Chennai-based visual artist Parvathi Nayar plays an active role in the emerging renaissance of the contemporary in Chennai. Parvathi is known for her multidisciplinary art, centred on complex drawing practices, video, photography and installation.

Her black-and-white graphite drawings are multifaceted works that look at the internal/intimate spaces within our bodies, and the external/public spaces in which we live, often through the prism of science and technology. Parvathi’s art talks about different engagements with our environments, and the philosophies of inhabiting them.

Her solos include Haunted by Waters (2017, Chennai), Dissonant Images: Drawing in Time, (2016, New Delhi), The Ambiguity of Landscapes (2014, Chennai), I sing the body electric (2008, Mumbai), Win Lose Draw (2007, Singapore) and Drawing is a Verb (Singapore, 2006).

Her installations in public spaces include Reflecting (on) The Inhabited Crossroads as part of TheHashtag#Collective (Kochi, 2016/17), and The Music of the Spheres (Chennai Mathematical Institute, 2016). She pioneered the form of “drawn sculpture” as in the seminal 20-foot high drawing A Story of Flight, Jai He art programme, T2 Terminal, Mumbai international airport.

She presented an installation of drawings and sound titled The Fluidity of Horizons at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2014/15. She was one of 70 artists selected to be part of B70, the historical 70th anniversary birthday show of Amitabh Bachchan in Mumbai. In 2008, her painting Firelight was selected to be featured on ABN Amro's Dil Se platinum card in Singapore.

Group shows include Against Nature (2016, Kochi), L’Attrape Feu (2016, France), Wayfarers (2016, India Art Fair, New Delhi) To Let the World In (2012, Art Chennai), Af-fair (2008, Dubai), Drawing Out Conversations (2008, Singapore), Nature Born (2006, Indonesia) among others.

Her works have been collected by institutions such as the Singapore Art Museum, BMW, HCL, The Sotheby’s Art Institute, The Australia India Institute and Deutsche Bank.  Press coverage includes a 2016 article in UK’s The Guardian newspaper referring to her as Chennai’s “best artist”. She is the subject of the film "Artists of Chennai: Parvathi Nayar" by photographer/filmmaker Saravana Kumar.

Parvathi is a writer and poet, and commentator on contemporary culture. She was a TedxChennai speaker (“Seeing the world through Different Lenses”, 2016).

Parvathi received her Masters in Fine Art from Central St Martins College of Art and Design, London, on a Chevening scholarship.