Parvathi Nayar

Chennai-based visual artist Parvathi Nayar, born in 1964, plays an active role in the emerging renaissance of contemporary art in Chennai. Parvathi is known for her multi-disciplinary art, centred on complex drawing practices, video, photography and installation. She has completed her MA in Fine Art, Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design, London on a Chevening Scholarship from the British government 1985 BA Fine Art (Distinction), Stella Maris College, University of Madras, Madras. 

Her black-and-white graphite drawings are multi-faceted 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 environments, and the philosophies of inhabiting them. 

Her solos include Haunted by Waters (2017, 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) and Drawing is a Verb (Singapore, 2006). 

Her installations in public spaces include Reflecting (on) The Inhabited Crossroads as part of TheHashtag#Collective (Kochi, 2016/17), 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.