Information — Siya Kumar

Siya Kumar (b. 2002, Bangalore, India) is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, New York.

Working across painting, object-making, and performance, her practice is rooted in an animist sensibility: the belief that all elements of the earth, from rocks and rooms to vases and wind, carry an essence specific to them. She approaches making as a form of listening, attending to the way materials fold, resist, absorb, and break, and allowing the work to show her how it would like to rest.

She is drawn to things that quietly structure how we live without demanding attention. Dust, moss, windows, staircases, ceiling fans, locks. Dust is proof of existence, unintentional and uncurated, but holding a record of living. Moss is a labyrinth, a living network that records its own history in layers, growing and decaying and regenerating all at once. She once looked into a piece of it and realised it was an entire ecosystem, a whole world she hadn't known was there. That unknowability has stayed with her. There is an intimacy, she thinks, in knowing rather than saying.

Her paintings think of every person as a room, specific and unrepeatable, shaped by its own logic and light. They embed easter eggs from her childhood home, locks, bananas, wrought iron window grills, ceiling fans, ellipses, that serve as entry points to moments, intimacies, and desires while keeping their context deliberately elusive. These symbols unfold within loopy grids that catalogue, fracture, and distort, referencing visual traditions she grew up with. The surface becomes a palimpsest, layered with what came before even as new forms emerge. Sometimes a painting seems aware of its own object-hood. It knows it is a painting, and it looks back.

Siya is not interested in resolution. Her work operates more like a portal than a statement, something a viewer can enter and move through differently each time. She is currently developing a new series of paintings investigating how sound, rhythm, and resonance might translate into visual and material form, alongside a growing body of sewn fabric paintings built through layering, stitching, staining, and assembling.

Her materials include:
Canvas, Linen, Nylon, Paint, Buttons, Tape, Film, Thread, Warm Lightbulbs, Cherry Wood Stain, Dirt, Moss, Buttons, Sound, Wax.

Contact

siyakumar15@gmail.com

CV

Education

2020 - 2025
2020

Group Shows

2026
2025
2025
2025
2025
2025
2024
2024
2024
2023
2023
2023
2022

Awards

2025
2022 - 2024
2020
2019

Publications

2026
2025
2024
2022
2020

Bachelor of Fine Arts, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, USA
A Levels, Mallya Aditi International School, Bangalore, KA, IN

“Pirates Day Off” - Vernon Ave, Brooklyn, NY
“The Last Picture Show” - Memorial Hall, Providence, RI
“[See] [Saw] [Sound] [Wave]” - Fall River Museum of Contemporary Art, Fall River, RI
“Boston-Wide” - Harvard Gallery, Boston, MA
“Designated Smoking Area, Painting Senior Show” - Woods Gerry Gallery, Providence, RI
“The Big Fat South Asian Show” - Gelman Gallery, Providence, RI
“Textiles Triennial” - Woods Gerry Gallery, Providence, RI
“ChipWitch” - Memorial Hall, Providence, RI
“Junior Show” - Memorial Hall, Providence, RI
“Major Survey Show” - Gelman Gallery, Providence, RI
“Paper Tides" - Waterman Gallery, Providence, RI
“Brown SASA’s Annual Culture Show" - Saloman Gallery, Providence, RI
“Painting A Day" - Memorial Hall, Providence, RI

Florence Leif Award, RISD Department of Painting
Student Honor Roll, RISD Academic Affairs
CreA(R)Te RMZ Foundation National Award
Vijaya Raju & Rajkumar Sociology Award

ArtConnect Magazine, “New Voices: Siya Kumar”
RISD Undergraduate Viewbook for Prospective Students
RISD Undergraduate Viewbook for Prospective Students
V-1, Text and Image Issue
The Sunday Standard, “Nothing Else Matters” by Nayare Ali

Siya Kumar