Indianama
Client
Indianama, New Delhi, India
Indianama is an annual exhibition curated by Animal that brings together artists, illustrators, and designers from across India to respond to a shared theme through original artwork.
Indianama 2024: Lost & Found
Project Title: Doordarshan
VENUE:
Mumbai (India), October 25–November 3, 2024
For the 2024 edition, Lost & Found, participating artists were invited to reinterpret a piece of India’s cultural history through the format of a postage stamp. My contribution focused on Sarla Maheshwari, who anchored India’s first color television broadcast during the 1982 Asian Games. The artwork draws from the visual language of Indian postage stamps and Doordarshan-era broadcasting, capturing a moment that marked India’s transition from black-and-white television to color. I was interested in how a single broadcast could represent a broader shift in how people experienced news, entertainment, and national events. The piece celebrates a pivotal moment in Indian media history while evoking the nostalgia of an era when television played a central role in shaping collective memory.
Indianama 2019: Alternate Realities
Project Title: Cinema, Censor, and Politics
VENUE:
New Delhi (India), December 20–22, 2019
The 2019 edition of Indianama explored alternative histories and speculative “what if” scenarios drawn from India’s political and cultural landscape. My poster imagines a fictional future in which the Indian government bans the use of English and mandates Hindustani as the country’s primary language. Through the lens of popular cinema, the work examines how censorship can influence culture, language, and creative expression. By reimagining familiar Bollywood film titles in Hindi, the poster blurs the line between political propaganda, mainstream entertainment, and exploitation cinema. The result is both humorous and unsettling, inviting viewers to consider how quickly cultural norms can shift under restrictive policies.
Collaborator
Shreya Kathuri
Indianama 2017: A Nation Set In Motion
Project Title: A Million Tongues
VENUES:
New Delhi (India), August 13–15, 2017
London Design Festival (United Kingdom), September 6-24, 2017
Muncie, Indiana (USA), October 2017
Jerusalem Design Week (Israel), June 13-20, 2019
A Million Tongues explores India’s extraordinary linguistic diversity through the visual language of South Asian matchbox art. The piece was inspired by the hundreds of languages spoken across India and the idea that each region carries its own unique stories, traditions, and forms of expression. Much like vintage matchboxes, which often reflected local culture, politics, and everyday life, each element within the composition represents a different voice within a larger collective identity. While every language and region has its own character, the shared visual framework brings them together as part of a larger conversation about culture, communication, and belonging. The work celebrates the diversity that defines India while highlighting the connections that exist across its many communities. Exhibited internationally, A Million Tongues was shown in New Delhi, London, Muncie, and Jerusalem as part of the Indianama exhibition series.
