Bhavana Rao – “Art exists in everyday actions, objects and experiences”

I ran a successful architecture design studio in Bangalore, India (where I’m from) for many years. The pandemic brought an unwelcome pause to the practice, with all construction activity grinding to a halt across the country for eight or nine months. This, in hindsight, was a blessing in disguise and an opportunity to take a long look at my practice and what I really wanted to do with my life.

I decided to study fine art to push my work in new directions and be more experimental. Happily, I won a substantial scholarship to study at AUB (British Council GREAT Scholarship), which made things more affordable for me – so I packed my bags and came to this country!

I very consciously did not bring architecture or design into my art practice here for several reasons. First, I wanted to try my hand at something new. Second, I wanted to explore more embodied and experiential methods and mediums – unlike the digital 2D/3D work I do for architecture, which feels more disconnected from the lived experience of space. Third, I wanted to break away from the structured and outcome orientated nature of design practice and let myself explore outside those constraints.

That insight led me to discover my preferred mediums and specialism: performance, text and drawing in the expanded sense. I came to see that, for me, art exists in everyday actions, objects and experiences. Performance art felt like the most embodied, present and immediate way of engaging with the world. Language – or text – is something I constantly turn to in order to process experience. And I’m genuinely drawn to exploring what drawing can be and questioning its boundaries in the expanded field.

My final project series of works, Meditations on a Wall, started with a drawing I made on the wall in my studio. I picked up a pencil one day and traced around the bricks in the wall. I know it’s a simple act, but it was such a uniquely textured wall that the pencil almost moved of its own accord. It sped over the smooth bits and stalled in the bumpy bits. It developed its own momentum with minimal guidance from me and I felt like I was on a journey. It was exciting – there was a sense of discovery, and I think, importantly, it was a way knowing something I’d been seeing for months in a new way.

That moment of embodied drawing became a way of knowing the wall, not as an object, but as a lived, responsive site. The idea of site – familiar to me as an architect – began to shift to include this experiential information.

I did a series of works in different formats based on this experience, all orbiting this expanded idea of site and ways of knowing: Ways of Seeing a Wall (an artist book), A Wall of Voids (a laser-cut drawing), Blind Lines (performance and drawing/sculpture) and What is this? (performance and text animation). Together, they reflect my ongoing inquiry into perception, language and meaning. I move between disciplines to explore what’s elusive – what lies in the gaps between experience and representation. Each piece is an invitation to pay close attention, to embrace uncertainty and to find clarity, not through answers, but through the persistent, poetic act of asking.

I thoroughly enjoyed the MA Fine Art course and found it truly transformational. I appreciated that it welcomed people from all backgrounds – not just those with a fine art degree. It really opened up my thinking and expanded my horizons in ways I hadn’t expected.

That being said, what you choose to do with it after graduation depends entirely on your own circumstances and goals. I was fortunate to be in a position where I could take the time and space to pursue this shift.

Discover more of Bhavana's work through Umber, their sustainable architecture firm.