Radha Bhatnagar

Studio 88 is delighted to welcome Radha Bhatnagar, a multidisciplinary artist whose journey bridges the worlds of public health and creative expression. She is joining us for the Evolving Identities Artist Residency in May-July 2025!

With a Master’s degree from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and years of research focused on violence, migration, and community health, Radha is now embracing a life centered around art, healing, and storytelling. She is a self-taught artistic and practice poetry, short stories, oil painting, gouache, linocuts, and pottery.

In her own words, Radha is “in a state of transition”—moving from structured academic frameworks into the intuitive, expansive space of artistic practice. Her project, Roots and Cyclical Healing, reflects this shift and aligns beautifully with Studio 88’s 2025 theme, “Evolving Identities.”

Her upcoming residency project, “Roots and Cyclical Healing,” is a deeply layered exploration of how personal and collective identities evolve across generations marked by trauma, migration, and resilience. Through a multidisciplinary practice that includes novel writing, poetry, visual art, and ceramics, Radha delves into themes of sexual violence, patriarchy, colonization, queerness, and the complex realities of immigrant family life.

This body of work resonates strongly with Studio 88’s 2025 theme, “Evolving Identities.” Radha investigates how we carry the stories of our ancestors, how pain is transformed into expression, and how identities—especially those that are queer, feminine, and diasporic—are shaped by both rupture and renewal. Her creative process seeks to trace these narratives across time and medium, honoring the truth that our stories often begin before us and continue long after.

A first-generation queer Indian American, Radha navigates the spaces between personal and collective memory, between inherited narratives and self-authored truths. She writes, “We are ourselves through others,” a guiding belief that informs both her community-centered public health work and her artmaking.

During her residency at Studio 88, Radha will focus on:

• Developing her multigenerational novel exploring family, trauma, and transformation
• Creating visual works that trace the movement of healing through generations
• Writing a series of poems reflecting on cycles of identity, loss, and rediscovery

Radha views her time at Studio 88 as a moment to return to her beginnings—not to recover something lost, but to connect with what has always been there. The tranquil, culturally rich setting of northern Thailand offers the ideal space for her to experiment, grow, and find the artist she knows she is becoming.

As Radha shares: “The important things are not learned—they are simply remembered.”

Studio 88 is accepting applications on an on-going basis. Check out our residency program and apply now.