Parvathi Nayar

Chennai-based visual artist Parvathi Nayar plays an active role – and is deeply committed to supporting – the emerging renaissance of the contemporary in Chennai. Founder and member of art collective The Hashtag#Collective with architect Biju Kuriakose and Designer Abin Choudhuri. Parvathi is best known for her videos and her complex drawing practices; she also engages with sculpture, painting and photography. Her black-and-white graphite drawings are multifaceted works that look at the internal/intimate spaces within our bodies, and the external/public spaces in which we live, often through the prism of science and technology. She has pioneered the form of “drawn sculpture” – ie three-dimensional sculptural forms that are covered with drawings as in the seminal 20-foot high drawing A Story of Flight that is part of the now world-famous Jai He art programme at the new T2 Terminal, Mumbai international airport. She was part of a select group of some 90+ artists from India and abroad invited to be part of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2014/15 – where she presented an acclaimed installation of drawings and sound titled The Fluidity of Horizons. She was one of 70 artists – and the only one from Chennai – selected to be part of B70, the historical 70th anniversary birthday show of Amitabh Bachchan in Mumbai. In 2008, her painting Firelight was selected to be featured on ABN Amro’s Dil Se platinum card in Singapore. Her works have been collected by institutions such as the Singapore Art Museum, BMW, HCL, The Sotheby’s Art Institute, The Australia India Institute and Deutsche Bank. Parvathi is a creative writer and poet. She writes as a cultural commentator on aspects of contemporary art such as modern dance and film.