I am Apoorva John, from Bangalore, Karnataka, a city in South India, and my mother tongue is Tamil, and I also speak Kannada, Telugu, and Hindi. I have been drawing since the age of three, with an instinctive fascination with lines that has grown into a lifelong practice of observing, questioning, and expressing the world around me.

 

Trained as an architectural designer in India and Italy, I now primarily work with pigment ink on archival paper, drawing to the expressive potential of the thinnest lines.

My practice is rooted in precision and the accumulated strokes that slowly build into intricate forms. I have always been inspired by my culture, nature, memory, and places. Through these drawings I find the embedded subtle narratives of immigration, belonging, and the connections that unite us. Using 0.03mm and higher pigment liners, I construct each drawing through the repetition of minute, intentional marks.

The process is slow and meditative; each stroke become therapeutic, creating a sense of calm and allowing me to become immersed in the art of making.

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I come from a line of strong women in my family, who have shown me that it's possible to overcome difficult circumstances. I carry this experience with me in everything I set out to explore in my life. It's also why I believe art is not only for the privileged and all ideas deserve a platform for them to be expressed.

 

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“The Everyday song”

A celebration of the day-to-day moments and stories of my community, as a cultural memory that I can pass down. This project is aimed at standing as a reminder to the people of my own culture and also to others to never forget their roots and traditions.

I grew up surrounded by traditions in which the hands are the core to our everyday life. We use our hands to cook, eat, create, and pass on knowledge from one generation to another. To me, the hand represents the core of our culture and craftsmanship.

 

Yet, these everyday practices can sometimes evoke feelings of hesitation or self-consciousness.The slight hesitation of choosing a knife instead of breaking bread with our hands, or of the aroma that fills a room when a home-cooked meal is opened. These seemingly small moments reveal how easily cultural practices can become something we feel forced to conceal. Rather than viewing these experiences through nostalgia, I intend these artworks to reclaim them as sources of strength and pride.

 

Through this work, not only do I wish to focus on uplifting my culture on a global scale but also to question the value of my own society and the way it's viewed within the larger South Indian community.