feelings are data

Play and self-reflect at the Crossings Gallery exhibition, feelings are data, by Allston artist and educator Nina Bhattacharya. Through a collection of visual and participatory pieces, explore how we make meaning from our feelings.

Bhattacharya's tender collage series weaves together affirmations and archival images to invite curiosity about community, care, and our internal worlds. Hands-on activities—like a tarot-inspired card deck, response cards, and collage magnets—prompt visitors to have fun and learn new things about themselves!

Experience this interactive exhibit at the Crossings Gallery through May 25, 2023.

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Reflection, Emotions, and Art

"My collages are artifacts of reflection and physical representations of the ideas, source texts, and questions I simmer on during the act of making. Through the tactile experience of interacting with these works as a deck of cards, I am inviting you to embark on your own integrative and reflective journey.

Through my work as an educator and mental health professional, I’ve witnessed the possibilities that emerge when we nurture our capacity to sit with difficult thoughts. It is beautiful work, but can demand much of us.

In one difficult season of my life, I turned to pulling tarot cards. There was something meditative in the structure of shuffling a deck, drawing a single card, and paging through the tiny accompanying guidebook to find its meaning. It was tangible and doable. The daily ritual of pulling cards became gentle scaffolding for making more sense of my inner world.

I hope as you pull a card or find yourself drawn to a specific piece, you feel inspired to approach your feelings with a little more compassion—or, at the very least, with greater neutrality. In exploring these collages and ascribing your own meaning to them, you might find that feelings are not "right" or "wrong." Rather, they can gift us the information needed to spelunk into the depths of our personality and calibrate how we move through the world."

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  • On View at the Harvard Ed Portal

     

    'compost old stories'


    Nina Bhattacharya
    Digital Collage, 2023

    Our stories help us survive, but sometimes it is helpful to return them to the earth. For a very long time, I believed I was a solitary person. I worried that if someone got close to me, they might see this fundamentally unlovable person and run away. After several years of good therapy, I was finally able to see and appreciate the real community of care that surrounds me. It makes me smile thinking of how we can turn our most painful and joyful pasts into rich soil for our futures.

    What is a thought loop or narrative that served a real purpose (once) but is now limiting? What do you wish to plant instead?

  • On View at the Harvard Ed Portal

     

    'create your container'


    Nina Bhattacharya
    Digital Collage, 2023

    "Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously." These words from writer Prentis Hemphill remind me that creating my own container is a deep expression of love. Independence is interdependence, but not codependence. Trauma social worker Laura van Dernoot Lipsky also writes that "as stewards, we create a space for and honor others' hardship and suffering, and yet we do not assume their pain as our own." Their path does not have to be our path.

    What does your container look like right now? Are there containers that you want to revisit and reshape?

  • On View at the Harvard Ed Portal

     

    'choose another perspective'


    Nina Bhattacharya
    Digital Collage, 2023

    Have you ever taken a picture upside-down? Have you ever zoomed in really, really, really close on a small detail of a painting? Have you sat in a garden and watched it literally come alive in front of you? Where we stand and where we sit can change how we look at the world around us. There is data in details, but there is also information embedded in the big picture. Look at something in your life. Now, look again.

  • On View at the Harvard Ed Portal

     

    'deepen your rest'


    Nina Bhattacharya
    Digital Collage, 2022

    We are naturally programmed to just Be. This requires us to embrace the exquisite release of not-doing and to disaggregate our worth from capitalist production. Through the framework of Black liberation, Nap Bishop Tricia Hersey reminds us, "The beautiful interruption of rest needs to happen now. We cannot wait for the perfect opportunity, the perfectly curated events, or the perfect moment for us to leave our capitalist world." We must extend Wholeness to ourselves and others simply because it is our right.

    How do you still judge others on how they use their time? How can you embrace deeper rest for yourself? Where could you go if you stayed right here, right now?

  • On View at the Harvard Ed Portal

     

    'embrace the quiet'


    Nina Bhattacharya
    Digital Collage, 2023

    Who are you when no one else is around?

  • On View at the Harvard Ed Portal

     

    'hold the duality'


    Nina Bhattacharya
    Digital Collage, 2023

    The gray areas of life. Both/and situations. We are consistently asked to hold all the ways the world is not mutually exclusive. Holding multiple nuances simultaneously requires that our analysis is sharper. How frustrating! But also? How joyous.

  • On View at the Harvard Ed Portal

     

    'hug your people'


    Nina Bhattacharya
    Digital Collage, 2023

    At the height of the COVID-19 lockdown, I used to dream about hugs. Hugging my friends. Hugging my family. Living alone, I had taken these physical gestures of affection for granted until they were suddenly gone. Swami Chinmayananda reminds us that "[m]erely saying 'I love,' is not sufficient, we must express our love in action." To hug your people, then, could be literal. But hugging your people could look like lots of different things! Ordering takeout for a friend, helping someone do the dishes, showing up for their gig, picking up their kids after school—so much is possible when we begin to think expansively.

    How do you like to hug your people? How do you feel about hugs in general?

  • On View at the Harvard Ed Portal

     

    'joy is juicy'


    Nina Bhattacharya
    Digital Collage, 2023

    I think about eating a perfectly ripe mango over the sink, juice dripping down my chin, on a sweltering summer day. I think about my best friends massaging amla oil into my hair as we catch up. I think about the moments when I'm alone, and my thoughts feel so quiet, I think they have almost dissipated. These small joys feel incandescent and effervescent, even more so when I remember I am Joy.

    What is one small joy you experienced this week? How can you make Joy your best friend? What does it mean to remember you are Joy?

  • On View at the Harvard Ed Portal

     

    'learn by doing'


    Nina Bhattacharya
    Digital Collage, 2023

    There's this beautiful course taught by Professor Karen Brennan at the Harvard Graduate School of Education called Designing for Learning by Creating. It is a class I wish we could all take because it was one of the first times I had been given permission to dream big and to fail hard in the classroom. Throughout the semester, we explored the magic of personalizing, creating, sharing, and reflecting in learning experiences. Inherent to the process was a belief that there is learning in all we do. In fact, it was because of this class that I developed the creative confidence to start making my first collages.

    What would you try next if you weren't scared? What could you start right now?

  • On View at the Harvard Ed Portal

     

    'let it go'


    Nina Bhattacharya
    Digital Collage, 2023

    What if we open our hearts just a little? What if we release the fear of failure? What if we relaxed into the present? What if what if what IF?!?!

  • On View at the Harvard Ed Portal

     

    'lighten with laughter'


    Nina Bhattacharya
    Digital Collage, 2023

    Working primarily with queer and trans students of color, I witness firsthand how laughter smooths the rough edges of day-to-day challenges and knits together a community. Humor, carefully applied, can be a balm. Personally? I am sometimes overly serious by nature. When I can laugh at myself, though, something loosens inside of me. Things feel a little less precious.

    What makes you laugh? Who makes you laugh?

  • On View at the Harvard Ed Portal

     

    'make some space'


    Nina Bhattacharya
    Digital Collage, 2023

    Sometimes this is literal stretching, like laying on your foam roller so that your shoulders loosen just one more inch. Sometimes this is about cultivating inner spaciousness to hold the complicated and messy things of being a person in the world. What's wonderful is that the more we do it, the easier it becomes.

    What do you want to make room for in your life right now? Where have you adapted before?

  • On View at the Harvard Ed Portal

     

    'mend with care'


    Nina Bhattacharya
    Digital Collage, 2023

    With a little bit of patience and ingenuity, we can repair lots of different things: socks, loose threads, hearts, relationships. Committing to mending is more than an act of sustainability—it is to categorically reject that the people, objects, and relationships in our lives are disposable. This work takes time! We may even prick ourselves or butt up against our deeper fears. "Perhaps many of us fear failure, believing that we will make the problem worse, turning a small hole into an even bigger one," Nina and Sonya Montenegro wrote in their love letter to mending. "But even if we do, the bigger hole can still be mended."

    Isn’t that reassuring?

  • On View at the Harvard Ed Portal

     

    'nourish the body'


    Nina Bhattacharya
    Digital Collage, 2023

    We live in a world that tells us many types of bodies are wrong: fat bodies, disabled bodies, trans bodies, Black and brown bodies. Nourishing my body feels like a radical antidote to all the things I'm continuing to unlearn. Eating with my hands, sharing a plate of french fries, cooking with friends, returning home with a Tupperware brimming with leftovers... these all become small rituals for replenishment and repair.

  • On View at the Harvard Ed Portal

     

    'open to receive'


    Nina Bhattacharya
    Digital Collage, 2023

    It is far easier to remain closed to the world rather than doing the difficult work of maintaining a stance of openness. Being open is a constant commitment to hope despite our individual griefs, heartbreaks, and losses. Hope is "the daily practice of constantly reminding yourself that we have a possibility of another world every single day," says abolitionist and educator Mariame Kaba. When we are open, though —when we are fully ready—we also have the spaciousness to receive... ideas, support, knowledge, care.

    What has closed your heart? What new ideas do you want to receive?

  • On View at the Harvard Ed Portal

     

    'relax into discomfort'


    Nina Bhattacharya
    Digital Collage, 2023

    Distress tolerance refers to our inner capacity to manage an emotional incident without getting completely overwhelmed. It's that intangible thing that helps us move through difficult feelings and circumstances. In this way, discomfort points out our growth edges, the parts of our personality that require a little greater expansiveness. Rather than rejecting the uncomfortable feeling, perhaps there is something to be learned about stretching our capacity to embrace and learn from that feeling.

    Where can I find medicine in discomfort right now? Where does my discomfort show where I can grow?

  • On View at the Harvard Ed Portal

     

    'respond, not react'


    Nina Bhattacharya
    Digital Collage, 2023

    Sometimes, our immediate reaction can lead us to do things we regret. I wonder what we can unlock if we give ourselves an extra minute to reflect. Or force ourselves to walk around the block. You know how you can "undo send" on an email? Developing the habit of pausing is a way to "undo send" in real life.

    What was a situation recently where you reacted? How do you wish you responded? What practices help you pause?

  • On View at the Harvard Ed Portal

     

    'sadness is okay'


    Nina Bhattacharya
    Digital Collage, 2023

    I am so guilty of "meta feelings," where I feel bad about... feeling bad. But sadness is okay! Sometimes we do feel too much. Sometimes sadness IS actually an appropriate response to the white supremacist, transphobic, ableist, and broadly unjust world we live in. Maybe it is okay to be sad about heartbreak and burnt toast and lost mail and just because. Perhaps letting ourselves feel our feelings can help us metabolize our grief.

  • On View at the Harvard Ed Portal

     

    'unlock the silly'


    Nina Bhattacharya
    Digital Collage, 2023

    There is a childhood photo on my wall where my younger sister and I beam with impish smiles as we sip on a shared soda through neon-colored straws. The mischievousness just sparkles through the frame and reminds me of the magic that unfurls when we allow ourselves to be a little silly. Isn't there something terribly earnest in being goofy? I wonder about the tender, goofy part of you that's worth protecting.

  • On View at the Harvard Ed Portal

     

    'weave beloved community'


    Nina Bhattacharya
    Digital Collage, 2023

    "Building community is to the collective as spiritual practice is to the individual." According to writer adrienne maree brown, this was a sign on Detroit activist and movement elder Grace Lee Boggs' wall. Finding your people, nurturing those relationships, showing up for both the big and small moments—each of these moments becomes a ritual at the altar of our collective care. It reminds us that no one is dispensable, that each one of us is deserving of dignity. We matter because, in the words of indigenous botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, "All flourishing is mutual."

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Community Celebration

On May 12, 2023, the Harvard Ed Portal hosted 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. Community members enjoyed the performances, mingle with their neighbors, pulled cards from the tarot-inspired deck, and added their reflections to the installation.

Meet the Artist

Photo by Mel Taing (Instagram: @m.ltaing)
 

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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.

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In her life as an educator and facilitator, Nina designs learning experiences that nurture and amplify the agency, wellbeing, and creative power of young people. She is Senior Instructional Design Specialist at Harvard University, has taught courses for students at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Harvard College, facilitated programs for LGBTQ+ and Hindu youth, and organized workshops for activists across the country. As an enthusiastic emcee, Nina also builds intergenerational creative community with Subcontinental Drift Boston, the first and longest-running South Asian open mic in the city. She is also a kathak dancer and a self-taught audio engineer, contributing to several diverse audio projects and podcasts.  

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.