This Artist in Me workshop explores the relationship between time, memory, and material through sculptural engagement. Inspired by the practice of Tyeb Mehta, whose work often transformed lived experience into distilled visual forms, the session considers how images and objects can hold emotional and psychological presence.

Led by Murari Jha, participants will work with found and discarded objects as points of departure for reflecting on personal histories and lived experiences. The workshop approaches making as a mode of thinking, encouraging participants to consider how gestures, materials, and acts of assembling can function as traces of memory and time.

Through an exploration of material relationships and sculptural thinking, participants will engage with how ordinary objects can shift in meaning and become repositories of experience. The session emphasises process, reflection, and the ways in which personal narratives can emerge through form and material.

Please note:

Please bring one discarded or found object that you do not mind changing, breaking apart, or transforming. It could be an old household item, a broken tool, a toy, or any everyday  object that carries traces of time and use. Please avoid bringing anything valuable, precious, or emotionally irreplaceable, as the object may be altered during the workshop.

Artist Bio 

Murari Jha is an Indian visual and performance artist and educator based between Bihar and Delhi. His multidisciplinary practice explores the relationship between the body, memory, and power, approaching the body as both subject and archive that carries social history, trauma, and resistance. Working through performance, objects, and shared spaces, he examines how everyday socio-political conditions are lived and processed psychologically and physically. His work responds to lived realities through durational actions, repetition, stillness, and care, often engaging communities as active participants. Jha holds a BFA from Patna University and an MFA from Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University.

Key presentations include the solo exhibition The Future of Nostalgia at Nature Morte (2026); Baggage from The Longest March at Nature Morte (2023); Returning to Earth – A Kinder Search for Home, co-commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation and Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (2022–2023); Samay Pahaad Ho Gaya Hai, a live art performance at Dutch Warehouse, curated by HH Art Spaces in collaboration with Kochi Biennale Foundation (2022); Machaan, conceived for Five Million Incidents at Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan (2020); Fondle at Mumbai Art Room (2018); Good Sleep at UNIDEE Residency, Cittadellarte –Fondazione Pistoletto (2017), supported by Inlaks; The Lane at Theertha 

International Artist Collective (2017); Barrow, an installation-cum-durational performance curated by HH Art Spaces for the Serendipity Arts Festival (2016); Touch Everything for the exhibition Future Collaboration at the Italian Cultural Centre (2016); Bhumi, presented at the invitation of Clark House Initiative at Mithila Bhavan Akhara (2016); Body, Structure & Space residency at 1Shanthiroad Studio/Gallery (2015); and In Between at Crack International Art Camp (2013)

While you’re here, we invite you to also explore KNMA’s ongoing exhibition TYEB MEHTA Bearing Weight (with the lightness of being)