Process Archive / Studio Bhoan

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field notes & fragments from an itinerant studio
ongoing marginalia on image, memory, and place




SHOW: All  SET—A  SET—B
Copycat Neuroplasticity, as it's called, gives us a much more acute understanding of how the brain works, but it doesn't bring us a great deal closer to the ghost in the machine: consciousness. Many scientists believe the sensory map imprinted on the brain forms a rudimentary consciousness, and the next stage of development is "mirror neurons", which enable us to ape the actions of others.

These neurons were first discovered in monkeys in the 1990s and last year they were formally identified in humans. Ramachandran, the mirror therapist, was quick to reflect on their potential and he predicts that their discovery "will do for psychology what DNA did for biology".

What they appear to tell us is that humans are first and foremost mimics. We make ourselves up as we go along by improvising from what we see. This model also suggests the self is in dynamic interaction with otherness, both copying behaviour and projecting its emotions on to others, which is the basis for the vital human quality of empathy. (Ramachandran speculated in 2000 that autism was caused by deficient mirror neurons and medical research is now going in this direction.)

*via The Guardian :  VS Ramachandran: The Marco Polo of neuroscience, 2011

Category
Research, Mirror Neurons, Empathy
Scanning and Imaging
 Lidar scans, 2023

First comes the blood work—CA-125 in her case—then the imaging: MRI, followed by a sonogram. The gradients and radio-frequency coils map the body slice by slice, stacking them into a three-dimensional volume.

Chemotherapy begins but exacts its price; chemicals flood every tissue. Her bones feel hollowed, her cells as if they are burning from the inside. Category
Medical Imaging, Embodied Trauma, LiDAR
Reading Mohammed Iqbal in Ahmedabad


 An old man corrected my pronunciation. Two men on a scooter stopped, leafed through the Iqbal poems, and snapped photos of the pages. “Where did you find this?” they asked. “It’s hard to get Urdu books here”

Video recordings in Urdu with English subtitles.Category
Urdu Poetry, Identity, Collective readings
Family Archives
You know how sometimes you find images that were bundled together in a photo album, a few inserted in that slot-for-one? The ones that can only first be felt with fingers and then their density tells us, there is more here.Category
Personal Memory, Photo Albums, Domestic History
Sitting Standing Leaving
 BBC News 2024

“Billboards promising easy immigration to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK jut out through ample mustard fields.

Single-storey brick homes double up as canvasses for hand-painted mural advertisements promising quick visas. And in the town of Bathinda, hundreds of agents jostle for space on a single narrow street, pledging to speed up the youth's runaway dreams.”

Images from Punjab, a few years prior to Daksh leaving for Canada.

Category
Migration, Punjab, Global Mobility
Studies for drawing
“The assassination of Prime Minister Smt. Indira Gandhi on 31-10-1984, by her two Sikh security guards, led to violent attacks on Sikhs and their properties in Delhi and other parts of the country.  The incidents of violence in Delhi started from the evening of 31-10-84.  

 As a result of these riots, hundreds of  Sikhs had to leave their homes and take refuge in relief camps or in other safer places.  Many Sikh families lost their male members and thus suffered great emotional and heavy financial loss.  The Home Minister made a statement on the floor of the Rajya Sabha that the number of Sikhs killed in Delhi during November 1984 riots was 2146; 586 persons were said to have been killed in other parts of the country during that period.”

*via Govt Of India - Justice Nanavati Comission Of Inquiry (1984 Anti-Sikh Riots), submitted in 1986Category
Migration, Political Violence, Historical Record
Middle Class English Medium
My mother’s English book, photographed in 2022.

Category
Language, Middle-Class India, Maternal Memory
Grid Sight
Gagandeep recently became a Patwati. 3 years probation and then permanent. He took me to his tin roof office, made with plywood partitions. Turning on an inverter, he pointed a remote towards an AC vent that was too split between two rooms with plywood, half the vent here, half there. We only have permission for a fan so we put together money and installed this, he explained. 

Category
Provisional, Jugaad, Boundries
About 
studiobhoan@gmail.com

 Akshay Bhoan is a lens based artist working between Delhi and London. His practice explores the transitory nature of knowledge, memory, and perception—unfolding through photography, mixed media, and interactive installation. Bhoan constructs dialogues between past and present, tracing how historical residues shape identity and visibility in contemporary life.

Bhoan earned his MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art (2023). Recent presentations include One Tongue Over the Other, lake.space, London (2024); By the Means at Hand, with Vlatka Horvat, Croatian Pavilion, 60th La Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2024); A Small Thing but My Own, The Studio @ 620, Florida (2022); Lambing Season, Worldling Gallery, London (2022); Poplar Union Digital Arts Festival, London (2020); and Pop-Up Archive, ICP MANA, New York (2017).

His recognitions include the TAF Emerging Artist Award (2025), a residency at Landschaftspark Rietzer Berg (2023), and an En Foco Photography Fellowship (2020).
Studio Bhoan  2025