Pushpamala N

Pushpamala N has been called “the most entertaining artist-iconoclast of contemporary Indian art.” A photo- and video-performance artist, sculptor, writer, curator, and provocateur, she is known for her strongly feminist work and her rejection of authenticity in favor of multiple realities.

Beginning as a sculptor, she incorporated photography and video in the mid-1990s, creating tableaux and photo-romances in which she casts herself in various roles. Her series of masquerades references art history, photography, film, theatre, and popular culture, placing herself at the center of social and political inquiry. She also creates archives of images and objects that deconstruct colonial disciplines such as ethnography, archaeology, epigraphy, and eugenics.

Her work has been widely shown internationally and is held in major collections including MoMA New York, Tate Modern London, Centre Georges Pompidou Paris, KNMA Delhi, and MAP Bangalore. She is frequently invited to speak at conferences in India and abroad, and her writing appears in academic journals and books.

In 1996, she founded the fictional institution Somberikatte (“Idler’s platform” in Kannada), organizing seminars and conferences, including a 2016 international conference on K. Venkatappa, later published as Nation, Region, Modernity: The Art of K. Venkatappa (co-edited with Deeptha Achar, Routledge, 2025). Her MA thesis Sculptor’s Notebook (Reliable Copy, 2022) and the catalogue Motherland: Pushpamala N.’s Woman and Nation (Roli Books, 2022) further document her work.

She curated India’s first large-scale public installation show, Sthalapuranagalu (“Place Legends,” Bangalore, 1999), and served as Artistic Director of the Chennai Photo Biennale Fauna of Mirrors (2019), which included the international conference Light Writing. In 2024, she curated Hand Prints / Mind Prints, Gulammohammed Sheikh’s print retrospective, which traveled to Bangalore, Delhi, and Mumbai.

Pushpamala lives and works in Bangalore, India.