Manjari Sharma’s latest project, Tat Tvam Asi तत् त्वम् असि—The Universe is a Mirror, is more than an art installation. It is a deeply personal reckoning with life, death, and the eternal connections that bind them.
The project began 12 years ago, during her mother’s battle with a terminal illness. With her father as caretaker and Sharma behind the lens, photography became her way of halting
time, if only briefly, to preserve moments she knew she could never relive. “Tat tvam asi,” a Sanskrit phrase meaning “I am that,” echoes this quest for understanding the relationship
between the self and the infinite—a theme that underpins Sharma’s work.
When her mother passed in 2022, Sharma was immersed in the elaborate Hindu rituals of death and ancestry. These practices, steeped in geometry, symbolism, and methodical acts, transformed grief into intention. They were as much about honouring a life as they were about preparing a soul for its journey onward.
For Sharma, this ritualised farewell sparked a larger curiosity about the afterlife—not just in spiritual terms but through the lens of science. Drawing parallels between personal loss and
humanity’s search for life among the stars, she began exploring celestial bodies like Jupiter and Europa while merging Hindu iconography with the mysteries of the cosmos. Her work straddles science and scripture, reality and fiction, crafting a narrative that collapses time and space.
The results are mesmerising. With the help of artisans in Mumbai, Sharma constructed elaborate visual tableaux, layering photography, sculpture, and storytelling. Her compositions unfold like cosmic altars—at once deeply intimate and universally resonant.
Each image feels alive, connecting the viewer to questions far bigger than themselves: Where do we go when we die? How does grief transform us? And what lies beyond the stars?
Tat Tvam Asi is Sharma’s homage to her mother, but it is also a meditation on existence itself—a project that asks us to contemplate the infinite, not as something distant, but as something already within us.
