Riya Kar

Title: Untitled
Acrylic on Canvas 122 × 158.4 cm
AWARD WINNER: Rs 35,000

Riya Kar (born 13 November 1999) is a visual artist based in Kolkata, West Bengal. She completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2023 and her Master of Fine Arts in 2025 from Rabindra Bharati University. Earlier, she completed her Secondary Examination in 2015 and Higher Secondary Examination in 2017 from Ultadanga Government Sponsored Higher Secondary School for Girls.

Kar’s artistic practice is shaped by her experiences of growing up in a densely populated metropolitan environment. Her work draws from close observation of everyday surroundings, often focusing on domestic elements, animals, and fragments of urban nature. Rather than expansive landscapes, her understanding of nature emerges through intimate encounters with potted plants, garden beds, creeping vines, and other quiet presences within domestic spaces.

Through imaginative and sometimes surreal compositions, she reflects on the fragile relationship between urban life and the natural world, particularly the struggle of birds and animals within changing cityscapes. Her works explore the emotional tension between confinement and openness while reimagining how nature and architecture coexist in contemporary urban life.