About

We are delighted to share that Payal Arya has been nominated and selected by the PAIR 2026 jury including Atul Bhalla (Artist, Professor of Visual Art, Shiv Nadar University), Veerangana Solanki (Independent Curator and Writer), Manjiri Dube (Associate Director, KHOJ International Artists' Association), and Anindo Sen (Independent Arts Writer) alongside Institut Francais Paris, for the residency at Cité internationale des arts, in partnership with Institut Francais Paris, and the French Institute in India.

Payal’s practice emerges from a desire to find meaning within her autoimmune condition rather than seeking a cure. She is interested in understanding the moment of onset- the trigger, the misrecognition, and the body’s decision to turn against itself. She finds resonances in ecological frameworks: a tree deprived of nourishment from mycelium networks may begin consuming its own bark, just as some of the earliest microorganisms perished from the oxygen they themselves produced. Through such parallels, she examines complex relationships between self-preservation, adaptation and self-destruction.

During her residency, Payal aims to explore imaging techniques such as confocal microscopy to study the movement and behavior of cells within autoimmune processes while engaging with the body’s modalities of resistance, tolerance, and endurance of diseases.

Image: Payal Arya, Tracing memory, kinetic light installation, 2023.