Swasti Bharti

Swasti Bharti is an interdisciplinary artist originally from India who is now located in Toronto, Canada. We conducted our interview over a period of three weeks in the late spring of 2020.

What are you working on and how does this fit with your background as an artist?

Life in a Scrapbook, photo by Swasti Bharti

I’m currently working on a board game on the topic of immigration. To be honest, I feel like I’m still exploring my own place as an artist – I’m too new to stick to a particular style or even a medium. I started off as a documentary photographer but, I’ve realised that each project is different and requires a whole different treatment. So, over the last five years I’ve moved slightly away from documentary photography and became more of a photo-based artist, working mostly with archives and found images.

The board game is a step in a whole different direction and is both exciting as well as daunting. To answer your question, I guess I'm trying something new and, and also something that  feels like an organic response to the topic. It’s almost like trying different kinds of food. I’ll have to wait and see whether this is going to be like chicken nuggets (my comfort food) or like sushi (a one-time venture as I realised I was allergic to fish). 

What led you to  choose a game format for this piece? Why a game, rather than anything else?

I remember one day in January when I suddenly had this eureka moment and announced I was going to make a board game on immigration. It was like I was standing in the middle of a colosseum and everyone was cheering for me. Unfortunately the only audience in reality was my husband and all I got from him (I think) was a hmmm. But I do believe there are two factors that may have led to this moment. 

In college there was a department dedicated to toys and games and one of my best friends was a student there. We were always very closely involved in the development and production of each other's work, but I had never really seen myself making something like this back then. Then last year during a residency, a friend mentioned Rachel Whitehead’s ‘Modern Chess set’. I got really fascinated by that particular work, and just the simple interpretation of domestic politics in the form of an age-old game.  

The idea of working on the project of immigration and it being a board game was more of a tandem thought. For some reason I didn’t visualize it as anything else. A board game is multi-dimensional and multi-layered as a medium, just as the topic is, thus giving me the opportunity to express myself better. It just felt right. 

Where has the journey of game making led your art practice – are you writing, sketching? Where do you begin?

I am mostly writing – a lot! Almost two whole notebooks worth, plus multiple excel sheets and word documents. And just researching. I’ve split the research into two parts. One part is about immigration – the history, policies, process and people’s personal stories. The other part is about board games – how they came about, why they came about, the most common ones, the rules, the other elements used, board games as art, etc. When I feel overwhelmed by one of the two research topics, I switch to the other. 

I haven’t gotten my hands dirty with actually making anything physically yet, but I do keep playing around with what the board may look like on my computer, or just sketching it out in my notebook. I don’t think I have come far enough in the project to try anything new yet except for running my ideas by a lot of people at every stage. I feel like this project will get enriched from input by artists and others alike. 

You've been through a lot of changes lately – family changes and also moving to a new country. Is art a comfort during change? Or do you lose something of your artistry when life takes over? 

Art was always my coping mechanism and I think it will always remain so. Previously, before life took over, I could go from the conception, to execution, to production of some of the toughest projects in a matter of days. Days used to become like a fluid string of hours. Everything in life used to take a back seat, including health. Sleep was a lesser-known phenomenon to me then. But now things have changed entirely. I am more aware of a lot of things around me, and about myself, and I feel that’s reflected in my work as well. However, it’s much harder to stay motivated. Self-doubt kicks in as well from time to time, and most ideas just end up being words in my notebook or visions in my head. Also, with the luxury of time, procrastination has become a very good friend of mine. But I guess it’s give and take. 

The Domesticity of things, photo by Swasti Bharti

Lonliness 2.0, photo by Swasti Bharti

What needs as an artist have you not had a chance to meet yet in your new circumstances?

One of the things that really bothers me, being in a new place and given the circumstances, is not having people to share things with. My graduation, marriage, moving to a new country, moving away from the medium I generally worked with before, and COVID, coincided with each other into one big blob of happenings and now I feel lost. It’s not just a loss of my comfort zone, but a much bigger void that is very hard to explain. Even something as simple as buying paper, or a notebook, or markers feels so big now. That sense of community – with not just friends, peers, mentors and family but also from the shopkeeper at the stationery store to the hardware store to everyone else around who all contributed into making a project whole – is something I really miss a lot. And I know that an artist should be able to work with whatever is available, and I have been able to produce work even now, but you know the feeling of stuffiness when you have a cold? Life feels like that right now, and I really want to be able to breathe freely again.  The virtual residency was very helpful in getting over that though, and it was very comforting to just be heard after a very long time. 

We’re all adapting so fast – or trying to – in this new landscape of connection, and how that feeds into art making. With that in mind, how do you imagine the next twelve months will unfold for your art practice?

I am really looking forward to exploring a lot more mediums, not in terms of any work but just as a self-imposed exercise.  When I was in first grade, we had an exercise to model clay into something of our choice in class. The next day my parents were called to school. I was quite clueless about what was happening but proud of what I had made. I had made a fish pond with fishes and a fishing pole. I had even explained that to my teacher but she obviously didn’t see it. No one did. I obviously flunked the class. While leaving the class I remember looking at other people’s work, seeing a simple flower or a house and wondering to myself why I hadn’t thought of that. To me, the fish pond was the most obvious choice. Needless to say, the next two decades were uneventful in this regard. I didn’t do anything like that again because I was trying to follow some kind of a protocol for life that I thought was meant for me. 

But when I started my classes at design school exactly two decades later, I went through the same thing. Even though I was able to articulate my work better,  even justify it, it didn’t work. Most people failed to see what I saw. My parents were not called to school  of course, which was a relief. But again, I mellowed myself down. Basically what I am trying to say is, I have been trying to fit into something for too long now. I want to free myself of these imaginary moulds and that is what I want to work on in the coming time. 

And of course, I hope to complete my board game by this time next year (Fingers crossed).  

See more of Swasti’s work at swastibharti.com