Priyanka Paul
Priyanka Paul is a multidisciplinary artist from Mumbai, India. Their work revolves around themes of social justice, self-exploration, and understanding marginalisation. Their work is known for its use of comedy and poetry.
Priyanka’s art draws from their lived experiences which are informed by their queer and Ambedkarite and anti-caste sensibilities. They write, “My work reflects my feelings and emotions. It is the continuous altar I build in honor of my anger, my grief, my joy, my deep love for the people and things that sustain my existence in this realm.” Priyanka uses their work to traverse through history, the modern world, and the future — to interrogate the basis of systemic past beliefs of current beings and how future imaginations are shaped by it.
They draw what they are surrounded by and what they aspire to inhabit – a casteless world centered around building kind and sustainable communities through friendships and ecosystems that are considered alternative yet should not be. As Priyanka writes, “At the core of my work will always be honest storytelling that disrupts the demand for performance and throws vulnerability in your face.”
Priyanka uses bright and pastel colors which steer away from hues of black and grey that can be considered grim, in order to entice the viewer to engage with topics that are observed as “too political” or “too serious” in popular culture. The artist employs each pixel and line to tell a new story in the condensed visual plane they create. If one looks closely, Priyanka’s compositions feature multiple stories within the same frame which is a form of subversion and the artist exercises this with the tools of humor, poetry, and the material with which the works are created.
Priyanka has chosen digital art as their primary medium for the lack of materiality it possesses, and its versatility to be reproduced, reused, translated, and communicated across different channels. The medium has the ability to float through time and space, existing yet not possessing the quality of being held. Digital art for Priyanka represents a sense of informality in the institution of art, the spaces it occupies, and the privilege of those who practice it, while rupturing the notion of exclusivity within the arts and shifting the narrative of those who claim to consume and own it.
Priyanka earned a Bachelor of Mass Media from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai in 2019 and has been working on a variety of projects since 2016. Their work as an independent illustrator and writer has been published with organizations such as Gucci, Vice, Malala Fund, Dalit Human Rights Defenders Network, Vogue, Google, Twitter, National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, Amazon, and Netflix among others. Priyanka contributed as a columnist to DNA India until 2017 and since 2023, has been working with Mid Day India. They have participated in many conferences and workshops including the “Conference on Social Media Influencers and the New Political Economy in South Asia and Africa” hosted by the University of Michigan in 2022 where Priyanka delivered a presentation on Social Media Hierarchies and its Subversion by Marginalised Creators on the Digital Landscape. Their writing on anger, mental health, and current affairs for teenagers has been published in Mid Day India, Vogue India, Vice India, DNA India, and The Wire. They have also been awarded the “Top 100 Digital Stars” in the Changemakers category by Forbes India in 2023 and the “Feminist Voice of the Year” by Cosmo India in 2020. In 2020, their works were exhibited in Indianama’s “Reimagining India,” and were awarded a grant by the Wienwoche Festival for Art and Activism to create an illustration on the theme “Party at the End of Gender Normativity.”