Ruchika Nambiar
Ruchika Nambiar is a book artist, designer, and writer who creates experimental, interactive books and stories. While her methods are interdisciplinary, she treats the book as her container, using it to combine her various practices of image-making, miniature art, writing, research, and graphic design. Her books play with the relationship between content, form, and interaction, finding new ways to combine meaning, methods, and materials to create highly experimental narrative experiences. She is a RISD alum with an MA in Global Arts and Cultures (2023).
Formally trained as a graphic designer, Ruchika completed her undergraduate studies at Srishti Institute of Art, Design & Technology in India, with a major in Visual Communication Design (2014). Her book projects take on visually rich multimedia forms and are often produced as single/limited-edition pieces, such as Home vs Home (2023) or Record Withheld (2025), copies of which have been acquired by The Clark Art Institute and Bainbridge Island Museum of Art for their special collections. Her interactive artist book Memes for the Soul (2024) was supported by RISD’s SPUR Fund. Her 2D/3D graphic memoir Notes to Self (2026) was awarded the RISCA Make Art Grant.
She is the creator of The Dollhouse Project (2017-present), an interactive miniature storyverse that has been featured in Architectural Digest, Marg Magazine, India Today, and other publications. She works on experimental art commissions, with brand collaborations like Samsung and limited-edition books produced for clients such as the city of Providence. She does talks and speaking engagements—such as at TEDxRISD and MAD Museum NYC—and also runs a mentorship program, The Creative Finishing School.
As a researcher, Ruchika writes on themes of cultural philosophy and media studies. Her writing has previously been published in the Journal of Contemporary Thought. Her interests lie in studying media and its relationship to knowledge production and the formation of our conceptual frameworks, with a special focus on mainstream media, new media, and pop culture. She frequently finds ways to express these themes through creative, multimedia formats. Her thesis at RISD, Memes for the Soul (2024), was produced as an interactive artist book.