About

Ruchika Nambiar is a miniaturist, book artist, designer and writer who creates experimental, interactive stories. She is an alumnus of RISD with a research MA in Global Arts & Cultures (2023). Formally trained as a graphic designer, she completed her undergraduate studies at Srishti Institute of Art, Design & Technology in India, with a major in Visual Communication Design (2014). She is currently teaching at RISD, under the Department of Illustration. Her work is interdisciplinary and ranges across media, from artist books and graphic memoirs to dioramas and interactive social-media stories. She publishes most of her book projects independently, such as her graphic memoir The Breadcrumb (2020). Many of her book projects take on visually-rich forms and are often produced as single/limited edition pieces, such as Home vs Home (2023), a copy of which has been acquired by The Clark Art Institute for their Special Collections. Her work plays with the relationship between content, form and interaction, finding new ways to combine image-making, writing, research, miniature-making and more to create experimental narrative objects.

She is the creator of The Dollhouse Project (2017-present), an interactive miniature storyverse that has been featured by Architectural Digest, Marg Magazine, India Today, and more. She works on experimental art commissions across miniature making and book art, with brand collaborations like Samsung and several publication design clients. She does talks and speaking engagements – most recently at TEDxRISD – and is also developing a mentorship programme, The Creative Finishing School, for young artists and designers.

Also a researcher, she writes on themes of cultural philosophy and media studies. Her writing has previously been published in the Journal of Contemporary Thought. Her interests lie in studying media and its relationship to knowledge production and the formation of our conceptual frameworks, with a special focus on mainstream media, new media and pop culture. Her thesis at RISD, Memes for the Soul: The Internet and its Phantasmic Global Citizen (2023) is currently being translated into an interactive artist book as well as an exhibition.