Portfolio: Bhavna Mehta

Bhavna Mehta is best known for her intricate cut paper and embroidery works that delve into the the human body and the natural world. Painstakingly handmade, they borrow from the folk art traditions of India, where she was born and raised. Since 2016, Mehta has worked with another medium, as well, one that is perhaps surprising for its contrast to her larger practice: the iPad drawing. Mehta had been searching for an alternative to her labor-intensive work with paper and thread, something that could be an everyday practice, freer and more fluid. She looked to artists such as David Hockney and Jorge Colombo, who have used the iPad to compelling effect in recent years. Mehta immediately took to the iPad, on which she draws with her fingertip in the Sketchbook app. This technology offers both ease of use and an immediacy that speaks to daily life in our digital era. 

On April 1st of this year, Mehta embarked upon a self-assignment to make one drawing a day for forty days— forty for the Italian word quaranta, the origin of the term quarantine. Posted on Instagram at @bhavnaquickdraw, the images depict herself, her husband George, and her friends during #quarantinelife (as she tags it). They do laundry, cook, make the bed, video chat with friends, stretch, do a puzzle. Like so many coping with the anxiety of living amidst a pandemic, they also scream and hide. Mehta draws these moments in bold, graphic lines with a sure hand. Largely black and white, with a judicious use of color, the images thrum with energy. Her drawings appear quickly made, not in haste but because she has come to know these people and their actions so well. Her subjects—friends old and new—are dear to her, and this tenderness is apparent in each image. 

All the figures in Mehta’s drawings have disabilities. Both Mehta and her husband are paraplegic, and a number of her friends have disabilities, too. In a way, this should not be remarkable; these are people living life, with all its attendant banality and drama. But in our deeply ableist society, seeing people with disabilities represented in the cultural sphere is so infrequent that it becomes extraordinary. While this is ordinary life for Mehta and her friends, she knows that presenting images of disabled bodies is a significant act. Her earliest drawings in the series featured herself and her husband, but she soon felt a desire to depict others with disabilities who were navigating the COVID-19 world. #quarantinelife is different for people with disabilities than it is for the able-bodied. Put simply, it is not new. Many people with disabilities have long experienced the isolation that comes with not being able to go out into the world to do whatever they want, whenever they want. There is, too, the isolation created by intense cultural stigma around bodies with visible physical differences. And so they have developed coping mechanisms, creative ways to cultivate full lives, well-being, and connection in isolation. In Mehta’s drawings, we see these figures revel in an intimate everydayness, rendered with the technology that is a dynamic tool for living and for art making. 

-Elizabeth Rooklidge, Editor, HereIn