Artist In Public Service.

Mobilising For The Right To Be Defenceless

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

Jasmeen Patheja (b. 1979, Kolkata) is an award-winning Artist in Public Service, working at the intersection of art and feminist movement-building. She builds ideas and facilitates collective action for the right to be defenceless.

In 2003, she founded Blank Noise in response to the silence around street harassment in India and globally. Blank Noise is a community of Action Sheroes/Theyroes/Heroes—individuals stepping in to end gender-based violence. Over two decades, the initiative has developed participatory methodologies and art interventions that shift public consciousness. Patheja’s work is rooted in listening to survivors of sexual violence, exploring themes of fear, memory, shame, empathy, desire, belonging, defencelessness, and the politics of fear.

Key projects include I Never Ask For It (2004–ongoing), Talk To Me (2012–ongoing), Meet To Sleep (2015–ongoing) and Hahaha Sangha. Her practice spans performance, facilitation, photography, installation, sound, and video.

She is a TED speaker and a TED and Ashoka Fellow. Awards include the Visible Award (I Never Ask For It/Meet To Sleep), the International Award for Public Art (Talk To Me, 2015), the Jane Lombard Fellowship (Vera List Center, 2019), and the CARE Arts for Gender Equality Fellowship (Rockefeller Foundation, 2023). The BBC named her one of 12 artists changing the world (2019). Residencies include Akademie Schloss Solitude (Germany), the Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio, and Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology.

Her work has been exhibited at the Ford Foundation Gallery (NYC), the National Portrait Gallery (UK), the Bronx Museum of the Arts (USA), and the Centre for Contemporary Photography (Australia). Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, BBC, Bloomberg, and The Hindu, among others.

Patheja has delivered talks at McGill University, Concordia University, Christ University, Mount Carmel College, Azim Premji University, and the College of William & Mary. She has taught at Grinnell College (USA) and Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, where her classrooms become communities of Action Sheroes/Theyroes/Heroes. Students engage with the complexities of gender-based violence, locate their own experiences within it, and cultivate agency in designing for social change. She has over seven years of experience in feminist mentoring, including her work with CREA, supporting young women leaders across organisations in India through a South Asia-focused programme.

Patheja collaborates with her grandmother, Inderjit Kaur, on the photo-performance series Indri, addressing ageing and agency. She is based in Bangalore.

Her practice reflects on the visible and invisible labour of socially engaged art, the finite and infinite, and the tangible and intangible forms of making for social change. Through Blank Noise and I Never Ask For It, she brings attention to what she calls the “infrastructures of listening to survivors of violence”—building capacities and methodologies for listening.

With over two decades of practice, Patheja continues to explore questions that shape the relationships between civil society organisations, art institutions, artists, and social change. Committed to strengthening socially engaged art, Patheja develops frameworks that foreground listening, care, and collective action.