Pragati Dalvi Jain

Pragati Dalvi Jain

1984

Overview

Pragati Dalvi Jain’s multidisciplinary practice spans performance, painting, and conceptual inquiry, grounded in rigorous research and an unflinching engagement with the socio-political constructs of visibility, identity, and embodiment. Over the past decade, her work has persistently explored the structures of marginalization, confronting systemic blind spots that render certain bodies and voices unseen.

Navigating the interstices between public and private space, Dalvi Jain’s oeuvre foregrounds the body as both site and symbol- animated by the weight of cultural inheritance, social taboo, and emotional residue. Her sustained investigation into themes such as matrophobia, loneliness in motherhood, and the psychosomatic dimensions of rare medical conditions reveals a practice attuned to the poetics of constraint and the complexities of care.


Notable among her projects is Tin Soldiers, a durational performance that brought visibility to the condition of Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP), confronting conventional narratives around disability and agency. Her fellowship at Harvard University catalyzed a significant body of research into maternal identity and isolation, further anchoring her work within questions of gender, affect, and social estrangement.


Dalvi Jain’s recent solo exhibitions include A Pound of Feathers (APRE Art House, Mumbai, 2025); Shapes of Unseen Voices (Bangalore, 2025); and Breathing Spaces (Bulthaup, Bangalore, 2020). Her work has been featured in Ephemerides (APRE Art House, 2025); Women in South Asia: Expectations, Burdens and Obligations (Mittal Institute, Harvard University, 2021); and the Royal Watercolour Society, London (2021), among others.


With a practice marked by formal precision and conceptual clarity, Pragati Dalvi Jain continues to articulate urgent questions around erasure, care, and corporeal memory through a deeply considered visual language.