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In 2023, as I was doing an art residency with the Basu foundation in India, I had the luck to visit the Rajkumari Ratnavati School, founded by Michael Daube and his organization CITTA in rural Jaisalmer on the edge of the Thar desert. The school is dedicated to the education of girls living below the poverty line. After discussing with Michael his project of art works created by women artists in support of the school, I imagined KUMARI NAYIKA : In collaboration with a group of students, I imagined an epic tale  based on the world they want to live in. Together we discussed the subjects dear to their hearts and outlined the characters. We unearthed Princess Rimjhim, born of the Sun and the River, in a faraway country where water is rare and dreams are blooming. Chetan, the defender of Nature who shepherds butterflies, his friend the magician and his gardeners, and his brother Marich, the cunning merchant and his court of polluting demons... 

The students enacted the central characters with amazing talent in a large-scale  photographic fresco, and a series of single photographs.

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After an event and an auction in Mumbai in 2024, this series was shown as a fundraiser in NYC at Diane Von Furstenberg Gallery in February 2025. An exhibition and conference opened in Evora Portugal at the Palacio Cadaval in March 2026

KUMARI NAYIKA is an evolving project, explored in several forms.

A Series of Art videos, the KUMARI NAYIKA Mirages, were filmed in Rajasthan this winter and are being finalized. A fiction film and a book are in development.

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