Editor’s Note: The following story contains mentions of sexual assault and harassment. To reach the National Sexual Assault Hotline, call 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or visit online.rainn.org.
At the core of Pyaari Azaadi’s diasporic artistic genius lies the belief that to do something fully and in an embodied way, one must immerse oneself in the storms of the heart, where our emotional and physical selves congeal as both metaphor and sacred koan. It is in that space — where even light is dimmed — that we live our truth, the elusive state that all people of conscience strive to hold.
In those storms, we encounter spiritual reckonings that challenge us to reflect and reassess. Within their tides, we learn to swim and, in time, to save those around us who are drowning. Looking at Azaadi’s art, one can see monuments to victories in battles yet to be waged and won.
I first encountered Pyaari in 2017, when she invited me to a studio visit early that year. Her invitation introduced me to her expansive practice, which felt as much like the work of a conductor or community organizer as that of a conventional visual artist. Her first message to me began, “Hi Hrag, hope this finds you in fighting spirit,” a phrase that immediately revealed her engaged, unapologetic approach to the world.
I remember my trip to her studio, then located in her home by Brooklyn’s Navy Yard, as an eye-opening experience that guided me through wormholes of perception and revealed layers of communities I thought I already knew. I left feeling renewed, writing to her afterward, “I felt inspired.”
A few months later, she curated a major exhibition, Lucid Dreams and Distant Visions: South Asian Art in the Diaspora, at New York City’s Asia Society. She also organized an associated conference at the Queens Museum, where she served as the founding director of Public Events and Projects from 2003 to 2006. The gathering built on an early exhibition of diasporic South Asian art she had curated. For this iteration she brought together a who’s who of the city’s and region’s South Asian art communities. To call the event joyous would be an understatement — it became a hothouse of ideas and connections, blooming before our eyes.
One particularly poignant moment featured a drag performance by Faluda Islam, the alter ego of Pakistani-Lebanese-Iranian artist Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who danced through the aisles and even accepted tips from attendees. The celebration, at times almost raucous, swept us away from the hushed tones of Manhattan museums and into the lively, obstreperous atmosphere of a community in the act of creation. The weekend event was as moving as Pyaari’s exhibition, demonstrating that her work — her craft, her art, her life — spans genres, spaces, and time. We felt connected not to a family into which we were born, but to one we cultivated, even if briefly. In that way, Pyaari’s practice is deeply queer, grounded in the knowledge that chosen families are often the strongest foundations. As she once said, “Every object is a conversation. Every exhibition, a gathering. My work is about pulling bodies and hearts together, forging a space against erasure.”
* * *
Our relationship as artist and critic deepened in a profoundly unexpected way as we faced darkness together.
On October 11, 2017, Pyaari messaged me about a major exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art spotlighting an artist she described as “her own personal Harvey Weinstein.” Soon after, following several Facebook posts sharing her story, she called into the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Using only her first name, she managed to hold back a torrent of emotions to explain that the celebrated artist was her personal tormentor. She recounted how, at 25, she was invited by the then-53-year-old artist to India for two weeks, during which she was abused by him in a hotel room. Listening to the conversation, you can recognize that this was an act of public courage, even more so in a pervasive rape culture wherein victims too often face blame or dismissal, especially when the accused abuser is powerful and male. She explained that the abusive dynamic continued in the form of messages and did not end until his death.
The exhibition, along with the widely reported Harvey Weinstein case, triggered her flashbacks, which she described in the radio segment. The announcer added a legal disclaimer, noting that they did not know Pyaari and the accusation was about someone already deceased — deploying all the usual tools that shield institutions and individuals from the responsibility of bearing witness.
It was bravery on her part, but not justice. “To be able to come on the radio and say it is incredibly helpful … because it is a very powerful man and he’s dead and there’s a lot of money behind his career and there’s going to be nothing I can do about it. But I can make it public, who he is, so that they know they are consuming a predator’s work as they consume it,” she said to the host. Lehrer added another disclaimer before saying, “… if it helps that you got it out, I’m glad.” They exchanged formalities and she signed off, but she was not finished.
We met a short while later, because she knew I was also a survivor of rape and childhood abuse — something I’d revealed on social media. She was looking for someone who might understand, and who also belonged to her communities.
Finding trust in the world is never easy. I knew going into that meeting, it could trigger difficult memories or lead to conflict, as survivors sometimes lash out when faced with the abyss. I reminded myself beforehand that, in such moments, we often hurt those around us first and most. I thought I was ready; we met at a Brooklyn breakfast spot to talk.
When we sat down, she did something unexpected: she asked me to share my own stories of abuse. It felt strange at first, but necessary. It revealed how Pyaari never shied away from power, even when wrestling with her own, or with our power dynamic as art journalist and artist. By inviting my vulnerability, she freed me, if only momentarily. I shared not about my childhood, but about an incident as an adult involving an artist. She watched and listened, her gaze searching for honesty. She did not judge but met my story with understanding, touching me on a deeply emotional level. In that moment, we recognized what truth was in each other.
We tend to build layers up around our wounds, hiding where the skin could not protect us. That morning, in that restaurant, Pyaari and I changed the bandages on our pain together. She turned her private suffering into a subject we could discuss, mourn, and even examine. She didn’t create a hierarchy of suffering, but rather held space for me as I did for her, forging a bond that only survivors know. That experience transformed my understanding of her work. Pyaari is part of a new generation of artists who refuse to see art objects as the core of their practice. In that meeting, I felt a new horizon opening — a new way of being an artist, one she was helping to bring into being.
Our intimacy as artist and journalist was unusually deep, but we were not yet friends — just colleagues. It was a difficult interaction, but such dynamics were familiar to me from healing spaces. Relationships between artists and those who write about them can shift in ways dictated by the art and by the demands of bearing witness, which is central to my own work and art practice.
We looked for reasons to distrust and instead found the opposite. As a journalist, the experience was overwhelming. As an art critic, I became confused as to where the contours of the story and artwork existed. But I did not look away; it felt too important. Pyaari kept the tension between us taut, and I realized then that to tell this story another way would have been fruitless.
A few days after that meeting, as I researched the story and considered what could be reported, she found and sent me her diary notes from the incident. She was protective about what she shared, and I asked her what she planned to do next. As a survivor, I knew reminding her of her agency might help. As a journalist, this was the natural question, and she seemed to appreciate the prompt. Eventually, she revealed that she would stage a performance in front of the museum’s Breuer outpost on the Upper East Side, determined to break the silence around the abuse. What is art, if not sometimes a battle of competing narratives? Who tells a story — and when? What do we omit, and why?
Healing is a circuitous route, picking up the parts we can carry and leaving others for the future, for when we are ready.
On Sunday, December 3, 2017, I found myself sitting in a taxi beside filmmaker Mary Louise Schumacher, who was shadowing me for a documentary about art critics. As we rode over the Queensborough bridge, she asked what it was like to cover such stories as a survivor myself. I remember feeling a little numb, thinking about my own healing journey, about Pyaari’s story, and about the brief period in which the world seemed willing to listen to survivors during the #MeToo movement.
When I arrived on Madison Avenue, I saw the artist, her husband, and their allies lined up outside the museum. As I later reported, they held red signs made by artist Swati Khurana, emblazoned with the words “ME TOO” in block letters, and placed red gags — made by Fariba Alam and Pyaari — over their mouths. One sign stood out, the one held by Pyaari. It read: “I SURVIVED … RAGHUBIR SINGH #MeToo!”
The group caused some confusion among passersby — tourists and locals alike — since the artist’s name was not widely known, but the message was unambiguous. Pyaari carefully described the 90-minute action as a performance, not a protest, even if the aesthetics of the latter figured into the work.
In my reporting, I noted: “Everyone I talked to who encountered the performance was uncertain as to how the museum should respond to the allegations, but they seemed thankful that the performance was taking place.” A prominent Metropolitan Museum of Art employee told the artist in an email, “The Met fully supports the right to free expression and therefore we wish to assure you that we will not try to stop you.” And they did not.
After the performance — which included some participants briefly going inside the building, and a moving song by Imani Uzuri — Pyaari hugged each participant in turn, offering a warmth that seemed to counteract the cold violence she had endured. She told me, “He used his art to trap me, so I can use my art to talk about my experience with him.”
Did she bring me into her work? In her studio was I initiated into her circles that seem to expand and shift, like borders, but more porous, until the artwork becomes the glue that binds us in the moment?
Being someone who has identified as a man for most of my life, I’m acutely aware of my male privilege in her spaces and work, since she does not create them for men. This quality is fundamental to the aesthetics of her art. It’s also hard to articulate, because so much of being a man in society involves refusing to explain things to others — expecting them to already know what society has taught you to believe you deserve.
As the years passed, my relationship with Pyaari, once strictly professional, grew more personal. It is rare to find people who live so fiercely in public — managing their wounds while always holding space for the communal aspects that make the recovery more meaningful.
Years later, I would visit her studio more frequently, especially during the pandemic, as we found ourselves messaging each other more routinely. By then, she was working in a spacious warehouse in East Williamsburg. It became a place where we listened, talked, and shared — sometimes while she made art, other times simply sharing a joint or laughter. It was a difficult period for both of us, for different reasons, but it became obvious that our personal turmoils were deeply connected to the chaotic violence we were also witnessing in the larger world. The pandemic blurred the boundary between personal and public pain, a reality impossible to ignore. At one point, a terrible argument strained our relationship. It took months to recover — not because we didn’t love each other, which we found we did after six years, but because we had shown one another our deepest, darkest parts.
When we look into the abyss, do we not scream?
Azaadi’s art defies containment. Her solo show, Talkin’ Bout a Revolution, at Pen & Brush in New York City turns the gallery into a living ritual: each object, each photograph, each tapestry is charged with the collective energy of shared stories, both ancestral and contemporary. Portraits of leaders and lovers — writers, mothers, friends — anchor the exhibition in the power of care work, solidarity, and intergenerational wisdom. The mythologies of South Asian goddess figures collide with living queer and feminist resistance, saturated in color, pleasure, and longing.
On the lower level of the gallery, Pyaari mounted the video of her Met Breuer performance beside the bathroom. If you watch closely, you can see me darting around on the sidewalk, documenting the group as they stood, mostly silent. In front of the screen sits a sculpture of her abuser, depicted as a feckless figure on a mattress, his large testicles and hairy belly exposed like mounds in the countryside. In that small work, Pyaari transformed the monster into landscape — a marginalia commentary on her performance. Here, the man becomes a thing, his eyes closed, unable to speak. Smuggled into her imaginary, like a hostage, he is exposed for all to judge.
It feels less intimate than factual, like a courtroom reenactment: her written words become physical, pulled from memory and rendered like a diorama. In that act of creation, somewhere between protest and prayer, Pyaari Azaadi forges art as radical embrace. It calls us to bear the weight of survivorship and to find, beneath its burdens, the shimmering possibility of new allies. In her practice, pleasure is weaponized, mourning is communal, and every object becomes an invitation to destroy the patriarchy that tears us apart.
Talkin’ Bout a Revolution is a solo exhibition and forthcoming publication examining the enduring relationship between art and advocacy in the practice of artist Pyaari Azaadi. The exhibition, extended through February 14, 2026, remains on view at Pen + Brush, presenting a comprehensive selection of works that reflect Azaadi’s sustained commitment to cultural, political, and feminist discourse.
This article will be included in a catalogue featuring newly commissioned essays from leading scholars, curators, and advocates within the art, social justice, and South Asian communities.
