Assembly is pleased to share that Mumbai-born and Los Angeles-based artist Manjari Sharma is in residence at the University of Alabama at Birmingham for Fall 2024. Sharma’s 2023 exhibition Expanding Darshan, which combined the diverse historic collections of the Birmingham Museum of Art and the artist’s ongoing Darshan series—a photographic re-imagining of Hindu deities—received wide critical acclaim.

For her UAB residency, Sharma is creating a two-part collaborative exhibition: Manjari Sharma: तत् त्वम् अिस (Tat Tvam Asi) The Universe is a Mirror for the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts (AEIVA) and Looking for a Silver Lining for UAB Arts in Medicine.

The first exhibit features entirely new works by Sharma, from a speculative, fiction-based project that collages spiritual concepts of the Hindu rituals of death and the afterlife with mankind’s scientific curiosity and exploration of the universe. These works are created first as complex life-size studio installations involving many collaborators and then photographed to be exhibited in their final form—in the spirit of her previous Darshan work that she is well known for, as ornate large-scale prints.

The new works presented here are concurrently featured in the exhibition at AEIVA, which runs from September 13 - December 7, 2024.

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