Yashika Sugandh

Yashika Sugandh keeps a visual diary of flora and fauna—a meticulous, meditative practice rooted in Indian miniature painting that has grown into a sculptural language of kites, gilli danda, and garden creatures rendered at joyful scale.

Born in 1993 in Kolkata and raised in New Delhi and Noida, Sugandh took her BFA and MFA in Painting at Amity University, Noida. Each of her family’s moves cost her a garden—the trees, birds, and animals whose ecosystems are constantly displaced—and her work records what was lost. Tree branches dominate her compositions, cast as the elders of the household: givers, symbols of paropkar, selfless service. She frames the practice with a line she paraphrases from the Bhagavad Gita—to become humbler than a blade of grass and more tolerant than a tree.

Her tone is nostalgic, playful, and deliberately hopeful. In recent years the diary has stepped into three dimensions—works in acrylic on PETG, nylon, wood, and fibre resin, from Gilli Danda and Meri Patang to Sukoon—bringing childhood games and garden life into sculptural presence.

Her work has been shown at Art Mumbai, the India Art Fair, the Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Jehangir Art Gallery, ICCR, Lalit Kala Akademi, and IGNCA, among others. She received the City Award for Delhi from the Prafulla Dahanukar Art Foundation in 2017 and its All-India Merit Grant in 2021. She lives and works in Delhi.