Found, Built, and Imagined Worlds with Manjari Sharma (Online Learning – Six Sessions)

About

Online Learning

This short-format seminar invites students to reflect on their own artistic worlds—those they have found, constructed, or imagined—through the lens of visual storytelling, identity, and mythology. Anchored by a close look at Manjari Sharma’s own creative process and projects (Tat Tvam Asi, Darshan, and others), the class will explore how visual worlds are built from memory, culture, ritual, and personal symbolism. 

Rather than building a new body of work from scratch, students will be encouraged to bring in existing projects—finished or in-progress—and use the course as a space to embellish, reframe, and refine them through critique, dialogue, and conceptual inquiry. 

Each session will include a mix of artist presentations, group critiques, and discussions around visual construction, meaning-making, and narrative depth. Students will leave with a stronger understanding of how to build layered, resonant visual worlds from the raw material of their own lives. 

Key Topics: 

• Visual worldbuilding: from source material to symbolic resonance 

• Found vs. built imagery: working with archives, sets, and environments 

• Critique methods: deepening visual language and conceptual clarity 

• Artist as storyteller, builder, and mythmaker 

Outcomes: 

• Deeper conceptual grounding in existing or in-progress work 

• Expanded vocabulary around symbolism, narrative, and visual construction 

• Peer and instructor critique to guide next steps in one’s artistic evolution 

• Firsthand insight into Sharma’s approach to building complex photographic worlds 

Manjari Sharma (b. 1979, Mumbai, IN) is an internationally recognized Indian-American artist based in LA who examines ritual, identity, memory, and mythology through worldbuilding. Her projects explore the nature and potential of rituals and their transformative impact on the inner landscape of the human mind through photography, sound, motion, projection, and sculpture. Manjari’s project ‘Darshan’ (Published by Nazraeli Press) is a photographic re-imagining of Hindu deities that has garnered her wide critical acclaim. Her works can be found in The New York Times, Vice Magazine, CNN, LA Times, The Huffington Post, and NPR, to name a few, and her projects have been published and exhibited in galleries, museums, and festivals worldwide. Manjari is a proud recipient of the prestigious Pollock Krasner Foundation grant (2024), and her works are in the permanent collection of The MET, MFA, Houston, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Carlos Museum, and Birmingham Museum of Art, amongst various private collections.

View Instructor Profile Here

Details

• Six Sessions
• Dates: Fridays, November 3 – December 8, 10 am – 12 pm PST
• Enrollment Limit: 12 students
• Skill/Experience Level: Open to all levels
• Tuition: $675  (Become a Member today and received up to 20% off!)
• Location: Online

A details email complete with the Zoom link will be sent to the attendees prior to the start date. Please read the instructions included in the email. If you have additional questions please email info@lacphoto.org.

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