Bio – NITHYA IYER

Nithya Iyer is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher of South Indian Tamil-descent. Raised in Melbourne, Australia, she currently resides in Lisbon, Portugal. Working across text, video, photography, sculpture and performance,Nithya uses embodied and feminist practices to articulate notions of alterity, plurality and ambiguity – qualities she believes are crucial to recasting limiting ideological narratives inherent in contemporary society. With a focus on cumulative and iterative projects that span solo and group performance through to participatory installations, Nithya seeks to articulate generative modalities of arts practice as means of both research and form, attempting to disrupt traditional parameters of aesthetics and performance through the enactment of ambiguous territories. In 2022 she co-founded The Third Thing with Vlad Mizikov. The current focus of her research unfolds between solo and collaborative projects.

Nithya was trained for 12 years in the forms of Bharatanatyam and Odissi at the Chandrabhanu Bharatalaya Academy of Indian Dance in Melbourne, Australia, where she later taught and performed as a senior ensemble member of the Jambudvipa Ensemble. She was the co-founder of interdisciplinary arts collective L&NDLESS with Devika Bilimoria and Luna Mrozik-Gawler, presenting several durational and participatory works across festivals in Australia. In January 2020, Nithya was invited to perform her debut solo work ‘Vengayam’ at Kampni Kutcheri in Bengaluru, India, by the esteemed Madhu Nataraj of Natya STEM Dance Kampni. The work – first shown at the Critical Animals festival as part of This Is Not Art in Newcastle in 2018, and subsequently at Bus Projects, Melbourne, Australia, – dissects the impact of migration and nationalism on individual identity with a particular focus on first-generation South Asian immigration to Australia.

Nithya arrived in Lisbon, Portugal, in March 2020 under the auspices of the Ian Potter Cultural Trust to complete a year-long residency project at the Hangar Centre for Artistic Investigation. Entitled ‘An Indefinite Series of Discontinuous Acts’, the project explored the apex of artistic investigation, phenomenological practice and academic research to ask: What is knowledge-making? How are alternative forms of knowledge validated into the formal research process? How can these processes re-envision knowledge-based hierarchies to challenge systemic dysfunctions? Working collaboratively with PhD researchers Zohar Iancu and Jad Khairallah (Universidade Catolica Portuguesa) the exhibition aimed to challenge traditional notions of both research and arts practice.

Concurrent to the themes of her residency project, Nithya was commissioned by the European Cooperation Funded 4Cs Project – From Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture, to facilitate a 3-day workshop at Appleton Box, Alvalade. ‘Notes from Atopia‘ centred on the existential atopia – or placelessness – ushered in under the isolation measures of pandemic restrictions. Employing the tools of phenomenological research informed by her Masters at the Melbourne Institute of Experiential and Creative Art Therapy, participants were guided through a series of solo and small group investigations in dialogue with an artefact of their choice that related to the period of the March COVID19 restrictions in Lisbon. The resulting digital archive can be found on the 4Cs website. A critical text regarding the subject matter of the workshop and the resulting findings will be published by the 4Cs in 2021.

Also in 2020, Nithya was commissioned by Luisa Santos, Ana Fabiola Mauricio and Miguel Palma to present a performance at the esteemed Nanogaleria, Alvalade. The work, LAZULI#002FA7, sought to question the complicated lineage of a colour commencing at Lapis Lazuli and eventually appropriated to ‘Yves Klein Blue’. Drawing on the work of Helena Almeida and the Anthropophagy Manifesto by Oswald de Andrade, the piece signals a new direction in her ongoing research regarding the use of the performative body as a tool of subversion, deconstruction and reconstruction.

Contact: msnithyaiyer@gmail.com

All work on this website is the exclusive property of Nithya Iyer unless otherwise credited, © Nithya Iyer as covered by the Copyright Act 1968. Any publication of material on this website requires the express written consent of Nithya Iyer.

/TRAINING & EDUCATION

Melbourne Institute of Experiential and Creative Art Therapy: Masters in Therapeutic Arts Practice (Community Arts & Health); 2020
RICE University, Texas USA: How to Read Texts, Summer School with Professor Timothy Morton, 2020
University of Bologna, Italy: Atlas of Transitions Summer School 2020
Deakin University, Melbourne: Cross-institutional study, Arts-based and Sports-based Approaches to Community Development, 2019
Chandrabhanu Bharatalaya Academy of Classical Indian Dance, Melbourne: Bharatanatyam & Odissi Dancer & Teacher; 2005-2016
Jambudvipa Association for Indian Arts: Chair and Ensemble Performer; 2014-2017
Monash University: Bachelor of Arts (Politics & International Relations)/Bachelor of Commerce (Accounting & Finance); 2004-2008
University of Liverpool: ERASMUS Program; 2004
MacRobertson Girls High School: VCE, 2000-2003

/VISUAL ARTS & INSTALLATION

An Experiment in Intervals – II: Video & photograph exhibited at Marvila Art District as represented by Movart, Lisbon, 2021
An Indefinite Series of Discontinuous Acts: Research-based exhibition presented after a year-long residency at the Hangar Centre for Artistic Investigation, Lisbon, alongside collaborators Zohar Iancu and Jad Khairallah, 2020
Liminal Mudra: The Un-Appropriated Hand: Video art piece presented at Sangam Performing Arts Festival of South Asia and Diaspora, 2019
Book of Dream, The Great Wall of Books: Facilitated community arts project as part of Well Productions Inc (AD Dario Vacirca) for Falls Festival, Lorne, Australia, 2018
Body/Wall_Encounters: Video art component of Masters research on body and architecture, Melbourne 2018.
Lord, have you forsaken me thus?: Video art project developed on-site with Art Ecology, Bangalore, 2018
Now, And the Mind Tears: installation at Agency Agency, Nicholas Building Open House, 2017

/PERFORMANCE

L(AZUL)I#002FA7: Performance and installation commissioned by Luisa Santos and Ana Fabiola Mauricio, Nanogaleria, Lisbon, 2020.
Vengayam: Kampni Kutcheri series, Natya STEM Dance Kampni, Bengaluru – India, 2020
Vengayam: Bus Projects, Collingwood, Melbourne, 2019
//solo performance installation
H:O:M:E: Mapping Melbourne 2018
//durational live art work exploring memory and place performed as part of L&NDLESS arts collective.
Vengayam: Critical Animals, This is Not Art Festival, Newcastle, 2018
//solo performance installation
Syllables of Ritual/Resonant Lines: Mapping Melbourne & Queensland Poetry Festival, 2017
//duo and trio performance poetry and live art collaboration.
MOKITA – A Secular Grieving Ritual: HillsceneLIVE, 2017
//trio durational, interactive and live art performance over eight hours regarding grief.
Remedium: Melbourne Uni Mudfest, 2017
//trio immersive and durational performance installation over 4.5 hours across five rooms.
In the Beginning there was Sound: Peril Magazine x AASRN Tenth Birthday, 2016
//solo performance, voice and body
Rates of Exchange: Mapping Melbourne 2016
//one of five performers in group work choreographed by Dr. Priya Srinivasan
H:O:M:E: Crack Theatre Festival (This Is Not Art) 2016
//trio experimental storytelling performance
Black Bird: The Body Speaks Melbourne, 2015
//duo performance poetry
ANDASHA: Regrowth Festival, Braidwood NSW, 2015
//one of five performers in roving performance on ritual.
Hybrid Continent: RMIT University & Australian Multicultural Association, 2015
//one of four performers in group work choreographed by Kathleen Gonzalez
Navagraha (‘the 9 planets’): Jambudvipa Association for Indian Arts, 2014
//one of 17 performers in group Bharatanatyam performance choreographed by Dr. Chandrabhanu OAM
MARIAMMAN: Jambudvipa Association for Indian Arts, 2013
//one of 27 performers in group Bharatanatyam performance choreographed by Dr. Chandrabhanu OAM
Darpana – the mirror of gesture: Jambudvipa Association for Indian Arts, 2013
//duo work in Bharatanatyam performance choreographed by Dr. Chandrabhanu OAM
‘Arangetram’, Chandrabhanu Bharatalaya Academy of Classical Indiance Dance, 2010
/solo debut in feature-length Bharatanatyam work.

/WORKSHOPS, RESEARCH & FACILITATION

AMBIGUOUS TERRITORIES: Paper presentation at the Convivial Cultures Summer School, Lisbon Consortium, 2021
Alternative Knowledge in the Making – An Experimental Dialogue Between Academic Research & Artistic Investigation (Film): Presentation of research film at the Convivial Cultures Summer School with Jad Khairallah and Zohar Iancu, Lisbon Consortium, 2021
Notes from Atopia: 3-day workshop at Appleton Box, Alvalade for the European Cooperation Funded 4Cs Project focusing on the knowledges gained from the existential placelessness of pandemic isolation. Lisbon, 2020
Book of Dream: One-one and group arts-based interventions over three-day interactive installation at Falls Festival, Lorne, 2019
Exploring Gesture: workshop presented at Yoga Health Mandala, Goa, India, 2018
BON moving meditation: weekly workshops at Dancehouse, Melbourne and Regrowth Festival, NSW, 2014 – 2016
Bharatanatyam dance teacher, Chandrabhanu Bharatalaya Academy of Classical Indian Dance, weekly classes for children and adults five to 20 years old, 2014 – 15

/WRITING

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