(b.1950)
Shakuntala Kulkarni (b. 1950, Mumbai, India) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans drawing, sculpture, video installation, performance, and collaborative projects. Since the 1990s, she has been exploring the politics of space, the female body, memory, and resistance through immersive multimedia environments. Trained in painting, mural, and printmaking at Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda, and Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, Kulkarni continues to push the boundaries of media and meaning in contemporary art.
Her recent body of work, Quieter than Silence, presented at Chemould Prescott Road (2023–2024) and Sumukha Art Gallery, Bangalore, reflects on urban violence, domestic confinement, and resilience through reverse drawings using demography pencil, acrylic on museum acrylic sheets and glass, and charcoal on handmade paper.
Kulkarni’s solo exhibitions include Of Bodies, Armour and Cages (2012, Chemould Prescott Road; KNMA, Noida; CSMVS, Mumbai), Juloos and Other Stories (2018), and the groundbreaking Grandmothers’ Tales (2005). Her work has been featured in the 58th Venice Biennale (2019), NGV Triennial, Melbourne (2023), Dhaka Art Summit (2016), and India Art Fair. In 2024, she collaborated with Dior for their Fall/Winter Ready-to-Wear show and was named Harper’s Bazaar Artist of the Year.
She lives and works in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.