Portfolio: Bhavna Mehta

Day 17. Harvesting, 2020, iPad drawing.

[Image description: A black line drawing on a white background. A person in a wheelchair bends forward and holds a fennel bulb by its stalk, as if having just pulled it from the ground.]

Bhavna Mehta is best known for her intricate cut paper and embroidery works that delve into the the human body and the natural world. Painstakingly handmade, they borrow from the folk art traditions of India, where she was born and raised. Since 2016, Mehta has worked with another medium, as well, one that is perhaps surprising for its contrast to her larger practice: the iPad drawing. Mehta had been searching for an alternative to her labor-intensive work with paper and thread, something that could be an everyday practice, freer and more fluid. She looked to artists such as David Hockney and Jorge Colombo, who have used the iPad to compelling effect in recent years. Mehta immediately took to the iPad, on which she draws with her fingertip in the Sketchbook app. This technology offers both ease of use and an immediacy that speaks to daily life in our digital era. 

On April 1st of this year, Mehta embarked upon a self-assignment to make one drawing a day for forty days— forty for the Italian word quaranta, the origin of the term quarantine. Posted on Instagram at @bhavnaquickdraw, the images depict herself, her husband George, and her friends during #quarantinelife (as she tags it). They do laundry, cook, make the bed, video chat with friends, stretch, do a puzzle. Like so many coping with the anxiety of living amidst a pandemic, they also scream and hide. Mehta draws these moments in bold, graphic lines with a sure hand. Largely black and white, with a judicious use of color, the images thrum with energy. Her drawings appear quickly made, not in haste but because she has come to know these people and their actions so well. Her subjects—friends old and new—are dear to her, and this tenderness is apparent in each image. 

All the figures in Mehta’s drawings have disabilities. Both Mehta and her husband are paraplegic, and a number of her friends have disabilities, too. In a way, this should not be remarkable; these are people living life, with all its attendant banality and drama. But in our deeply ableist society, seeing people with disabilities represented in the cultural sphere is so infrequent that it becomes extraordinary. While this is ordinary life for Mehta and her friends, she knows that presenting images of disabled bodies is a significant act. Her earliest drawings in the series featured herself and her husband, but she soon felt a desire to depict others with disabilities who were navigating the COVID-19 world. #quarantinelife is different for people with disabilities than it is for the able-bodied. Put simply, it is not new. Many people with disabilities have long experienced the isolation that comes with not being able to go out into the world to do whatever they want, whenever they want. There is, too, the isolation created by intense cultural stigma around bodies with visible physical differences. And so they have developed coping mechanisms, creative ways to cultivate full lives, well-being, and connection in isolation. In Mehta’s drawings, we see these figures revel in an intimate everydayness, rendered with the technology that is a dynamic tool for living and for art making. 

-Elizabeth Rooklidge, Editor, HereIn

Day 3. Meditating, 2020, iPad drawing.

[Image description: A black line drawing on a white background. A view from above of a woman with black hair in a wheelchair, doing the dishes.]

Day 4. Screaming, 2020, iPad drawing.

[Image description: A black line drawing on a white background. A person sits in a wheelchair, their eyes and mouth wide open.]

Day 6. Housekeeping, 2020, iPad drawing.

[Image description: A black line drawing on a white background. A view from above of a woman on a bed, tucking a rumpled sheet into the bed’s top left corner. She lies on her stomach, with her right leg outstretched and her left leg bent at the knee. Her arms reach up in front of her. On the left side of the image is a partial view of a wheelchair and a bedside table with objects on it.]

Day 8. Zooming, 2020, iPad drawing.

[Image description: A black line drawing on a white background. A bald, bearded man and a woman with black hair sit at a table. The woman is in a wheelchair and holds a glass of wine. The man reaches his hand for a plate of orange sweet potatoes on the table. Smiling, they look at a computer screen featuring five rectangles with figures in them. Through a window behind the couple, the moon hanging in a sky of gray and purple is visible.]

Day 11. Dreaming, 2020, iPad drawing.

[Image description: A black line drawing on a white background. A view from above of a woman with black hair in a bathtub. The woman’s face is not visible. The floor is covered in green and white tile. On the left side of the image is a partial view of a wheelchair.] 

Day 18. Storytelling, 2020, iPad drawing.

Laura: “[I am] a Disabled interdisciplinary artist based in NYC who mainly works with song composition/performance and improvisational dance. [I am] also the co-founder of @hyp_access— a hypermobility-specific disability justice project that focuses on care access for Hypermobile people across artistic, body-based, and scientific fields.” 

[Image description: A black line drawing on a white background of a woman performing. The shape of a piano is visible in the background and the lines of floorboards demarcate the foreground. She is mid-turn in her electric wheelchair, her right hand on the controller and her left curved in front of her body. Her head and my legs are tilted away from the turn, trailing behind. She is wearing a long sleeved black shirt with the shoulders cut out and flowing pants.]

Day 21. Assembling, 2020, iPad drawing.

Laura: “SCI [spinal cord injury] for over 40 years. Writing a memoir. Used to living alone, but hard to concentrate these days, like living a never-ending PTSD. Puzzles help— it’s soothing to make order out of chaos.” 

[Image description: A drawing on a white background. A woman with black hair sits at a table, her right arm stretched out to a puzzle spread in front of her. She wears a black shirt, purple vest, blue pants, and brown shoes. She sits in a black wheelchair that has orange spokes.]

Day 23. Visiting, 2020, iPad drawing.

[Image description: A black drawing on a white background. A woman with black hair, wearing a black mask over her nose and mouth, sits in a wheelchair. She bends forward and stretches out her hands to a small black dog. His hair is long and his ears are small and floppy.]

Day 24. Feeding, 2020, iPad drawing.

Sherril: “Wife, creator of children, friend, teacher, writer, photographer, ASL interpreter, athlete, survivor, student of life.” 

[Image description: A drawing on a white background. A blonde woman in a wheelchair sits in front of a stove. She wears black glasses, a blue shirt, and red and gray patterned pants. On her lap, she holds a cutting a brown cutting board with a beige plate and white fork on it. Her right hand reaches up to stir food in a pan on the stove. She has a smile on her face. Her wheelchair has hot pink hardware.]

Day 25. Stretching, 2020, iPad drawing.

[Image description: A black line drawing on a white background. In the upper left corner of the image, a woman sits in a wheelchair. She reaches her left arm up in the air and her right arm down to the ground. In the center of the image, the same figure is repeated but in a stretched, elongated form. In the bottom right corner of the image, the figure is again repeated, elongated even more. The overall result is of a figure being repeatedly stretched, while she is stretching.]

Day 26. Hiding, 2020, iPad drawing.

[Image description: A black drawing on a white background. A person is crouched forward over their knees, framed within the rear wheel of a wheelchair. The wheelchair seat is empty.]

Day 31. Writing, 2020, iPad drawing.

Lamp: “Lamp (not her real name) is 9 years old and she’s in the 4th grade. She wants to be an actor when she grows up and loves the show Full House.”

[Image description: A drawing on a white background. A young girl with long blond hair, wearing a blue shirt and gray pants, sits on a bed in a bedroom. She has a condition called limb difference and her left arm ends at the elbow. Her right leg is stretched out in front of her and she holds a writing implement between her toes, poised above a piece of paper on a clipboard. A book and papers are scattered on the bed. The walls of the bedroom are pink and there is a gold lamp on a shelf. An abstract yellow and white pattern can be seen through a window on the right side of the image.]

Day 32. Making, 2020, iPad drawing.

August: "August is a Graphic Designer, Illustrator, and Art History student. During quarantine, they’ve picked up crochet and painting to ease the stress of change.”

[Image description: A black line drawing on a white background. A person with short dark hair and glasses sits cross-legged on the floor with a manual wheelchair behind their back. They have a dog on their lap and hold in their hands a crochet hook and project made of red yarn.]

Day 33. Husbanding, 2020, iPad drawing.

[Image description: A drawing on a white background. A man wearing a hat and sunglasses sits in a wheelchair, facing away from the viewer and toward an umbrella-style clothesline. His arms extend above his head as one hand holds a clothespin on a piece of orange laundry. Pieces of blue and green laundry hang on the right side of the clothesline. Abstracted green plants are visible in the background.]

Day 36. Communicating, 2020, iPad drawing.

Renata: “I am a 13 year-old who is partially blind. Learning how to use my Braille writer has helped me share my thoughts and ideas through a new language.”

[Image description: A black line drawing on a white background. A young woman with short black hair sits in front of a typewriter. She is wearing a white Mexican-style blouse with multicolored embroidery of birds and flowers around the neck.]

Day 38. Yogaing, 2020, iPad drawing.

[Image description: A black drawing on a white background. A woman with black hair levitates above a wheelchair with her legs crossed over each other in lotus position, a yoga meditation pose.]