Artistic Statement

I am in love with the notion in clowning that it is not in the attempt of trying to be entertaining that liveliness emerges, but rather in doing something that leans towards the possibility of impossibility. I hold this love alongside having a body that transcends from South-Asia, a country where the goal of performance art is to create "Rasa," a divine juice, if you will, between yourself as an artist and the audience in front of you. As I think about the contrast of these statements, my artistic practice is rooted in a desire to understand the punk, the unpolished, and that which leans towards failure, as a mode of divinity on its own. I desire for my work to feel like a soft blanket over a gravel road. Integrating magical realism, puppetry, aesthetics of folklore, and physical movement, It is cozy, yet rigid, a place to rest that also questions stasis, specifically for those who have had to hold onto questions of the unknowns alone.

Anooj Bhandari

Artistic Statement

I am in love with the notion in clowning that it is not in the attempt of trying to be entertaining that liveliness emerges, but rather in doing something that leans towards the possibility of impossibility. I hold this love alongside having a body that transcends from South-Asia, a country where the goal of performance art is to create "Rasa," a divine juice, if you will, between yourself as an artist and the audience in front of you. As I think about the contrast of these statements, my artistic practice is rooted in a desire to understand the punk, the unpolished, and that which leans towards failure, as a mode of divinity on its own. I desire for my work to feel like a soft blanket over a gravel road. Integrating magical realism, puppetry, aesthetics of folklore, and physical movement, It is cozy, yet rigid, a place to rest that also questions stasis, specifically for those who have had to hold onto questions of the unknowns alone.