Meet the 2026 JURY

Al-Qawi Nanavati is a Mumbai-based artist and art educator working with papermaking, printmaking, and textiles. Her practice explores grief and memory through material transformation, drawing on her late mother’s garments as both witness and collaborator in navigating loss. 

 

Nanavati holds an MA and MFA in Printmaking with a minor in Papermaking, and a Graduate Certificate in Book Arts, from the University of Iowa; a BFA from SAIC; and a Postgraduate Certificate in Indian Aesthetics from Jnanapravaha, Mumbai. She co-founded Young Art Support, co-created the Immerse Fellowship, and has exhibited at CSMVS Museum, Mumbai, Aicon Gallery, New York and Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai amongst others.

Indu Harikumar is an award-winning Indian visual artist, author and researcher whose work explores stories of the body, desire, love, abuse, gender, sexuality, and belonging. For over a decade, she has worked with personal narratives, creating spaces rooted in trust, consent, kindness, and respect, and transforming intimate stories into art while preserving their nuance and emotional depth. She has 14+ years of experience using art to engage and train children and adults, and her work has been exhibited in India and internationally.

 

Indu has also written and illustrated several acclaimed children’s books, many translated into Indian languages. She is currently completing a graphic novel on love and relationships and facilitating a reading circle on the feminist foremothers of Maharashtra.

Sriparna Dutta explores womanism, memory, care, landscape, craft, community, and social realities through textile, storytelling, workshops, and site-specific installations. Her mediums include paper, textiles, embroidery, quilting, and soft-stitched sculptural forms. She founded Street Healing School, a community-based art and learning initiative that works with children and women through art, storytelling, stitching, and care-based learning.

 

Her works are part of collections including Lekha Poddar Museum, with Lines of Resistance: Water and Caste in the Subcontinent, and Ruby Jagrut, Founder and Director of Abir India, with A Quilt of Presence: Stitching as a Way of Holding Memory.