SUMMER 2025 EXHIBITION

GIRL YOU ARE RICH, EVEN WITH NOTHING
by Neha deshmukh

Opening reception: Saturday, July12, 5-7p
Music + Dance Showcase: August 16, 5-7p
Healing Workshop: September 6
On view: July 12-October 4, 2025 at Michelle Thomas Fine Art Gallery + Studio

GIRL YOU ARE RICH, EVEN WITH NOTHING, is a multi-disciplinary creative project incorporating storytelling, photography, dance, and memory. The project contends with the violence of life lived in a body assigned female at birth. Through portraits of primarily first-time models, the artist explores the space that opens when two people feel safe together. With the practice of portraiture as a vessel, both photographer and muse investigate the embodied experiences of seeking and finding safety in the body. Through this process, the questions are asked: How do I re-find safety in something that was taken from me? How can beauty be an antidote? How do I locate and access my own beauty, and then let it be seen by myself and others? And then, how do I let this be important? The visual work privileges the language of the body (where body is of both human and earth) as the holder of memory and the ultimate authority of all life. We are, as it is, always at the mercy of our bodies, and at the mercy of the earth. GIRL YOU ARE RICH, EVEN WITH NOTHING, asks us to hold close that which is always ours - from where our power truly emanates and which violence could never take away.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Neha Deshmukh (she/he/they) is a licensed clinical social worker, artist, and dancer. Born in the San Francisco Bay Area and based in Oakland, Neha photographs people they know and love by means of a technique which began as a self-love exercise and expanded into an artistic practice. Passionate about their work as a psychotherapist in private practice, Neha continuously explores where their creative interests and fields of study meet, entangle, and grow.

ARTIST STATEMENT

"I don't want that for myself anymore" is enough of a reason. I can't tolerate falseness, my energy disrupts it, and in most circumstances I am deemed the antagonizer. This happens again, and again. Child me didn't understand how I'm perceived as a threat. Adult me does, and though it still hurts, I know the truth is all there is.

You underestimated me. You took advantage of a person that loved you. Now you get my wrath.

it's the sad & mad hours

I can't destroy myself anymore. I haven't *quite* figured out what to do instead.
You think it's easy for me to be this open?
I enjoy wearing makeup just as much as I don't. I enjoy this face of mine.
I came out of the womb terrifying my mother
I lived as a dead thing in your house.
My surroundings have always been rigid & punishing. me, spilling, with soft porous edges
aged overnight, in both directions
I have always been more powerful, than anything that tried to apprehend me to the floor
nowadays, i laugh, a lot. growing old looks lovely. my parents are my best friends. we're getting a dog. there are flowers, birds & trees. there is writing. there is work. there is love, for infinity. & there is God.
we lived in a lonely and skeletal hell and self-harm was the only way out.

I am everybody's one who got away and nobody is mine
don't be mistaken, my brightness is an indication of my absolute darkness

i do not fear. i will walk into the dark. i will hold it steady. i will look it in the face. i will become it. and i will transform.

I've died so many times. I lived as a dead thing for a while.
I'm not your forbidden fruit. You can have me.

You just want to be seen and loved and appreciated by me and I can do that for you
my death always haunts the narrative
the anger returns and returns and returns

I don't need to know your sad story of why you can't show up for me. I just see that you can’t.
It's not enough to not use me & abuse me; if you don't give back to me, I'll say goodbye too.
There's a reason why bravery lives in the heart.
I WILL LOOK VIOLENCE IN THE EYE AND I WILL NOT BACK DOWN.
Something is birthed in me. It is mine.
I tried to leave you so many times. But your steady & potent medicine kept me coming back.
I crave other people's self-expression. I do a lot of my own, I want yours too.
I don't want to hear your elevated thoughts about me. I just want to know that you see me clearly.
Not a maiden anymore. Not a fawn. Not a damsel in distress.
I am not yours. I belong to no one but myself, my land, and my lineage.
intoxicated by a destructive power- no more
it's like my lungs were filled with ash
There was always a fat girl in me. Let me love her in the daylight, under the sun.
Fat in the ways i am
Fly in the ways i am
Ugly in the ways i am
Weird in the ways i am
Anyway, she’s soft in the ways I am