In “Voyage,” Pondicherry artist Aarti Manik sets adrift all-important touchpoints where floating bears weight, enunciated and earthen. Her current works make possible meditations on the nature of Architecture, or the architecture of Nature. Here we meet chiseled poems, heavy yet buoyant, some with prows stretched upwards where there is Space to inhabit. Untended, the sounds of waterworld seem distant, if at all. Might these be relics of having gone? “And where did you go, my darling young one?” (Bob Dylan “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” -1963)Windward shifts announce arrivals not like crackling airport loudspeakers, but confident whispers that lay bare the precariousness of transiting here to there. We are invited to follow, escaping beneath the upper reaches of doubt, and delve into structure as it must be, could be, wants to be. A grounding of sorts.“Voyage” presents interior dialogues, through shaping both movement and abstraction. These works bridge the unsure found within each of our paths, making real our invited pasts. Manik provides as geologic swells, those points at which our lives face change along the way, marking the ‘go,’ decide now. These are moments drafted inextricably by the trade winds of simply living a life and constructing our own unbalanced stories.Bruce Dehnert - New York - 2024

Starting out as a professional photographer, Aarti Manik’s creative journey turned towards clay in 2012 at Dharavi, where she learnt from Hanif Galwani, a 7th generation master potter. In 2014, she quit photography to mould a career in ceramics by joining Golden Bridge Pottery (GBP), a studio established by Deborah Smith and Ray Meeker in Pondicherry in 1971. In 2016, she spent 6 months as an apprentice to Penny Simpson, a slipware potter in Devon in England. During her time there, she also had the opportunity to assist Svend Bayer with firing his anagama kiln and assisted Clive Bowen with his slipware workshop at Kigbeare Studios. Since her return to India, she has been teaching the 7 month course at GBP. In 2019, she won the Multicultural Award at NCECA. She has been a workshop facilitator at GBP for Bruce Dehnert in 2019, Elena Renker in 2020, and John Dix and NIck Schwartz in 2022. She has been part of a few group shows- Handle it! 2018, Jaipur. Beyond the Brickyard at Archie Bray, Montana (U.S). Table Manners at Gallery Art & Soul 2021, Mumbai. Clay Carrots at 079 Gallery,2022 Ahemdabad. Many Cups in a Large Sink by Inordinary.in,2023, Mumbai. Earth & Sea, Contemporary Ceramics curated by Kristine Michael at Gallery Art Motif, 2024, Delhi. Multicultural Show at The Black History Museum,2024, Richmond, Virginia (U.S).