2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition

Mukta Salve’s Shreeja Rao
Gouache on canvas
50.5x28 in
2026

Manusmriti Dahan (Annihilation of Caste)
Unfired clay, henna
8.5x11 in, Multi-element installation, dimensions variable
2025

Shrujana Niranjani Shridhar (b. Mumbai, India), an interdisciplinary artist, honors the resilience of communities that fought caste, class and gender oppressions.

Shridhar’s ongoing series, Educate, inspired by the works of bell hooks and Shailja Paik investigates the exclusion of Indian Dalit communities from learning for nearly three millennia. Portraits rendered with detailed patterns, vivid colors materialized through the textures of gouache, oil and soft pastels challenge the erasure of Dalit women’s labor.

In the installation, Manusmriti Dahan (Annihilation of Caste), Manusmriti verses detailing cruel punishments towards oppressed caste members pursuing education are screen printed with henna on letter-sized unfired clay tablets, working with both abstraction and representation, demonstrated by the disintegration of the text through interruptions such as water droplets, or being walked upon by audiences.

Alongside creating a paradigm shift in the perception of South Asia, Shridhar offers solidarity and strength to confront hierarchies audiences experience in daily lives.

Shrujana Niranjani Shridhar is an artist and illustrator based in New York City and Mumbai. Her works have been published in magazines in India and abroad. She runs the Dalit Panther Archive, digitising and archiving Little Magazines and literature published by the members of the Dalit Panther movement. Shrujana has written and illustrated children’s books, and is also the co-founder of Mavelinadu Collective, an anti-caste publication, based in Mumbai.

She is an MFA Fine Arts candidate at Parsons School of Design, New York. She received the SSAF–AAA Research Grant for Archiving Histories of Art, Ideas, and Visual Culture in 2019. Her works have been exhibited at Kochi Biennale, Arts House, Melbourne, Clark House Initiative, Mumbai, The Showroom, London, and China Residencies at The Centre for Media at Risk at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.