About​​​

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Devika is an interdisciplinary artist and credentialed art psychotherapist based in Bangalore, India. Trained in the psychodynamic approach, she holds a Master’s in Art Therapy from LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore. During her clinical training, Devika worked with children and adolescents living with chronic illnesses, degenerative conditions, and developmental disabilities, alongside their families and caregivers. She has additionally supported women and children survivors of domestic violence, at a crisis shelter in Singapore. Over the years, Devika has facilitated therapeutic art sessions and workshops for children and adults from diverse backgrounds. Her collaborations include projects with institutions such as St. John’s Medical College Hospital, India Foundation for the Arts, and the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art. In 2019, Devika founded Saya, a therapeutic art space and community open studio in Bangalore.

 

Devika’s own artistic and curatorial practice explores art as a restorative, rehabilitative medium; expressing collective themes of invisibility, illness, memory and impermanence within personal and shared human experience.  Devika presented her exhibition “Essentially Normal Studies” around invisible illnesses, as a keynote speaker at the MYOPAIN 2018 medical conference, and in 2020 as an interdisciplinary guest lecture at Ashoka University. She has written pieces around art, disability and accessibility for Marg Magazine (2021), Art India Magazine (2021), and Skin Stories, Point of View (2018). Her work has also been published in The Third Eye, The Indian Journal of Medical Ethics and Dark n' Light Magazine.

 

Devika is an Inlaks Fine Art Awardee 2020 and a Prince Clause Fund Seed Award Recipient 2021. . Devika was the curatorial lead of "Bodies at Sea", an Archival exhibition with The National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore. In 2022, she received the IFA Arts Research Grant from the India Foundation for the Arts. She was the winner of the BMW X India Art Fair Future is Born of Art Commission, unveiled at India Art Fair 2023. .

 

Devika has exhibited her work in a solo exhibition at Blueprint12, Delhi ( 2022) and Gallery Sumukha, Bangalore (2018) and in group shows at India Art Fair (2020), Serendipity Arts Festival (2024) Delhi Contemporary Art Week (2021) with Blueprint 12 Gallery, Shrine Empire Gallery ( 2022), Bikaner house, Delhi, Anant Art Gallery (2021), The Bandli Project (2019) at The Consulate of France Bangalore, among others

 

Devika has been part of residencies including the Inlaks Fine Art Awardees Virtual Residency (2020), Smarter Digital Realities with Sandbox Collective and Goethe Institut Bangalore (2021), and Project MAAF (Manifesto For Accessible Art), a collaborative, bipartite project supported by Serendipity Foundation, British Council and Arts Council of Wales (2021). She was selected among 9 other Seed Awardees to participate at the Prince Claus Fund Mobile Lab ( 2022) at Documenta15, in Kassel, Germany.

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