This Fire That Warms You

Here the dust rises and falls, and the eyes tear up.
It’s a space where something has to transmute its living form to build another.
Time converges, of many pasts and futures.
I hope the dough takes a while to knead, as for me it would be the end of something, having to do with us, together, in a kitchen.

“This fire that warms you” compassionately honors the diligence of a homemaker, the one who chooses to serve you tenderly, as the labor is arduous and the kitchen fragile. Tsohil Bhatia occupies the kitchen often as a studio and the subject. Their ability to deflect and embrace the blade comes from the resilience of whom they memorize and mourn. Tsohil has been ritualistically making self-portraits for more than a decade, seemingly as a feedback loop, of the complexities within and how they present to the world. In the video we disquietly observe their body beside the fire, it seems they’re two subjects with independent agency; both identify themself to each other, and choose to live harmoniously. This fire may fulfill what you’d like it to, but this fire may also burn you. Tsohil observes the passing of time with the skin of its teeth, noting the forms of its ghosts. Such as the cartographies of salt on the ground base of a pan holding water from familiar geographies they’ve been. Tsohil mentions, “I just let it do its thing”, alluding to the fruits and vegetables they’ve been preserving in their studio, they urge that sometimes by decaying it transforms to its true-self. Like other ephemeral pieces, if this decay is always present within the object; then what you see is how it chooses to declare itself to you in that moment. This allows for boundless potentials, as we all have distinct encounters to its authenticity. The exhibition evinces that the objects and the emotional labor in the kitchen are not always of polite nurturance, they’re also loud and assertive. There are cracks, spills, burns, spit, poison, contamination; there are moments that may not seem disciplined to eat off. Tsohil is interested in these ruptures to the sobriety. The kitchen then serves as a site for many active possibilities, not only to feed ourselves, but also a space to revolt, imagine and fuel radical actions.

Fadescha, Jan 2024