EDUCATION
2025 MA Painting, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2024 Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2016 Bachelor of Dental Surgery, KLE VK Institute of Dental Sciences, Karnataka, India
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2026 In Between, Royal Society of Arts, London, UK
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2026 Histories of Goa, Museum of Goa, Goa, India
2026 BUoY Arts Center, Tokyo, Japan
2026 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London, UK
2026 Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art, Bonhams, London, UK
2026 A Line Has Time in It, Cartamagna Art, London, UK
2026 The Capacity to Begin, A Space Residence & Gallery, London, UK
2026 In Transit, In Return, Goa Open Arts Festival, Goa, India
2025 43rd Small Is Beautiful, Flowers Gallery, London, UK
2025 Lido Open 2025 Exhibition, Lido Stores Gallery, Margate, UK
2025 Diasporic Archives, Maverick Projects, London, UK
2025 17 Points of Departure, Maverick Projects, London, UK
2025 Art for Everyone, Art_list, Geneva, Switzerland
2025 The Summer Day in Support of Sisterhood, Silian Gallery, London, UK
2025 Jaguar x RCA Award Shortlist Exhibition, Jaguar Land Rover Headquarters, Gaydon, UK
2025 MA Painting Degree Show, Royal College of Art, London, UK
2024 One Swam Up Another Stream, Art in the Docks, London, UK
2024 Transient House of Memories, Way Out East Gallery, London, UK
2024 Behind the Seen, Indian International Centre, Delhi, India
2023 Artist Collective, Vulcan Art Gallery, Punjab, India
2023 Contemporary Visual Arts, The Bombay Art Society, Mumbai, India
2023 Emerging Voices, Artjuna Gallery, Goa, India
AWARDS / SHORTLISTS
2025 Shortlisted, Inaugural Jaguar x RCA Award
2024 Longlisted, Women United Art Prize, Painting & Drawing
2024 Women Achiever’s Award in Art, Incredible Goa, Goa, India
FEATURES / PUBLICATIONS / MEDIA
2026 PR Times, Press Release for Fault Lines Group Exhibition, Tokyo
2026 Bonhams, It’s Only Natural, Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art
2026 Homegrown, Examining Trauma, Gender & Inherited Patterns
2026 Colstoun Arts, Resident Artist Feature
2026 Our Culture, Exploring the Urgency of Being - RSA Solo Exhibition
2026 O Heraldo, Feature on Goa Open Arts Exhibition Exploring Memory & Displacement, Pg. 9
2026 Royal Society of Arts, In Between, RSA Solo Exhibition
2025 Creatrix Magazine, Artist Interview
2025 Jaguar-RCA Award, Artist Shortlist
2025 Royal College of Art, MA Painting Artist Profile
2024 FAD Magazine, One Swam Up Another Stream, Art in the Docks Exhibition Feature
RESIDENCIES / PROGRAMMES / WORKSHOPS / EXPERIENCE
2026 Cream Athens x D Contemporary Collector Access Programme
2026 Colstoun Arts Residency, Scotland, UK
2025 Invited Artist, Women’s Safety Workshop, Wandsworth Council, London, UK
2024 Residency, University of East London, London, UK
ARTIST TALKS
2025 Royal College of Art Tour, Bangalore, India
2025 Royal College of Art, London, UK
2025 Turps Banana Studio Programme, London, UK
Divya Balivada is an Indian artist whose practice draws from personal experience and inherited histories of gender bias, trauma, and displacement. Her practice asks how the body carries history and what happens when it is given space to express. For Balivada, gesture and colour are central to her practice. They allow her to remain with felt experiences and contradictions. Influenced by nature and meditation, Balivada uses mark-making as a form of grounding and inquiry. Her use of colour is informed by cultural memory and sensory impressions, particularly saturated textiles, festivals, and intricate architecture. Her interest in cyclicity reflects the non-linear nature of memory and inheritance, where experiences compound and transform.
A distinctive part of her practice is a self-built loom that allows her to paint on a continuously rotating fabric, without a fixed beginning or end. Balivada paints onto fabric, accumulating gestures cyclically, allowing repetition, labour, temporality, and bodily movement to intersect, while navigating the coexistence of control and uncertainty. The whole painting can be seen only when the fabric is removed from the loom, the moment when she becomes both maker and spectator. Her loom connects this process to South Asian textile traditions and the histories of labour, intimacy, and autonomy.