India-born, Spain-based artist painting the objects that carry home.
Bhawana Sahu is a visual artist based in Benavente, Castilla y León, Spain. Working in watercolour, coloured pencil and mixed media on paper, she creates contemporary still lifes in which everyday objects become indirect portraits of the people and relationships that have shaped her life.
Born in Banda, Uttar Pradesh, India, Bhawana now lives with her family in Spain. Her work moves between the home she grew up in and the one she is making: between inherited rituals and new family habits, childhood and motherhood, memory and the present.
Artist statement
I paint the people in my life without painting their faces.
A pressure cooker carries the sound of my mother's kitchen. A moka pot holds quiet mornings with my husband. A flower recalls the small ritual of my son bringing the garden indoors. A chrome hair bow returns me to the girl I once was.
Through close observation, reflected light, colour and precise mark-making, I paint these ordinary things as portraits of the lives held around them. The object is visible, but the relationship is the true subject.
Each work begins with a person or memory of my own, yet it does not ask the viewer to inherit my exact story. It leaves room for someone from their own life to appear: a mother, a partner, a child, a grandparent or a former self.
BeSahu Arts is my independent art practice for original works on paper exploring how the people we love can remain present in the things of everyday life.