Shaurya Kumar is a contemporary artist whose work engages deeply with themes of memory, cultural loss, and the transformation of sacred objects and practices. Born in Delhi, India, Kumar began his artistic training in painting and printmaking at the College of Art in Delhi, where he developed an early interest in traditional techniques and material culture. This foundation eventually led him to the United States, where he earned his MFA in Studio Art from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 2007. His move marked a pivotal shift in his practice—expanding beyond conventional forms into the realms of digital media, installation, and interdisciplinary research.

Kumar’s artistic investigations center on the shifting meanings of cultural and religious artifacts in an era of digitization, displacement, and commodification. His works—often constructed from print, sculpture, drawing, and hybrid media—explore how objects once regarded as sacred are transformed through museumification, digital replication, or physical destruction. By engaging with the fragility of history and the politics of preservation, his practice asks urgent questions about the erasure and reinterpretation of cultural narratives.

Throughout his career, Kumar has been involved in a number of significant research and documentation projects. These include The Paintings of India, a series of 26 documentary films; Handmade in India, a comprehensive documentation of Indian craft traditions; and the digital restoration of sixth-century Buddhist murals from the Ajanta caves—projects that underscore his enduring commitment to the preservation and critical reinterpretation of traditional knowledge systems.

His work has been exhibited internationally in museums, galleries, and cultural institutions across India, the United States, and countries including China, South Korea, Thailand, Italy, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Poland, Bulgaria, Norway, France, Australia, and Finland. Some notable venues include the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai, the Queens Museum in New York, the Seoul Museum of Art, Sundaram Tagore Gallery in New York, the South Asia Institute in Chicago, Gallery Threshold in New Delhi, Lakeeren Contemporary in Mumbai, Guanlan Printmaking Base in China, and international art fairs in Delhi, Mumbai, Abu Dhabi, Dubai,Honk Kong, Poland, and Singapore.

Kumar currently lives and works in Chicago, where he is Professor of Printmedia at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently serving as Chair of Faculty.

One of his recent major exhibitions, Living Without the Gods (2025, South Asia Institute, Chicago), brought together a body of work that reflected on iconoclasm and the afterlife of sacred artifacts. Through installations and mixed-media pieces, Kumar explored how religious and cultural objects acquire new meanings—or lose their original significance—when removed from their spiritual contexts and placed into secular, often Western, collections. These works offer a meditation on absence, fragmentation, and the violence embedded in cultural displacement.