Ruchita Madhok

Ruchita Madhok is a Mumbai-based artist and designer whose work explores light through historical photographic processes like cyanotypes. Drawing on modernist design, poetry, and natural history, she captures ephemeral moments shaped by sunlight, surface, and material.
From: Mumbai, India
Shows: Cyanotypes

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Ruchita Madhok is an Indian artist and designer living in Mumbai, India. She explores photography as a means of recording light, not just as a form of image-making, but also as a way of capturing the impression of light as it travels through the world interacting with surface, material, texture and shape. Through the practice of historical photographic techniques, she traces the evidence of these journeys with lens-based and camera-less methods, deploying the alchemy of earth, air, sunlight and water to speak to the universal sensations of awe and wonder.

Working primarily with the mediums of cyanotypes and anthotypes, colour forms a strong element in Ruchita’s work, especially the colour blue. She applies the emotional, cultural and historic associations of blue-ness to expressions of sea, sky and water, using sunlight as a catalyst in the conception and execution of works.

She is deeply influenced by modernist design. Her experience in graphic design and scenography juxtaposes with a love of poetry, science fiction, astronomy and natural history.

Ruchita Madhok received her M.A. in Scenography from Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design, University of the Arts, London and a B.Des. in Communication Design from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. She has been a practising artist since 2021.

In 2024 Ruchita was invited to participate in the International Print Exchange India. She has exhibited works at Kamalnayan Bajaj Gallery, Mumbai (2025), Apre Art House, Mumbai (2023), ‘Everyone is Showing’, Fluxus Chapel, Mumbai (2022) and cyanotype exhibitions held in Chennai, India by Chennai Photo Biennale in 2023 and 2022. Her work has also been featured in newspapers such as Midday Mumbai and in numerous online exhibitions for alternative photographic practices. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Spacehouse Artist Residency programme in Satoli, Uttarakhand, India (2024). She has previously been awarded the Arthink Southasia Fellowship (2013), the UnBox Fellowship (2012) and the Inteatro Residency in Polverigi, Italy (2010).

She conducts workshops in the cyanotype printing process. She is the Director of design studio Kahani, an award-winning communication and design practice.

“At a time when it is easier than ever to take a photograph, alternative processes offer an interpretive and creative path to image-making. I find that the processes are precise but also intuitive, and the play between these two aspects is an exciting challenge for me.”

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