Chennai-based contemporary visual artist Parvathi Nayar is known for her multidisciplinary art, centred on complex drawingpractices, video, installations 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. Parvathi’s art talks about different engagements with our environment, and the philosophies of inhabiting them.

Solos include Atlas of Re-Imaginings (2018, Gallery Veda, Chennai), At the Heart of the Question (2018, Singapore), Haunted by Waters (2017, Dakshinachitra Museum, Chennai), Dissonant Images: Drawing in Time, (2016, New Delhi), The Ambiguity of Landscapes (2014, Chennai), I sing the body electric (2008, Mumbai), Win Lose Draw (2007, Singapore) Drawing is a Verb (Singapore, 2006)journey (1998, Jakarta).

Installations, including those in public spaces, areWAVE at Alliance Francaise Madras andGallery Veda,Invite/Refuse at the Indo-German DAMned Art project curated by Florian Matzner and Ravi Agarwal (2018); GenderFluid andReflecting (on) The Inhabited Crossroads as part of TheHashtag#Collective (Kochi, 2018 and 2016); Parvathi is a founder member of the collective), and The Music of the Spheres (Chennai Mathematical Institute, 2016). She pioneered the form of “drawn sculpture” as in the seminal 20-foot high drawing A Story of Flight, Jai He art programme, T2 Terminal, Mumbai international airport.

She presented an installation of drawings and sound titled The Fluidity of Horizons at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2014/15. She was one of 70 artists 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.

Group shows include Of Memories and Might (Kochi, 2018), Spirit and Matter(Hyderabad, 2018),L’Attrape Feu (2016, France), To Let the World In (2012, Art Chennai), Af-fair (2008, Dubai), Drawing Out Conversations (2008, Singapore), Nature Born (2006, Indonesia), popularart (2005, Nehru Centre London) among others.

Her works have been collected by institutions such as the Singapore Art Museum, BMW, The Sotheby’s Art Institute, The Australia India Institute and Deutsche Bank.Sheis the subject of the film “Artists of Chennai: Parvathi Nayar” by photographer/filmmaker Saravana Kumar.  She is featured in Parvathi Nayar Artist Interview at  http://kochimuzirisbiennale.org/artist-interview-parvathi-nayar/

Parvathi is a writer and poet (presentations include Poetry with Prakriti 2017), commentator oncontemporary culture and public speaker (TEDx talks include “Seeing the world through Different Lenses”, Chennai 2016). Parvathi received her Masters in Fine Art from Central St Martins College of Art and Design, London, on a Chevening scholarship.