Manjari Sharma: Surface Tension
September 8 - November 4, 2023
Opening Reception: Friday, September 8, 6-8pm
Assembly, 4411 Montrose Blvd, Suite F
Assembly is pleased to present a selection of work from Manjari Sharma’s latest series, Surface Tension. This new body of work, which consists of photographs, video works, and site-specific installations, extends her metaphorical gaze to one of the most fundamental elements of human life and transforms her viewers alongside her subjects.
Water is life. It cleanses, it feeds, it transforms, and it destroys. Surface Tension explores our metaphysical relationship with water through diverse human forms submerged in swimming pools. These immersive and gestural forms highlight the fragility, circularity, and oneness of our existence, turning the pool into a vessel for transcendence. The artist writes:
A new world appears; Figures turn into landscapes, limbs into fins, and bodies morph and merge into peculiar yet familiar organic shapes and structures. A ceremonial splash is followed by a momentary lapse of consciousness, and new galaxies are born with every drawn breath. What are we but a series of star-crossed enigmas; a deck of cards in the wind, twisted by fate and held together, loosely, by a glue that has no name.
Born and raised in Mumbai, India, Sharma roots her decades-long practice in her cultural heritage, but extends her personal narrative to a more universal one. Her work is shaped by her curiosity about the inner landscape of the human mind and its inextricable, elemental, and sacred relationship to ritual and mythology. Sharma’s practice revolves around her deep-seated interest in studying, questioning, and celebrating these transitory states of human imagination, history, and transformation.
Manjari Sharma
Untitled (Surface Tension), 2019
Archival pigment print, framed
20 x 30 inches
Edition of 4
Inquire
Installation images by Suzanne Zeller
Surface Tension Installation at La Colombe D’Or
September 8, 2023 - Houston, TX
Presented by Assembly and SohoHouse, Sharma installed her second site-specific work of the Surface Tension series at La Colombe D’Or Hotel in Houston.
Sharma created an original video piece for the hour-long projection into the pool, with coordinated soundscapes and swimmer performances throughout the duration. This event took place after the opening reception at Assembly on September 8 and was documented by photographer Channel Purple and drone footage by Uche.
Images by Channel Purple
In Conversation: Manjari Sharma & Bridget Bray
Hear Assembly artist Manjari Sharma in conversation with Houston-based independent curator Bridget Bray. The two discuss the artist’s evolving multidisciplinary practice and her latest body of work on view at Assembly, Surface Tension.
The talk took place at Assembly on September 9, 2023.
Bridget Bray is an independent curator and arts advisor based in Houston, Texas. She served as the Nancy C. Allen Curator and Director of Exhibitions at Asia Society Texas from 2014 through 2022, and organized exhibitions featuring the work of artists including Mel Chin, Phung Huynh, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Hung Liu, and Manjari Sharma. Her creation of the annual residency program at Asia Society in spring 2020 continues to support Houston-based BIPOC artists through a re-envisioned use of the galleries and related programming.
Her most recent responsibilities prior to her arrival in Houston were leading the curatorial department at the University of Southern California’s Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, CA. During her ten years of service there, she curated major exhibitions of both historical and contemporary arts of Asia and the Pacific Islands. She has lived and worked in Asia, including India, China, and Nepal, and was educated at Georgetown University and University of Washington, Seattle.
Manjari Sharma (b. 1979) is a Los Angeles-based artist who was born and raised in Mumbai, India, and who makes art that addresses issues of memory, identity, multiculturalism, and personal mythology. After moving to New York City, she gained notoriety for her long-term project, The Shower Series. With this series, Sharma began creating work that was just as much about the materiality of water as it was about the inner landscape of the human mind. Expanding her art practice, Sharma has continued incorporating sound, motion, projection, and collage into her work. Sharma's project Darshan, published by Nazraeli press, is a photographic re-imagining of Hindu deities that garnered her wide critical acclaim. In 2017, The Metropolitan Museum of Art commissioned Sharma to create a collaborative piece that received international praise and recognition.
Widely-celebrated and exhibited around the world, she has won numerous awards and is in the collections of major institutions, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Carlos Museum at Emory University, and the Birmingham Museum of Art, among many others. Works from her projects have been published, exhibited, and traveled to galleries, museums, and festivals worldwide.