By Srishti Prabha
When Chaitra Bangalore first started growing out her body hair, she wasn’t trying to make a statement. She was trying to reclaim how she viewed herself. “It didn’t feel good,” she says. “It was uncomfortable.”
But that discomfort became a catalyst for transformation, both personal and artistic. In the years since, the Sacramento-based high school art teacher and artist has developed pieces exploring identity, otherness and self-acceptance through the lens of her South Asian heritage. Her pieces are currently showing at Signa Rare Plants until May 31 and Prism Art Space until June 7.
Bangalore never set out to become an artist. In fact, for much of her life, she didn’t even feel comfortable calling herself one. “It still feels a little self-aggrandizing,” she says with a laugh. “Like I’m asking people to look at me and what I’ve made.”
Raised in Stockton, she grew up navigating the push and pull of cultural expectations. Summers spent in Bangalore, India shaped her sense of home and belonging along with her artistic perspective, while a stable career path felt like the only option in her Indian American household.
“There was this unspoken thing,” she says, “that pursuing something like studio art wasn’t a smart decision.”
Bangalore majored in design at UC Davis, later earning a master’s degree in art education at the Rhode Island School of Design. Teaching became the practical path, but art remained her refuge. “I think art has always been the way I make sense of myself,” she says.
After years of teaching by day and creating quietly by night, Bangalore started to embrace the title of artist in 2017 when she began working on a series on body hair — a subject shrouded in secrecy and cultural beauty norms. Like many Indian women, she had grown up with thick, dark hair that appeared early and everywhere, only to be relentlessly plucked, shaved or bleached. This would define her early voice: a visual exploration of shame, disgust and eventual healing.
“Growing out my hair while making art about it became this exercise in self-acceptance,” she says.
One oil painting zooms in on Bangalore tweezing her upper lip — humorous, tender and defiant — poking fun at the pressure to remove something barely visible. “It’s not about telling everyone to grow their body hair,” she says. “It’s about giving yourself the option and seeing how that feels.”
Since then, her practice has expanded to include handmade paper — sometimes embedded with unexpected materials like hair — along with wool felting and oil pastels. While Bangalore experiments with craft-based media, she continues to use traditional techniques, including oil painting.
One ongoing series draws inspiration from traditional South Asian games. She reimagines Moksha Patam — the spiritual predecessor to Snakes and Ladders — as a critique on colonial erasure. She also references Carrom, an Indian version of pool, and is developing a piece based on chess, which has origins in the Hindu epic Mahabharata.
“The British simplified these games,” she says. “They removed the spiritual meanings, the symbols of reincarnation and rebirth.”
Her work invites viewers to reflect on parts of history that have been lost or rewritten. “When I was thinking about putting the Om symbol at the start of the game — since it really does symbolize the beginning of everything — it felt tacky,” Bangalore explains. “It’s an overused symbol by Westerners to the point where it’s been stripped of meaning. For me, it’s been a good exercise reclaiming these symbols and reincorporating them into my life — they’re mine to begin with.”
Another installation centers on Rangoli, patterns traditionally drawn in Indian households to invoke prosperity and good fortune, which she reimagines across different materials. Though deeply influenced by her heritage, Bangalore said her art doesn’t always appear overtly Indian.
“Sometimes it’s just color and texture and repetition — but all of it is rooted in my identity, in the internal struggles and questions I’m always navigating,” she says.
Her process is slow and intuitive. It often begins with reading, journaling or noticing something subtle, like hair in a bathroom drain. She selects materials based on her mood: felting when she’s anxious, painting when she’s focused.
“It’s not about big moments,” she noted. “It’s about a million little ones that shape who I am.”
For Bangalore, representation continues to be a driving force. “I don’t know many Indian artists in Sacramento,” she said. “Sometimes I just want someone to walk into the studio and immediately understand what Rangoli is without me having to explain it.”
Her upcoming projects include more game-based pieces, a group show she’s curating in November and a summer trip to Bangalore — a tradition she maintains to reconnect with her roots.
“Even though I only spend 10 days there now, it recharges me every time,” she says. “It reminds me of who I am and why I make what I make.”