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Working primarily with oils and acrylics, Bhargava, nevertheless, has experimented with many mediums. Her work with encaustic was one of her first experiments with textures. In the '80s, Bhargava created two assemblages with junk wood and scrap iron found from building demolitions. One of these assemblages was the result of a workshop with Piloo Pockhanawalla. In 1983, Bhargava did a course in photography at Chitrabani, Calcutta. The photographic image has always fascinated Bhargava and, of late, she has been juxtaposing silk screen images with her paintings. Bhargava's work has been predominantly figurative although, in the early years, she had done some semi-abstract lithoid forms. The decaying city has always figured prominently in her works. Architectural elements and other symbols or urban anomie like a crowded bus, an open manhole, graffiti and posters, surface in her works again and again. The other important feature of her figuration is the iconography of a woman. Sometimes she is Kali, at other times she is a bound, distorted body or a street performer juggling with the roles in her life. Of late, Bhargava has been experimenting with the surface of the painting adding three-dimensional objects or silk-screen images. She is also introducing elements of myth and fantasy to her strongly expressionistic style of painting. |