Chennai-based contemporary visual artist, poet and writer Parvathi Nayar is known for her multidisciplinary art, centred on complex drawing practices, installations, video, text and photography. Her black-and-white graphite drawings are multifaceted works that look at the spaces in which we live, often through the prism of science and technology. Parvathi’s art talks about different engagements with urban memory, our ecologies and environments – and the philosophies of inhabiting these spaces.
Sustainability is a key area in her work, including work on climate change and ecological crises. A consistent theme through her work is Water in all its aspects – as an integral part of the environment, as water bodies, as a contested resource, as well as a substance of meditative and metaphorical power, said to be born in the stars.
Parvathi curated the multiple award-winning show The Living Ocean (DakshinaChitra Museum, 2024); and co-curated popularart (Nehru Centre London, 2005). She is the creator-curator and co-writer of “Limits of Change”, a highly-acclaimed hybrid show of storytelling within a nine-room art installation (Lalit Kala Akademi, 2025).
Solos include Biome (Kolkata, 2025), Atlas of Re-Imaginings (Chennai, 2018), At the Heart of the Question (Singapore, 2018), Haunted by Waters (Dakshinachitra Museum, Chennai, 2017), Dissonant Images: Drawing in Time, (New Delhi, 2016), The Ambiguity of Landscapes (Chennai, 2014), I sing the body electric (Mumbai, 2008), Win Lose Draw(Singapore, 2007) Drawing is a Verb (Singapore, 2006) journey (Jakarta, 1998).
Installations, including those in public spaces, are Rooted Perspectives: An Antidote to Plant Blindness(community project, Alliance Francaise, Chennai,2024), Dreamcatcher (Lady Andal School, Chennai 2023/24), BreatheWater (Esplande-Theatres on the Bay, Singapore’s national arts centre), Chicken Run with Nayantara Nayar, Indo-Korean photographic & video installation (Chennai Photo Biennale 3, 2021-22), WAVE community project trash art installation (supported by Alliance Francaise Madras), Invite/Refuse at the Indo-German DAMned Art project curated by Florian Matzner & Ravi Agarwal (2018); The Fluidity of Horizons at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2014/15); The Music of the Spheres (Chennai Mathematical Institute, 2016) and In/Roads at CP Biennale II (Jakarta, 2005).
As part of The Hashtag#Collective (Parvathi is a founder member), installations include Of Disappearance and Desire, GenderFluid and Reflecting (on) The Inhabited Crossroads (Kochi, 2022, 2018 and 2016).
Group shows include: Traversing Boundaries:12 Contemporary Female Artists of India (Spin Gallery, Texas, 2025), Insurgent Spatial Practices curated by Richard Muller and Lee Yu-hsuan at Artsite(Hsinchu,Taiwan), Cloak and Dagger Zuzeum Art Centre(Latvia, 2021), Of Memories and Might (Biennale Collateral, Kochi, 2018), L’Attrape Feu (Huelgoat, France, 2016), To Let the World In (Art Chennai, 2012), Af-fair (Dubai, 2008), Drawing Out Conversations(Biennale Collateral, Singapore, 2008), Nature Born (Indonesia, 2006).
Parvathi’s films have been shown at film festivals and web-based platforms such as Waters of Change(International Web-based, 2021), <de>confine International Digital Media Art Festival, (Web-based, 2020), 20th Madurai International Documentary & Short Film Festival - Artists Cinema (2018), Against Naturevideoart show (Kochi, 2016). Her films have been shown at film festivals and internationally, including: By the Mouth of the River - selected for viewing as part of We Are Ocean’s curated film programme at multiple European venues including Venice (April, 2022); Seaspeaker - selected for multiple film festivals including the International Documentary & Short Film Festival of Kerala (2024), Madurai International Documentary & Short Film Festival (2025),the Chennai International Documentary & Short Film Festival (2025).
Parvathi pioneered the form of “drawn sculpture” as in the seminal 20-foot-high drawing A Story of Flight, JayaHe art programme, T2 Terminal, Mumbai international airport; and Water of Life/Salt as part of Rajeev Sethi’s Elemental project. 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.
As a writer, Parvathi has coauthored the book 15 Tables at TranQuebar (2022); she has written extensively on the arts for publications such as National Geographic, The Hindu, and The Business Times, Singapore. Her short story Rattrap was picked for ‘The Best Asian Short Stories 2021’ (Kitaab, Singapore) and shortlisted for The Bombay Review Creative Writing Award. As a public speaker, her TEDx talks include ‘Seeing the world through Different Lenses’ (2016).