Poison Berries:
Janhavi Sharma

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photo access Gallery, Manuka Arts Centre

Hand in front of window, landscape scene behind
Janhavi Sharma, Untitled 1, 2023

Exhibition Overview

Reflecting on her childhood and matrilineal heritage, the artist uses orange poison berries from her backyard, layering them over new and archival photographs. This act serves as a metaphor for the interwoven continuity of time. The inedible fruit, originally from the Caribbean region, now grows in the artist’s home garden as a thriving attraction for the songbirds and a reminder of present pasts.

In this work, she explores themes of identity, memory, and the interplay between reality and fiction. Through the lens of nostalgia, she investigates the allure and unreachability of the past, symbolised by the captivating yet harmful berries.

View Catalogue Here View Exhibition Opening Recording Here

Exhibition artist

Janhavi Sharma

Janhavi Sharma is a visual artist from India, currently living and working in Nottingham, UK.

Her work explores the intimate conflicts and intersections between gender, memory and ecology. She’s drawn to the inaccuracies found in anecdotal histories and recreates narratives that transform her understanding of the ‘self’ in context and contradiction to her surroundings. She often uses food as a mutating metaphor to stage personal, anatomical and systemic enquiries in her practice. Working across photography, moving images, sculpture and installation — she also traces eco-political trajectories of the materials and processes that she interacts with.

Community engagement activities like lectures, workshops, and performances that lead to collaborative research; and induce dialogue about identity and belonging, solidarity and reciprocity, are an extension of her art practice.

View artist profile

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