About

In Ritual Encounters the Vanderhoef Studio Theatre at Mondavi Center is reconfigured as a kind of temple that celebrates the secular, sacred environment of Mount Tamalpais. Visitors to this installation are invited to circle in a ritual walk around ceramic monuments and biomorphic sculptures that are ringed by dirt mandalas. Through immersion in video, sculpture, poetry, and the clockwise movement of their own bodies through the exhibition, viewers can experience (or recall) their own link to the non-human world, and to reevaluate the ground they stand upon, both physically and ethically.

Ritual Encounters is the work of artists Ashwini Bhat and Forrest Gander. Bhat’s background is in literature and classical Indian dance, but she now works at the intersection of sculpture, ceramics, installation and performance. Gander is a writer and translator of poets from Spain, Latin America and Japan. His recent work includes the Pulitzer Prize-winning Be With.

Photo Credit: Ritual Encounters, installation view. Artists: Ashwini Bhat and Forrest Gander
Photo by John Janca
Image courtesy by Shoshana Wayne Gallery and Ashwini Bhat