About

Ruchika Nambiar is a South Asian book artist, designer and writer who creates experimental, interactive books and stories. While her methods are interdisciplinary, she treats the book as her container, using it to combine her various practices of image-making, miniature art, writing, research and graphic design. Her books play with the relationship between content, form and interaction, finding new ways to combine meaning, methods and materials to create highly experimental narrative experiences.

She is an alumnus of RISD with an MA in Global Arts & Cultures (2023). Formally trained as a graphic designer, she completed her undergraduate studies at Srishti Institute of Art, Design & Technology in India, with a major in Visual Communication Design (2014). Alongside her practice, she currently teaches at RISD, under the Department of Illustration. She publishes most of her book projects independently, such as her graphic memoir The Breadcrumb (2020). Many of her book projects take on visually-rich multimedia forms and are often produced as single/limited edition pieces, such as Home vs Home (2023) or Record Withheld (2025), copies of which have been acquired by The Clark Art Institute and Bainbridge Island Museum of Art for their special collections. Her interactive artist book Memes for the Soul (2024) was awarded the RISD Research SPUR Fund. Her upcoming 2D/3D artist book Notes to Self (2026) has recently been awarded the RISCA Make Art Grant. In 2026, she is also developing two new interactive artist books, one using thermo-chromic paint (Shadow Files, 2026), and another with pages made of water (Aquagrafia, 2026).

She is the creator of The Dollhouse Project (2017-present), an interactive miniature storyverse that has been featured by Architectural Digest, Marg Magazine, India Today, and more. She works on experimental art commissions, with brand collaborations like Samsung and limited edition books produced for clients such as the City of Providence. She does talks and speaking engagements – most recently at TEDxRISD – and also runs a mentorship programme, The Creative Finishing School, for young artists and designers.

As a researcher, she writes on themes of cultural philosophy and media studies. Her writing has previously been published in the Journal of Contemporary Thought. Her interests lie in studying media and its relationship to knowledge production and the formation of our conceptual frameworks, with a special focus on mainstream media, new media and pop culture. She frequently finds ways to express these themes through creative, multimedia formats. Her thesis at RISD, Memes for the Soul (2024), was produced as an interactive artist book.

Portrait by Phoenix Kabali