Artist In Public Service.  

Mobilising To End Victim Blame
Towards The Right To Be Defenceless.

An idea has no significance or meaning unless someone makes it their own.

Patheja designs public and participatory projects to end gender-based violence and claim defencelessness. Jasmeen Patheja is an Artist in Public Service, committed to ending violence against women, girls and all persons. Patheja initiates ideas and facilitates collective feminist action towards the right to be defenceless.   In 2003, Patheja founded Blank Noise to address the silence surrounding street harassment in India and globally. Blank Noise works to affect public consciousness, calling everyday citizens to become ‘Action Sheroes’/ Heroes/ Theyroes and take the agency to end gender-based violence. Over the 20 years, her approach has grown from street harassment to victim blame; emphasising the interconnectedness of gender-based violence across spaces.

Patheja designs methodologies to build testimonials of violence against women. Her practice is based on listening to lived experiences. It rests on the power of feminist solidarities. She works with themes including fear, public and private memory, imagination, shame, desire,  belonging, empathy and the weight of defence. Select projects at Blank Noise include the I Never Ask For It Mission, Meet To Sleep and Talk To Me.

Awards and recognition include the International Award For Public Art, for Talk To Me (2015). In 2019 Patheja was awarded the Visible Award for the project I Never Ask For It / Meet To Sleep. Vera List Center awarded her the Jane Lombard Fellowship For Art and Politics. BBC listed her as one of the 12 artists changing the world, in 2019. Patheja is a TED speaker, a TED and an Ashoka Fellow. Select residencies include the Bellagio Residency with CARE and the Rockefeller Foundation, Akademie Schloss Solitude and Srishti Institute of Art Design and Technology.

Jasmeen Patheja ( born 1979, Kolkata) is an award-winning, Artist in Public Service, committed to ending violence against women, girls, and all persons. Patheja builds ideas and methodologies, for collective feminist action, mobilising for the right to be free from fear and defenceless. ” An idea has no significance or meaning, unless someone makes it their own.” Patheja’s practice is at the intersection of art and movement building.

Patheja founded Blank Noise in 2003, in response to the silence surrounding street harassment in India and globally. Blank Noise began as her final year diploma project at Srishti Insitute of Art, Design and Technology.

Blank Noise mobilises everyday citizens to become ‘Action Sheroes/Heroes/Theyroes’ and take agency in ending gender-based violence. It works to affect public consciousness, towards taking collective responsibility of the issue. Patheja’s practice is based on listening to the lived experiences of survivors of sexual assault. Over the past two decades, she has collaborated with numerous allies, communities, institutions, and stakeholders across different geographies and social contexts to end gender-based violence. Her approach has grown from addressing street harassment to confronting victim blame, as experienced across spaces of violence from the home, street, and campus. Patheja works with themes including fear, memory, imagination, shame, desire, belonging, empathy, defence and defencelessness.

Select projects at Blank Noise include the I Never Ask For It Mission (2004-ongoing), Meet To Sleep (2015-ongoing) and Talk To Me (2012- ongoing). Her art practice spans tactical media including performance, community building and facilitation, installation, sound, video, and photography.

Patheja is a TED speaker. She is also a TED and an Ashoka Fellow. In 2023, Patheja was awarded the CARE Arts For Gender Equality Fellowship with the Rockefeller Foundation. Notable awards and recognition include the prestigious Visible Award for the project I Never Ask For It/Meet To Sleep. Patheja received the International Award For Public Art for the project Talk To Me (2015). In 2019, Patheja was awarded the Jane Lombard Fellowship by the Vera List Center For Art and Politics, New York. BBC listed her as one of the 12 artists changing the world (2019). Patheja has been an artist in residence, in institutions including Akademie Schloss Solitude, Germany, and the Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio. She is an artist in residence at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design, and Technology.

Noteworthy press mentions include BBC, The Hindu, Times of India, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, Deccan Herald, Now This and The Guardian.

Patheja and her grandmother Indri are collaborators. They have been working on a series of photo performances to address desire, ageing and agency.