Tara Aliya Kesavan

Tara Aliya Kesavan (b. 1994) is a Goa based artist working across painting, sculpture, and video.. She holds an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College, CUNY, and an MA in Mass Communications from Jamia Millia Islamia. Drawing from public and personal records from the early decades of independent India, her practice examines the lives of women navigating both emerging professional spaces and intimate domestic routines. Her paintings depict figures absorbed in moments of focus engaging with devices such as microscopes, radios, and speakers suspended between physical and virtual worlds. Using loose, diaphanous layers of paint, she transforms archival references into scenes that privilege interiority over linear time. This attentiveness extends into her ceramic-video sculptures, where screens and mirrors are embedded into hand-built forms. Part vessel, part interface, these works invite a tactile, embodied engagement with virtual space. Influenced by pre-cinematic optical devices, her practice explores how technology shapes perception and presence. Kesavan’s work has been exhibited internationally and most recently in New York . She is a recipient of the Mumbai based Space118 Fine Arts Grant (2025).