The Wave & The Ocean

The Wave & The Ocean is Hiten Bhundia’s first solo exhibition, bringing together sculpture and painting to consider the human body as both an illusion and instrument: a vessel through which consciousness encounters existence beneath the veil of Maya. Drawing from Advaita Vedanta, the exhibition centres on the relationship between the wave and the ocean. The wave takes temporary shape, name and form before dissolving back into the water from which it came. In the same way, the body is understood as temporary. Recognising this can dispel Maya: the illusion of separation created through name and form.

Across paintings and the Body Chorus sculptures, bodies melt and flow as organic forms meet technological processes and naturalistic materials intersect with digital surfaces. The works explore the body as the place where consciousness encounters action, desire and experience, asking: How does consciousness pervade the body? How does the body dissolve and reform? Core to the exhibition is the tension between the wave and the ocean: the desire to exist as an individual and the reality of being inseparable from everything around us. The Wave & The Ocean invites audiences to consider whether the self was ever as separate, permanent and individual as it appears.