feelings are data: Community Celebration

Get curious about your inner world and experience Nina Bhattacharya's interactive exhibition, feelings are data, at the Harvard Ed Portal's Crossings Gallery! The Allston artist and educator's tender collage series weaves together affirmations and archival images to invite visitors to make meaning from their feelings.

Join for a celebratory event featuring creative responses to Bhattacharya's work, including original poetry by payal kumar, new music by Ava Sophia, and kathak dance performances by Chhandika.

Enjoy the performances, mingle with the community, pull a card from the tarot-inspired deck, and add your reflections to the installation. Snacks and drinks will be provided.

Meet Nina Bhattacharya:

Nina Bhattacharya ("Radio Rani", she/her) is an artist and educator from Michigan, now based in Boston, MA. As the visual artist Radio Rani, she stitches together reflections on liberation, community, and spirituality through digital collage. Her pieces stitch archival images with the visual details of scrapbook kitsch, and offer tender commentary on current moments and movements. Nina's artwork has been displayed in a variety of spaces in Boston, including the Institute for Contemporary Arts / Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Harvard University.

Most recently, Nina was a fellow in the Harvard Ed Portal’s inaugural Artist Pipeline Program. Nina is currently a clinical social work student at Boston College, and previously received her M.S. in Global Health & Population from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Meet Ava Sophia:

Laid-back R&B feels and emotionally-driven honest lyrics are what define Boston-based singer/songwriter, educator, and organizer Ava Sophia. Having performed at numerous venues in the Boston-metropolitan area, toured in New York City, Los Angeles, and Valencia Spain, and featured by MTV’s TRL, Ava is striving to inspire through her music.

Ava is a graduate of the world-renowned Berklee College of Music and she is continuing to share her music locally in and around Boston. In October 2019, Ava released her debut EP, "To See and Hear Hxrself," a project dedicated to exploring the relationship between femininity and vulnerability, and empowering women/femmes of color to feel and express our emotions to the fullest extent. She was most recently nominated for "R&B Artist of the Year" at the 2020 Boston Music Awards. Her true passion and ambition are captured when she describes music to be "the only way I know how to make the world a better place."

Check out Ava's website; find her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter; and stream her music on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and Bandcamp.

Meet Chhandika:

Chhandika is a non-profit organization dedicated to maintaining and contributing to the rich tradition of kathak dance, a classical storytelling art from North India. Based in Massachusetts, Chhandika offers classes for adults and children of all ages; enriches the community through performances and demonstrations; and fosters personal growth and cultural exploration through its workshop and outreach activities.

Find them on Instagram and Facebook.

Meet payal kumar:

payal kumar (they/them) is a multidisciplinary cultural worker, sexual and reproductive health justice advocate, doula, and organizer whose work is rooted in the in-betweens. Currently based on Massachusett, Pawtucket, and Wampanoag territories, they invoke the power of intergenerational community building to construct tender new possibilities of being beyond borders and capital. Their illustrations, zines, spoken word pieces, and workshops have found a home across Chinatown walls and grassroots protests, in gallery spaces like the Museum of Fine Arts and international TRANS* Future Archives, and through collaborative learning spaces like the Allied Media Conference and the School of Arts and Social Justice Boston.

payal's visual work alchemizes folk art from their ancestral villages in Bihar with traditional Americana motifs to amplify peoples’ movements and explore the in-between spaces of trauma, coloniality, queerness, and embodiment. payal was a 2021 recipient of the Boston Foundation’s LAB grant. They are an organizer with Subcontinental Drift Boston, a monthly multilingual open mic centering South Asian diasporic voices, and with the Boston South Asian Coalition (BSAC), a transnational organizing collective fighting for labor, race, caste, and gender equity. Through creative strategies, they cultivate playful spaces that challenge the state's monopoly on Imagination so that we may all fully unearth and activate our collective power.

Find them on Instagram.