Haarika Kathi - String Theory
https://www.haarikakathi.com/
Haarika currently lives and works in Berkeley, California where she is finishing her B.As in Art Practice and Molecular Cell Biology at UC Berkeley. She works primarily with oil, acrylic, and ink and watercolor. Outside the studio, she works in a lab working on gene-editing technologies; Haarika is particularly interested in the overlap between science and art, and in the similar processes of curiosity-driven questioning and creative experimenting involved in both fields. Much of her work relates to her own family history and investigates questions of nature versus nurture, the implications of genetics, and the many facets that make a person who they are.
Artist Statement:
We always make art about what we know. But these days, I feel like I don’t know a lot more than I do. I find myself trying to navigate early adulthood and wade through quarter life existential crises, and this process of really knowing myself, while deeply personal, is also vastly universal. But although we all inhabit the same planet governed by the same laws of physics, have the same five senses, and feel the same basic emotions, consciousness is ultimately a subjective experience. The human mind is analogous to a radio, tuned to the specific radio station of human, and even your own personal, consciousness. Although the human experience is pretty great, we are limited to experiencing and seeing the universe through this particular lens. It’s clear that our perceived reality becomes our objective truth. Furthermore, we are all the products of our experiences, events that shape thought patterns and belief systems and biases and personalities and personal narratives and actions. We are all connected to each other in the people we have affected, like a fractal folding into itself or a single string of rope winding to form every object and place and person; a tug at any end ripples through.The statement that everything is connected is cliche on its own but it is the process of questioning and the wonder and reflection in that process that is truly special, as there is a certain solace and serenity that comes in questioning even if the act in and of itself begs an answer. These days, I am still questioning. These days, I am a lot less sure and a lot more content
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