Parvathi Nayar, one of India’s most compelling voices in contemporary art, presents a major solo exhibition at Muziris Contemporary, Colaba, marking a significant return to Mumbai.

The Primordial brings together a body of predominantly new work from her ongoing Ocean, Pepper and Salt series, alongside a carefully chosen selection of earlier works from her oeuvre that engage with the themes of Body and Earth. These select works provide a wider arc and context for a practice deeply invested in elemental forces and their entanglement with human history.

The exhibition invites us to return to origins — to water, earth, salt, the ocean, and the spices it carried across oceans — forces that have shaped not only ecosystems but the trajectories of trade, migration and memory over millennia. Drawing on scientific inquiry as much as historical imagination, Nayar’s work occupies an ancient intersection of knowledge and narrative.

At its core, the show is anchored in new and recent graphite works from the Ocean, Pepper and Salt series, where salt crystals, tidal movements, microscopic marine architectures and the granular textures of spice are rendered at monumental scale. A small constellation of earlier works from the Body and Earth series frames this inquiry, tracing her longstanding engagement with materiality, geology and corporeality. Also featured is Pull, a short film directed by the artist.

Meticulous and meditative, her hand-drawn graphite works demand sustained looking. Whether evoking salt suspended against a cosmic black ground or the intricate lattice of sea life, they feel simultaneously intimate and planetary.

Parvathi is a Central Saint Martins, London alumna (Chevening Scholar), founding member of The Hashtag Collective, and the curatorial mind behind the award-winning permanent exhibition The Living Ocean at Dakshinachitra Museum. Her films have travelled to international festivals, and her TEDx talks have reached audiences beyond the art world. She is currently based in Chennai.

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