Michelle Thomas Fine Art: Girl You Are Rich, Even With Nothing by Neha Deshmukh (opening reception)

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.