Mondavi Center: Ritual Encounters by Ashwini Bhat & Forrest Gander

In Ritual Encounters, the Vanderhoef Studio Theatre is reconfigured as a kind of temple that celebrates the secular, sacred environment of Mount Tamalpais. Visitors to this installation are invited to circle in a ritual walk ceramic monuments and biomorphic sculptures that are ringed by dirt mandalas that are themselves edged with hems (hymns) of words. Through immersion in video, sculpture, poetry, and the clockwise movement of their own bodies through the exhibition, viewers can experience (or recall) their own link to the nonhuman world, and to reevaluate the ground they stand upon, both physically and ethically.

Ritual Encounters is the work of artists Ashwini Bhat and Forrest Gander. Bhat’s background is in literature and classical Indian dance, but she now works at the intersection of sculpture, ceramics, installation, and performance. Gander is a writer and translator of poets from Spain, Latin America, and Japan. His recent work includes the Pulitzer Prize-winning Be With.