Shweta Bist
Shweta Bist (b. 1980) was born in New Delhi, India, and currently lives and works in New York City. She earned her master’s degree in commerce from Delhi University and is an alumna of the School of Visual Arts Continuing Education in New York. Inspired by personal narratives, her photographic work explores maternal subjectivity. Her professional career began in the financial sector but she assumed a creative direction after becoming a mother to her two daughters.
Recent exhibitions include Naissance, curated by Hettie Judah for Unit London’s Voices platform; Oh, Mother, Hera Gallery, Wakefield, Rhode Island; Time/Space, Compère Collective, Brooklyn, NY; Maternal Interior, curated by Lee Nowell-Wilson for A2AC, Ann Arbor, Michigan; Procreate Project Archive, with Buildhollywood, London, UK (all 2023) and Constructions/Connections, South x Southeast Gallery, Molena, Georgia (2022).
Shweta has presented her work on motherhood studies at academic and art conferences. She is an artist mentor with Spilt Milk Gallery, Edinburgh, and is one of three founding members of Mother Creatrix Collective, a collective that supports the work of artist-mothers by creating exhibition opportunities for its members.
My work is an exploration of the psychological experience of mothering. I stage pictures to oppose the consideration of home as an economically non-productive realm and attribute value to motherwork, which has been central in my life.
Memories, dreams and suppressed emotions guide my creative enquiry. My investigations are inspired by the ever-evolving dynamic between my daughters and me, how we mother one another, and how stories of my past and the social milieu of our present influence us.
My recent investigations began when an unsettling anxiety started to creep in upon my younger child turning eight. Amidst the girls’ growing independence, I struggled to recalibrate from being their world to becoming a part of it. Despite having more freedom, I felt adrift.
I found myself reckoning with the impermanence of all things in this world—time became precious like never before. Perhaps this was triggered by the death of a friend close in age to me and other loved ones in close succession. Or perhaps by the realization that my daughters’ clock is keeping my time. Or both
The recent pictures are glimpses of reflection and rediscovery in midlife. I celebrate my daughters’ blossoming femininity, finding joy vicariously in the promise of their future while searching for myself anew. And I grieve for lost chances and departed loved ones while recognizing the temporality of the human experience.
Color conveys emotion and symbolisms from nature, popular iconography, and art history represent ideas and attributes in my compositions. Ultimately, I endeavor to create images that urge the viewer to contemplate the complexities of the maternal experience in its ambivalent entirety, and contribute to a narrative about the lives of women and their children, told from their perspectives.