Ashwini Bhat’s long-term and ongoing body of work, Assembling California, registers her personal, artistic field survey of California’s ecology in a time of climate change, shifting habitats, and devastating forest fires. Her studio practice is prompted by her desire to belong to a place, and a desire for intimacy with the land. Bhat sees her work, in part, as an act of mapping and remapping consciousness, contributing to a spiritual or psychological archive, with an emphasis on the transformative aspects of place.

Continued explorations and research about large-scale forces, geological time, and interrelated symmetries have led to this current and ongoing body of sculpture, installation, photography, and video. Works from the Assembling California have now been exhibited in various solo projects, two-person collaborations, and group exhibitions in several museums and galleries.