Kumar engages in systems that examine and order the world – from form to practice –through performance. Her research and practice intersect corporeal literacies, neuroscience, somatics, political philosophy, movement and visual arts with disciplinary rigour of training and architectural structures, seeking to produce tensions for non-modes of learning and perception. Over the years, she has produced work ranging from research, writing, editorials, performances, mixed media installations, paintings and media art, publications, and community-centred projects across Mumbai, Bangalore, London, Fort Kochi, Greece, Goa, Utrecht, and Lisbon. Her recent work and writings are available through Transmission in Motion (2020), Junctions Journal (2021), ARIAS, Amsterdam (2022), Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2023), 4K/less (2023), Contemporanea (2024), Artecapital (2024).
To construct experiences for new ways of perception, she regularly undergoes intensives that demand repetition such as bodywork, diving, academia, physical theatre, medicine and more that allow her to explore the research on herself. All of which feed her examination of how bodies and the hideousness of movement produce meaning, counter-normative spaces, relations, cultures, and knowledge. In 2018 she founded Stage Rabbit to accumulate and disseminate gestures of and at; encounters – human, hybrid, and multi-species, belonging and disconnection – in cultures, cities, ideologies, and diasporas, sex and sexual expression – its orientations and constructed spatialities, and networks – in philosophy, education, and exhibition design.
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Institutionally, she has collaborated in curatorial, programming, artistic, and production capacities with Instytut B61's (POL), Shoonya Centre for Art and Somatic Practices (IN), G5A Foundation for Contemporary Culture and its community-based initiative - cityLab (IN), ARIAS, Amsterdam (NL), IMPAKT [Centre for Media Culture], The Story Of Foundation (IN), We Learn We Grow, Kochin Muziris Bienalle (IN), SPHERE, The Lisbon Consortium (PT), and Antecâmara (PT).
A recipient of the FCT scholarship 2023 for PhD in Culture Studies, Kumar is a PhD candidate at Universidade Católica Portuguesa, where she is enquiring at the intersection of curiosity, performance, and philosophy. She is also a board member for SPHERE, editor for the Diffractions Journal (PT), and Creative Director at Stage Rabbit.
Her most recent projects were Orin Ifê at ‘Making is Colder than Capital’ through Atelier Concorde, a talk with Ebru Yetiskin on The Future is Now: Critical Curating in Art, Science and Technology at The Lisbon Consortium, and a presentation at Conjunctures of Hospitality titled Responsibility of movement: A character analysis of Ahmad’s quest in Khane-ye dust kojast as acts of infinite responsibility.
She is currently on the organising committee for the XIII Graduate Conference at the consortium through which she is also co-curating a programme with artists such as Simon(e) van Saarloos, Guy Ben-Ary, and Nanako Nakajima. She will also curate a public programme for our Food-Webbed World: interdisciplinary culinary landscapes in March 2025.
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research | curation | performance
s [hyphen] aiyer [at] ucp [dot] pt
aishwarya[at]spherefestival[dot]com
IG: aikuiye_
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design | facilitation | creative production
stagerabbit [dot] lab [at] gmail [dot] com
IG: stage_rabbit​
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