Material Bodies
Aastha Patel
Featured in Hot Sheet - Expanding the Boundaries of Photography, 2024
Aastha's work is characterised by a playful manipulation of photography and textile, transforming photographs into sculptural entities giving the images a new life as objects that are both organic and elemental. The sculptures she creates feels alive, shaped by the dynamic energy between material and concept. This offers the viewer an immersive experience that reaches beyond the visual to the tactile and experiential.
Artist Bio
Aastha Patel (b. 1996) is a visual artist from Mumbai, currently based in London,UK. She completed her Masters from Royal College of Art in Photography (2023). Her practice is inspired by the psyche and the history of film. In her work she explores the body and its relation to natural formations, and the capacity for images to be transformed into sculptural objects through alternative processes. Aastha wishes to explore how photographs go beyond the digital, into a realm of sculpture.
She's looking to understand and critique the patriarchal system that damages the psyche, to return the experience of the body back to the spectator. It is only by making and creating that one can heal. She wants to share this way of being with her viewers and the models she works with.Aastha works primarily with photography, operating in both analogue and digital, studio and outdoor settings, working well in conceptual and commercial environments. Having worked on film sets as an assistant director and camera assistant she is able to take her practical knowledge from sets and apply it to photography and its various forms. She is interested in fine art, fashion and still life shoots.