Kirti Virmani
Degree: MA Print
University: MA Print | Royal College of Art
Graduation Year: 2024
New Blood Art Commentary
Kirti Virmani is a multi-disciplinary artist with a focus on photography, print making and ceramic forms. Her work aims to explore a dimension beyond the visual eye, a space of silence, rest and pause. Through meditative visuals and a new found focus on semiology, her work offers a breathing space to the viewer in an ever frenzied world. The thematic focus of her work extends to the duality in human existence. She is fascinated by our constant oscillation between opposites—finding balance amidst the push and pull, navigating the realms of comfort and discomfort. Her artistic journey is an attempt to unravel the complexities of this constant flux, seeking to understand what it means and what it takes to learn to float gracefully within this ebb and flow. Informed by feminist principles, her ongoing body of work serves as an expression of reclaiming agency and challenging societal norms.
Artist Statement
I am an Indian-born visual artist based between London and India, working across photography, printmaking, and sculptural forms.
My interdisciplinary practice centres around ideas of rebellion within and hope. What I observe through my photographic lens becomes the source material for what I construct and destruct through my print and sculpture practice to navigate, and reconfigure the existing gender narratives that we finds ourselves in.
My recent body of work is about an ongoing interest in observing architectural sites and archaeological remnants through a feminist lens to make visible the invisible perspectives that have been normalised. I use architectural forms as specific metaphors, reimagining them as visual and building thresholds to question how architecture mediates access, gaze, and power.
I am interested in unlayering the physical and emotional veils that have come to cloak feminine existence. Through my making process, I seek to unmake these layers, to unwrap and release essence, allowing it to surface and breathe. My practice reflects on the weight of the self and the weight we carry collectively, navigating the tensions between intimacy, inheritance, and shared histories.
I holds a Master’s in Print from the Royal College of Art and have exhibited my works in both the UK and India.
Group Exhibitions
(2025) The Graduate Art Show 2025, Vanner Gallery, Salisbury, England
(2025) The Muse Residency Winter Group Show, Muse Gallery, London
(2024) Residency Shortlist Show, Muse Gallery, Portobello Road, London
(2024) Inbound Carousel, Galleria Objets, London
(2024) ‘Small But Mighty’ by The Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, Bankside Gallery, London
(2024) Affordable Art Fair, London - Graduate 2024 Exhibit, Affordable Art Fair, London
(2024) Out Of Thin Air, Southwark Park Gallery, London
(2024) In Translation, The Handbag Factory, London
(2023) Portrait of Humanity, Belfast Exposed, Belfast
(2023) Portrait Of Humanity, State Art Gallery, Hyderabad, India
Competitions, Prizes & Awards
(2023) Single Image Winner - Portrait of Humanity Vol. 5 by British Journal of Photography
(2025) Muse Residency