O-1 Visas
Caring for others can happen through objects. Divyangi Shukla, an artist from India currently living in the Bay Area, practices acts of great care for the damaged, the forgotten, and the just plain strange through sculpture, painting, and poetry. These artistic modes movingly converge in “A Catalogue of Injuries,” a series of hand-crafted dolls, plus poems and drawn portraits they prompted. Inspired by folk art collected by the late Chicago artist Ray Yoshida, now housed at the Kohler Art Preserve in Sheboygan, WI, and her own memories of idiosyncratic individuals encountered over the years, Shukla fashions small effigies out of fabric, paper clay, wax, metal, and whatever else is required. The results feel as if they have been unearthed in a junk shop after decades of wear and tear, with little hope of being loved again, only to have been recognized and rescued. The miracle is that Shukla does not display flea market treasures, she made them, or remade them, becoming caretaker and creator at once. If these are but proxy situations for a world deeply lacking empathy, in such models astonishing tenderness can be witnessed and, perhaps, learned.
—Lori Waxman 2025-06-10 12:28 PM