like a black box theater, and when I removed my body from the work, all of these things became characters: a cooktop, which is on, has heat and has these pressure cookers violently whistling on top of it. There are fountains that have constant water flowing. All of these things create a scenography for the gallery space. The absent body was very pronounced. It’s like someone left something on the stove and went away. It’s like, wait, the gas is on. Why is no one around here?
When the show got extended, I was like, okay, all of this time there’s been no body, and maybe now let’s f*ck it up. Let’s bring in a body and see what happens. And that’s why I ended up performing at the closing of the show. I was laying on top of 100 pounds of flour with objects around me — a knife and a rose from an ex-lover. I was very interested in the violence of the kitchen, and I really wanted to perform with my kitchen knife. But then other things came into it, like six casts of my grandmother’s body. The work was supposed to be violent, but then it became so soft by the end.
3
Looking back, what’s a moment during your time at CMU that stands out as a turning point?
One full semester, I decided to not enter my studio. I locked it and I and I got rid of the key, and I was just like, we don’t have it. So every time someone came, I would meet them at my studio door and then ask them where they wanted to go. I just wanted to imagine more spaces as the studio. I don’t like to see all of my work around me. It feels like living in an exhibition. I do remember having an absolutely illegal hot plate in my kitchen — sorry, in my studio. See, I’m calling it my kitchen. I had a bed in there. For me, for it to be generative, it had to look like some sort of living space.
4
What advice would you give to current and future MFA students?
Go out more and be in spaces. Art can be made anywhere. If you are a maker, an artist, a thinker, you’re going to make it happen no matter where you’re at. The work really changes and surprises you once you shift its location and that can be a really important thing to harness. If you’re working on a painting in the studio, maybe take it out and paint next to the pool and see how that changes. Maybe nothing will happen. It’s so important to be adaptable. I’m so tired people being like, Oh, I don’t make art these days because I don’t have a studio. You don’t need a studio.
5
What can we expect from you next?
I’ve closed the show, but not really. I just did a ton of dishes yesterday, and I made such a beautiful stack sculpture that I think I will continue to work in the kitchen. I’m also moving a little bit towards the bedroom. I realized that I don’t really make objects. I arrange them. So I guess I’ll be arranging more things.
More from Tsohil Bhatia | tsohilbhatia.com | @tsohilbhatia
Images: Photography by Leo Ng. Courtesy of CUE Art Foundation.