Sharmistha Ray

Sharmistha Ray (they/them) is a Brooklyn-based QTPOC/nonbinary artist, arts writer, and educator who draws from South Asian visualities, and im/migration and queer politics to examine lived experience. Ray’s core practice consists of painting and drawing, but also includes essay-writing, programming. sculpture, photography, and video installations. Exposed to both western and non-western cultural experiences and art histories from an early age, their work explores critical slippages of meaning alongside the unexpected fusions that occur when working at the intersections of culture and memory. They have exhibited their work in 50+ solo and group exhibitions internationally in New York, Chicago, Mumbai, New Delhi, Kochi, and Singapore. Between 2014-2019, Ray held a dozen in person salons in Mumbai and New York to cultivate a creative community that extended into theater, music, fashion, and film. In 2020, they co-founded the feminist artist collective, Hilma’s Ghost, with artist Dannielle Tegeder as a participatory and collaborative model for exhibitions, curating, creative pedagogies, and gathering and empowering community. The collective focuses on areas of collaborative artistic work, programming and free workshops for the community, and research into underrepresented histories of women artists and spiritualists that include the methods and techniques these women used in the areas of craft and magic. Their individual and collective work has been featured in The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Artnet, TimeOut Mumbai, Art India, and many other publications. As an art critic, they have contributed to AsiaArtPacific, Hyperallergic, Art India, The Brooklyn Rail, and Ocula, amongst others. They are the recipient of a Joan Mitchell MFA Grant and TED Fellowship and received a dual degree MFA in Painting/MS in Art History from Pratt Institute. Currently they teach at Parsons School of Design and Carnegie Mellon University.