Multidisciplinary Artist | Community Builder | Arts Leader
I am an Indian artist based in Arvada, Colorado. Born and raised in Chennai, India, I earned a Ph.D. in Biology from Kansas State University in 2006. After several years in academia, I transitioned to a full-time artistic practice in 2012. My scientific training continues to inform my engagement with pattern, repetition, geometry, and the relationships between organic and constructed forms.
My practice draws on the visual and material traditions of South India, particularly kolam, rangoli, and henna, to investigate the relationship between permanence and transience. These traditions, frequently practiced by women and embedded in the rhythms of domestic and communal life, inform both my methods and my understanding of artistic labor. Through textured acrylic paintings and slip-trailed ceramics, I translate ephemeral forms of mark-making into enduring objects. Working freehand with piping bags and squeeze bottles, I construct intricate surfaces of raised dots and lines. Geometric precision coexists with organic variation, while iridescent pigments and saturated colors evoke the textile traditions of South India.
My experience of visual impairment has introduced another dimension to my exploration of perception and materiality. Texture, long central to my practice, now also prompts questions about the relationship between sight, touch, and the ways we encounter and interpret visual art.
My portraits of South Asian women extend these investigations into questions of identity, representation, and cultural memory. Drawing on everyday life, ritual, and Indian visual traditions, I explore how ornament, gesture, and material detail can communicate narratives that extend beyond conventional portraiture. Rather than treating cultural motifs as decorative references, I consider their capacity to carry histories, relationships, and embodied knowledge.
My installations return to the ephemeral traditions that first informed my practice. In Embrace Mandala, a textured painting was accompanied by a rangoli rendered in sand, bringing permanence and impermanence into the same physical space. Such works engage with the temporality of ritual, the significance of repetition, and the labor embedded in practices that are continually created and erased.
Beyond my studio, I am concerned with access to artistic opportunities, institutional knowledge, and the authority to represent cultural narratives. In 2025, I founded the Colorado South Asian Artists Group (C-SAAG) to strengthen professional pathways for South Asian artists in Colorado. This work extends my artistic concerns with identity and representation into collective action, challenging the assumption that visibility alone constitutes equitable participation in the arts.
I am a 2026 Colorado Business Committee for the Arts Cultural Leadership Award honoree, a 2026 Watson Institute Fellow, and a 2024–2025 National Leaders of Color Fellow. C-SAAG was recognized as Westword's Best New Visual Art Group in 2026.
More than 1,000 of my original artworks are held in private collections across the United States and internationally, including India, Germany, Hong Kong, Mexico, Chile, and Costa Rica.
