My artistic journey has always centered a deep connection to my mental health, ancestry, and community. One of the most important questions I've learned to ask myself as a somatic practitioner and artist is, "For the sake of what? Art for the sake of what?" For me, it is for the sake of spiritual and emotional expression, for the sake of connection, and for the sake of freedom. I hope through emphasizing an intuitive art process, using materials that are easily available, and integrating the body, that my work can challenge the idea that art must be inaccessible in order to be valuable or effective. I hope my work encourages someone to buy cheap watercolors, take a deep breath, and paint the pain they have felt in their upper back, or write down the words they wish their mother told them, and frame it above their makeshift altar.

Two critical parts of my artistic practice are focusing on the process over the product and belief in the healing nature of creative expression. It is born out of listening and allowing for something larger than ourselves to move through us to do one of the most magical things we can do: create. I am queer, a survivor, Indian-American and immigrated to the US at a young age. My relationship to these identities is inseparable from the work I create, but also serves as both gateways and barricades to the ways I can fully understand others. My journey to learning about South Asian spiritual and mental health practices as a yoga teacher has deeply informed my artistic practice and my political beliefs. Our liberation is inherently tied to one another, my freedom tied to yours; and so I hope that with every piece of art that I create, it allows us to slowly untether ourselves from the trauma of white supremacy.

Both as an artist and mental health professional, I think it is imperative to be multi-disciplinary and a lifelong student. Each of my practices—dance, painting, writing, and music-making—all feed into one another. As I've learned bharatanatyam, I have been able to allow the anger and grief my body holds to be released into the earth. Designing and painting written affirmations and illustrations allows me to cast spells that center joy, magic, and care. I believe my work is a vessel for my ancestors, my personal connection to nature, and a practice that allows me to strengthen my relationship to my intuition. Through returning to ancient South Asian iconography, history, symbolism, and ways of being and integrating them into my artistic practice, I seek to create art that holds something holy and ancient while being firmly rooted in the present needs of the body.