Through fractured, haunting portraits and landscapes, Anoushka Bhalla explores the trauma of displacement within South Asia’s colonial and postcolonial history. There is an intentional dialogue between land and face, manifested through distinct textural languages. The landscapes function as metaphors—burning lands, spectral ships, scorched seas—symbols of her ancestors’ forced migrations and erasures; their rakish, hazy textures implying the elusive, fragmented nature of memory and time. These are memory-fields haunted by those who fled, those who perished, and those who were never remembered. The portraits, drawn from South Asian photographic archives, familial images and personal memory, put faces to these stories. These individuals—sometimes her own ancestors, sometimes anonymous yet familiar—appear in moments of confrontation, solitude, hope, and madness, rendered with structured, visceral knife strokes that animate their immediate, lived emotional aftermath of partition, exile, and generational loss.
Across both portrait and landscape, Bhalla employs fractured surfaces—cracked textures, ruptured layers, exposed underpaintings—as visual analogues for historical rupture and psychic fragmentation. Terracotta plays a vital role in this material vocabulary. She uses it not only for its earthbound associations with land, ritual, and ancestry, but also for its archaeological weight. Its surface—scored, worn, and intentionally eroded—serves as both site and symbol of excavation. In Bhalla’s work, terracotta holds the residue of cultural displacement and acts as an enduring, unstable terrain through which memory is made visible. In this body of work, the landscape tells the story. The portrait insists we do not forget who lived it.​
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Anoushka Bhalla (b. India) lives and works in New York City.
CV
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Education:
2023: MFA, Fine Arts: School of Visual Arts, NYC
2021: BFA, Sculpture: MSU, Baroda, India
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Solo/Duo:
2023: A Pound of Flesh, Charmoli Ciarmoli (with Nicki Cherry)
2021: An Endless Journey, CP Art Space, SVA (curated by Uttara Parekh)​​
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Biennales:
2026: Upcoming, US
2021: Kochi Biennale, India
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Selected Group:​
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2025:
Upcoming- Fall 2025
Upcoming- 'Lorax', Curated by Charles Moore, NYC
Summer Show- Malenka Room, NYC , curated by Abbas Malakar
'Reject Me Harder', Accent Sisters, NYC
'Ways of Being', ArtManzil, Toronto
Private View, Vardan Gallery, LA
'Do Not Disturb', Impulse Magazine Benefit exhibition, Brooklyn
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2024:
'Now Streaming' Rajiv Menon Contemporary, LA
'Peeling the Onion', Elza Kayal gallery, NYC
'Lost and Found', Cinema Supply NYC, curated by Aishan Zhang
San Francisco Art Fair, Arushi Arts, curated by Ayesha Kapoor, SF​
​Private View, Charmoli Ciarmoli, NYC
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2023:
'Young Artists of Color', Downtown Arts Center, NYC
MFA Thesis Show, SVA Chelsea Gallery, curated by Sara Raza
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2021:
Space 118 Gallery, India
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Residencies and Awards:
2024:
ATHR Foundation Residency Nominee, Saudi Arabia
2023:
FABnyc LES Young Artists of Color Fellowship, NYC​
SVA Alumni scholarship
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2022:
Foundation for Indian Art and education
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2021:
Scholarship, School of Visual Arts, NYC
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2020:
Space Studio Residency, India