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Aishwarya Kumar

Aishwarya Kumar

 https://orcid.org/0009-0001-5460-6951
    20212024

    Research activity per year

    Personal profile

    Biography

    Aishwarya Kumar is an interdisciplinary researcher, curator, and artistic director working across embodied curiosity and transnational cultural perception. Trained in Bharatnatyam, Information Arts and Design in India, and Media and Performance Theory in the Netherlands, her practice investigates how bodily experience, spatial environments, and cultural systems shape perception in the 21st century. She is a PhD candidate in Culture Studies at Universidade Católica Portuguesa, an FCT scholarship holder, and a Europaeum Scholar (2026–2027).

    Since 2016, Kumar's practice examines systems and aesthetics that are organised through diaspora communities, with fieldwork across South Asia, Northern and Southern Europe. Her research intersects corporeality and cognition, creates immersive performance environments that alter audience perception through embodied endurance practices (dance, somatics, deep sea diving). Founder of Stage Rabbit studio - producing artists from Portugal, India, Belgium, Spain - she curated Down The Rabbit Hole pavilion for The Wrong Biennale (Nov 2025-Mar 2026).

    Aishwarya Kumar is currently the Artistic Director of Sobremesa: Vagaries of Palate, a Creative Europe small-scale cooperation project (Feb 2026-May 2027). Leading a four-country Creative Europe consortium across Portugal, Italy, Greece, and the Basque region, the pilot confronts nation-state identities through food practices via co-curatorial research, transnational residencies, exploring how food shapes national identity. Her recent work has been disseminated through Junctions Journal (2021), Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2023), Contemporanea (2024), Arte Capital (2024), Culture Moves Europe grant (Poland 2025), A Study in Isolation, Universe Pavilion (Venice Biennale 2025), and Sobremesa (2026-2027).

    Education/Academic qualification

    Master, Media, Arts, and Performance Studies, Utrecht University

    Award Date: 30 Sept 2021

    Bachelor, Information Arts and Information Design Practices, Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology

    Award Date: 29 Jul 2016

    Keywords

    • B Philosophy (General)
    • Performance studies
    • New materialism
    • Philosophy of science
    • Continental philosophy
    • GN Anthropology
    • LB2361 Curriculum
    • BH Aesthetics
    • P Philology. Linguistics
    • N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR

    Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

    In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

    1. SDG 4 - Quality Education
      SDG 4 Quality Education
    2. SDG 5 - Gender Equality
      SDG 5 Gender Equality
    3. SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth
      SDG 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth
    4. SDG 9 - Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
      SDG 9 Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
    5. SDG 14 - Life Below Water
      SDG 14 Life Below Water
    6. SDG 15 - Life on Land
      SDG 15 Life on Land
    7. SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
      SDG 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
    8. SDG 17 - Partnerships for the Goals
      SDG 17 Partnerships for the Goals

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    Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

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    • 1 Organising a conference, workshop, ...
    • 1 Participating in a conference, workshop, ...