Anita Agarwal

I am a multidisciplinary visual artist from India based in London, working across performance, moving image, mark making, sculptural installations, and print. Sustainability plays a decisive factor in both my ways of making and being.

I consider myself a respons-able artist; as a visual artist, I respond to an event, a site, or a provocation through my work. My response, though intuitive, is grounded in comprehensive research to filter out emotional hyperbole, false consciousness, madness, or the perfunctory navel-gazing of the self-absorbed. Audre Lorde wrote that “emotions are one’s political and life resources, and that we must make use of our anger and frustrations, letting the anger spill out into a poem or a text.” Becoming the point of departure for much of my work—which later takes different forms.

My practice is dialogical, socially engaged, and activist in its nature and approach. My socially engaged practice investigates alternative models of artistic self-organisation, active spectatorship, participation, communication, social interaction, and community-building, with a focus on sustainable ways of creating and being.

My practice helps me question the socio-political status quo through a feminist lens. My work interrogates and pushes the socio-political parameters experienced in day-to-day life; it could be my own lived experience or that of others. Audre Lorde, Gayatri Spivak, Frantz Fanon, Sara Ahmed, Grant H. Kester, and Homi Bhabha have influenced and inspired my artistic journey.

I strive to bring playfulness and humour into my work, as humour can create collisions that open up space, allowing people to relax and ease into areas that might otherwise feel difficult or awkward to navigate.

Having travelled and lived in diverse cultures and geographies, my work explores the intersections, positions, and overlaps within cultures. I am basically a storyteller intent on creating new collective narratives teased out from the past to see where and how they intersect with the present and, as a result, help imagine and create evolved new worlds.

Art provides me with an opportunity to engage fiercely with the world through the lens of indigenous philosophies of universality and oneness from my Asian/Indian roots, applicable not only to the living, breathing beings but also the non-living. Donna Haraway, Bell Hooks, Silvia Federici, and Hannah Arendt are beacons for my practice-led research, providing a 3rd plane/axis in kinship and assimilation.

There is a continual search to find and create new language (mediums) and to create exhibitions/workshop spaces that allow fearless responses. Spaces and ways that question and challenge the prevailing power dynamics. My curatorial initiatives during Covid times, SW11ndows and Ap.aart.ment77, try to inquire and re-evaluate where and how art can be experienced, and by whom.

CV-

2019-2021 Masters in Contemporary Art Practices—Public sphere pathway, Royal College of Arts, London

2018-2019 Graduate Diploma in Fine Arts, Chelsea College of Arts and Design, UAL.

2017 The Art Students League of New York, US.

2004-2008 Triveni Kala Sangam, New Delhi.

Exhibitions and Residencies—

August 2025: Group show—Summer Camp, at Eastside Projects, Digbeth, Birmingham, UK.

May 2025: 'Reseeded'—a month-long residency with the altMFA collective at Turf Project Space, Croydon, London.

May 29, 2025: Workshop—Invited by London Museum to create and facilitate a creative activity for their Annual Community Celebration event and launch of their new London Museum Studios.

April 2025: An art performance, ‘Clutter, cluttering, cluttered,’ closing night for the 'Clutter' Group Show, altMFA at Hypha Gallery, supported by Hypha Studio and Sugar House Island at Stratford, London.

March 23, 2025: Workshop-Making Space, altMFA at Hypha Gallery, supported by Hypha Studio and Sugar House Island at Stratford, London.

March 26, 2025: Workshop—Flags and Banner Making Inspired by the Suffrage Movement Celebrating International Women’s Day at the Asian Resource Centre, Croydon, Hosted by the London Museum.

March 23, 2025: Workshop—Indigo Dreams, a Shibori Adventure, altMFA at Hypha Gallery, supported by Hypha Studio and Sugar House Island at Stratford, London.

March 6-April 12, 2025: 'Clutter' Group Show, altMFA at Hypha Gallery, supported by Hypha Studio and Sugar House Island at Stratford, London.

Jan 30-March 10, 2025: Solo Show, The Garden Gallery, supported by LLDC and Arbeit Studio @Hackney Wick, London.

December 8, Nov 23, Nov 16, Oct 17, 2024: 'Let's Be Eco-Logical' workshop free for the public, eco-dyeing fabrics with Indigo and Cochineal, , sonic-jamming and mono-printing with single-use plastic, eco-printing on fabric with leaves and flowers, and eco-dyeing fabric with kitchen waste, under the ReRooted Residency Program supported by Arbeit Studio @ Hackney Wick London. December 8, 2024: 'Let's Be Eco-Logical' Workshop free for the public, eco-dyeing fabrics with indigo and cochineal, under the ReRooted Residency Program supported by LLDC and Arbeit Studio @Hackney Wick, London.

October 17, 2024: 'Let's be Eco-Logical' workshop free for the public, eco-printing on fabric with kitchen waste, under the ReRooted Residency Program supported by LLDC and Arbeit Studio @Hackney Wick, London.

September-Jan 20, 2025: ReRooted Residency Program supported by LLDC and facilitated by Arbeit Studio @Hackney Wick, London.

September 2024: Art performance, I-The Story, group show—Summer Camp, at Eastside Projects, Digbeth, Birmingham, UK.

Jan 19-Feb 19 2024: MI ‘River (She/He/Her/Him/It)’ and participatory installation ‘Let Me Share…/ Did You Know... In the group exhibition, 'A Conversation With Water,' supported by Hypha Studio @ Hypha Gallery, Stratford, London.

March-May 2023: Residency PAiR; The Hive-Perivale Library, London. An art commission realised through public engagement with the local communities through a set of six workshops. These socially engaged, participatory workshops designed and facilitated by the artist helped create the installation ‘Under the Canopy of Our Stories.’

April 2023: Art performance, 'I—The Story,' and installation of the Robe in the exhibition Altered Planes at Meter Squared Studios, West Kensington, London.

March 2023: Moving Image—‘River (She/He/Her/Him/It)’ along with a participatory installation, which then culminated into a performative workshop, ‘Let Me Share…/Did You Know…’ on the closing day of the ‘Fly and Flock’ exhibition by the Lunchbox Collective, Chisenhale Studio, London, E3 5QZ.

March 2023: Art Performance, ‘Fair Enough?’, UAL Alumni of Colour Association (AoCA) Exhibition: Diaspora and Belonging; Mother London, 10 Redchurch Street, London.
October 2022: 'Text as an Image,' Jolly Adda Gallery, Kanjurmarg, Mumbai, India
September 2022: Magnificences, Amersham Arms, Take Courage Gallery, New Cross, London.
September 2021: Pause. Fervour. Reflections on a Pandemic
August 2021: AP.AART.MENT77, a pop-up residency initiated and curated collaboratively, London.
August 2021: Multiple participatory art performances for the public, supported by Counterpoint Arts, for the Clapham Park ArtBank, Clapham Park Cube.
July 2021: RCA 2021 Cromwell Place Gallery, London.
March 2021: Sound and spoken text work on Montez Radio.
March 2021: An online festival, Everything for Ever.
March 2021: ‘State of the Art,' online symposium, London.
February 2021: Co-curated a physical show, ‘SW11ndows,’ in London.
January 2021: ‘This Too Shall Pass,’ 20th-floor balcony, London.
December 2020: ‘CAPbaret,' Twitch.
October 2020: 'MIND THE GAP,' 20th floor balcony, London.
August 2020: SVA Gallery, Stroud, England.
May 2020: 302_direct, CAP festival.
May 2020: MI, ICA/LUX.
May 2020: Instagram takeover, @low_res_camera_roll
May 2020: Symposium: The Museum without a Public
March 2020: Hanover Space Project, Peckham, London.
February 2020: The WIP Show, RCA, London.
November 2019: Workshop with PSC, Coventry Biennial, U.K.
June 2019: The Parade Ground, The Degree Show, Chelsea College.
May 2019: Safehouse 1 & 2, Copeland Road, London.
May 2019: The Cookhouse Gallery, London.
March 2019: Art #23 Gallery, Bermondsey, London.
March 2019: ‘Cabaret’ Canteen Annexe, Chelsea College, London.
February 2019: Triangle Space Gallery, London.
December 2018: Chelsea college, mixed-medium installation
October 2018: ‘Parallax’, Poland.