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Bharat Sikka was born and raised in India, where he began his photographic practice before studying at the Parsons School of Design, NY. Sikka’s long term photographic projects have centered on the cultural residues and societal transformations within India, rendered with the visual language and material forms of contemporary art photography. His work subtly speaks to India’s history and regionality (of Kashmir, in Where the Flowers Still Grow), the tide of globalization (Matter), and masculinity (Indian Men). For Unseen 2019, Sikka creates an installation version of The Sapper - his detailed and layered portrayal of his father. Sikka brings together multiple vantage points; from the remote landscapes that his father inhabits and maintains to subtle still life observations of his habits and routines. Over the course of 3 years, Sikka and his father’s photographic relationship has also become multi-layered, shown in the range of Sikka’s intimate portraits of his father in his daily life through to the collaborative performances and enactments that the engineer-father undertakes for his photographer-son.भरत सिक्का का जन्म और पालन-पोषण भारत में हुआ, जहाँ उन्होंने पार्सन्स स्कूल ऑफ़ डिज़ाइन, एनवाई में अध्ययन करने से पहले अपना फोटोग्राफिक अभ्यास शुरू किया। सिक्का की दीर्घकालिक तस्वीरें भारत के भीतर सांस्कृतिक अवशेषों और सामाजिक परिवर्तनों पर केंद्रित हैं, जो समकालीन कला फोटोग्राफी की दृश्य भाषा और सामग्री रूपों के साथ प्रदान की गई हैं। उनका काम भारत के इतिहास और क्षेत्रीयता (कश्मीर में, जहां फूल अभी भी बढ़ता है), वैश्वीकरण का ज्वार (मैटर), और मर्दानगी (भारतीय पुरुष) बोलता है। अनसीन 2019 के लिए, सिक्का द सैपर का एक इंस्टालेशन संस्करण बनाता है - अपने पिता का विस्तृत और स्तरित चित्रण। सिक्का एक साथ कई सहूलियत अंक लाता है; दूरदराज के परिदृश्यों से कि उनके पिता निवास करते हैं और अपनी आदतों और दिनचर्या के सूक्ष्म अभी भी जीवन का पालन करते हैं। 3 वर्षों के दौरान, सिक्का और उनके पिता के फोटोग्राफिक संबंध भी बहुस्तरीय हो गए हैं, जो उनके दैनिक जीवन में अपने पिता के सिक्किम के अंतरंग चित्रों की श्रेणी में दिखाया गया है, जो कि इंजीनियर के पिता द्वारा किए गए सहयोगी प्रदर्शनों और अधिनियमों के माध्यम से हैं। फोटोग्राफर-बेटा।
Les Rencontres d'Arles 2026Louis Vuitton Fashion Eye Panel
Panel discussion followed by a signing.Bharat Sikka, Lachlan BaileyLibrarie Ephemere Louise Vuitton- Le Buste Et L'oreille 10 July 17:00-19:00
Athens Photo Festival 2026
Ripples in the Pond has been selected and is being displayed at the Athens Photo Festival 2026
Form Photo Award 2026 Winner
The winner of the Form Photo Award x Photobasel 2026 is Bharat Sikka's “Ripples in the Pond”
Elephant in The Room Launchat Paris Photo Awards 2025
Paris Photo- Aperture PhotoBook Awards 2025 Shortlist
Ripples in the Pond, shortlisted for the Paris Photo- Aperture PhotoBook Awards 2025 to be held in November.
Ripples in the pond
In Ripples in the Pond, the artist undertakes a nuanced exploration of Makharda, a peripheral township on the outskirts of Kolkata, West Bengal. Situated within a landscape marked by over twenty tranquil ponds, Makharda emerges not merely as a geographic locale but as a site of complex temporal and socio-cultural convergence. Through a process-based photographic inquiry, the artist renders visible the entanglements between memory, modernity, and the slow violence of infrastructural encroachment.The project is grounded in a personal act of return, both physical and affective, evoking the fictional sensibilities of 'Malgudi Days' an Indian tv series from the 80's, which serve here not simply as nostalgic reference, but as an aesthetic framework through which to understand the semi-rural imaginary. The ponds, recurrent throughout the body of work, function symbolically and formally as reflective agents, at once literal bodies of water and metaphoric surfaces that refract the tensions between past and present, fantasy and reality, the rural and the emergent urban.This duality is further accentuated in the artist’s methodological gesture: post-journey, the photographs are subjected to an extended process of scanning, not as a means of reproduction but as a conceptual device. The scanner becomes an apparatus of mediation, standing in for the pond itself, its beam echoing the slow scan of the eye across a reflective surface. By physically manipulating the photographic prints during the scanning process, the artist introduces visual rupture, ripples, blurs, and distortions, that function as aesthetic metaphors for temporal disturbance and spatial instability.
Souvenir Shop
Exhibitionat Nature Morte, Colaba, MumbaiAugust-September 2025
NorBlackNorWhite X Nike
Campaign
Zeit Magazine
Cover Story
Atmos Volume 10
Zero Waste Town Atmos Vol. 10 ' Afterlife'
Dazed Middle East
And Then
Launched at Offset ProjectParis Photo 2024
Book Launchat Super Labo Tokyo Store 24 August 2024
The Sapper
Asama International Photo Festival 2022 Photo Miyota20 July - 16 September 2024
The road to salvador do mundo
Goa Open art festival23 - 28 Feb 2024
Echo's of June
Short Film
Neither Magazine
No Grand NarrativeVolume 1 fall 2023
DEAR SUMMER
17 JunePIO PICO GALLERYLA CALIFONIA
Waiting for midnightDover Street Market Ginza
27th May Dover Street Market GinzaTokyo
The Sapper Solo Show/ Post Books
Venue: POST2-10-3 Ebisu Minami, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0022Dates: May 27, 2023 (Saturday) to June 25, 2023 (Sunday)Time: 11:00-19:00
Waiting for MidnightNature Morte29 April 2023
Waiting for Midnight
Solo show at Communion12 January 2023
Waiting for midnigt out now at Fw:books
Now Available at Fw:books
Paris Photo
Coming through in Waves10 Nov- 13 NovParis Photo Both D5
Nowhere is Home PHOTOINK is pleased to present Nowhere Is Home, an exhibition of photographs by Abhishek Khedekar, Devashish Gaur & Yashna Kaul.Conceived and curated by artist, Bharat Sikka, Nowhere Is Home is an ongoing conversation about the domestic space and the family album and how photography is able to transform memories into artefacts by giving them a material presence. We often look at pictures in our family albums and feel drawn to them—to find a version of ourselves, to make stories out of them, and perhaps re-live some altered moment, distorted by memory, to recall and to sometimes forget, and in some cases to revisit a place with an overwhelming feeling of nostalgic belonging. The artists in this exhibition combine found and newly created images to engage with and present their idea of home.
Coming Through in Waves Amsterdam Uneen 2022
A bottle of gum
SAY
The legacy of traditional music on JazzSixteen Magazine
The Vision Song
for Wales Bonner
The SapperNature Morte20-02 Feb 2021
Waiting for midnight Goa Open Arts festival13-16 February
' The Sapper' Premiered at Unseen Amsterdam 20-22 September 2019
Where the flowers still grow at, Salut au Monde from 17 Sep to 10th Oct 2019
UNSEEN DUMMY AWARD
THE SAPPER, SHORTLISTED FOR THE UNSEEN DUMMY BOOK AWARD
M Le Monde
In Between acts
The Marlborough Theatre
Book Signing
Signing my book " Where the Flowers Still Grow" at the India art Fair CMYK book store. 2nd Feb 3Pm onwards
Pleasure Garden
Baba Ram Devfor NYT MAGAZINE
Where the flowers still grow Available online at Loose Joints
The state of Kashmir holds a mythic place in the mind of India. Long known as one of the world’s most beautiful mountain valleys, since the late 1980s it has become synonymous with a political and sectarian conflict which strikes at the very heart of India’s identity. Delhi-based Sikka travelled throughout Kashmir in 2014 and 2015, to attempt to make some sense of this troubled region through his own personal experience. Taking inspiration from Mirza Waheed’s novel The Collaborator, which tells the story of a young Kashmiri man’s struggle with his own sense of self buffeted by the exigencies of history and the present, the resulting project is a meditation on the rich, green landscape and those who have lived and struggled within it.PressApertureClove MagazineIt's Nice ThatEdicola MagazineOffice MagazineNSS Magazine
The Road to Bliss
The Road to Bliss for Smithsonian magazine
Toki Doki
Cardiff International Festival of Photography 2017
"Matter" is part of the exhibition A Million Mutinies Later – India at 70, as part of Diffusion: Cardiff International Festival of Photography 2017, presented by Ffotogallery, in partnership with the Nazar Foundation/Delhi Photo Festival for UK-India Year of Culture 2017.
Matter, Shortlisted for the Mack first book award 2017
‘The Marlborough Theatre’ part of the Intimation show at the Focus Photo Festival Mumbai 2017
Working with communities in both Mumbai (Olivia) and Brighton (Bharat), the photographers have collaborated with their participants to produce a new project. Both series portray many individuals who identify themselves as part of the LGBTQ+ community, and is also an attempt to cross the boundaries between definitions of gender and sexuality. People of all orientations have been included.
The Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016 “Where the flowers still grow”
Pondy Photo Festival 2016
“ THE KITCHEN SINK" is a reflection on the human encounter and relationship with water. Images of pleasure, pain, joy, power and destruction, both whimsical and serious include fine art, documentary and photojournalism with some of the most internationally renowned photographers including : Mustafah Abduliaziz (USA), Corey Arnold (USA), Marcus Bleasdale, UK, Antoine Bruy (France), Solmaz Daryani (Iran), Mitch Epstein (USA), Rose Lynn Fisher (USA), Stephen Gill (UK), Noemie Goudal (France), Tom Hunter (UK), Max Pinckers (Belgium), Yan Preston (China/UK), Alessandra Sanguinetti (USA), Nigel Shafran (UK), Bharat Sikka (India), Alec Soth (USA), Maurice Van Es (Netherlands) and Vasantha Yogananthan (France).
Brighton Photo Biennial 2016
Reimagine: Olivia Arthur & Bharat SikkaA Photoworks/FOCUS Festival Mumbai co-commission in partnership with the University of BrightonOlivia Arthur (UK) and Bharat Sikka (India) have collaborated for the first time to explore private and public presentation of self-image in relation to the body, gender, sexuality and fantasy. Working with communities in both Mumbai and Brighton, cities with sharply contrasting politics of gender and sexuality, the photographers have collaborated with their participants to produce a new documentary project.The work they have researched and developed together revolves to a large extent around individuals who identify themselves as being part of the LGBTQ+ community and importantly, a community that represents contemporary diversity in relation to sexuality and gender. Both photographers have worked on large format film. Working in only black and white, Olivia has created images that explore people’s sense of self within their sexual identity. Working in colour, Bharat has offset this reality and added an element of fiction to his private and public scenes. The public and private spheres in which the photographs are set present a contrast and raise questions as to the private and public presentation of self and the influence of locale on gender and sexuality.
global youth: meet the young dreamers of delhi and mumbai
Photographed for ID magazine
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