Kalyani Tupkary

As a designer I like cross-pollinating ideas across disciplines. A gentle generalist, I am no expert. Instead I love inhabiting the in-between spaces and exploring the edges of all things unseen, unknown and dreamed in between. I design objects and interactions, that sometimes live in reality and other times only in imagination. But the process always starts by steeping in research and rooting in history to unravel the values knotted in our default worldview. I think through making, always with others, playing with the materiality to create artefacts or rather portals to alternate worlds. These artefacts then become tools for dreaming up new ways of seeing our world. Currently, I work as a Product Design Lead at Twitch. But my methods meander between product design and speculative design, often melding together in form of Config 2023. I received the Next Generation Foresight Practioners (NGFP) Innovative Methods Award in 2022. As a fellow, my research explores how an ordinary object like a calendar can unfold alternate histories and marginalized futures that otherwise remain in the unexplored nooks of our everyday world.

In ancient history, I studied Industrial Design from the National Institute of Design, India. Later I graduated with an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons School of Design, New York, where I studied on a President’s Scholarship. I love working with students, which I’ve done at NID and MIT (Pune), as a visiting faculty for speculative design workshops and courses.

EXHIBITIONS

Mozfest 2023
while (tech) do {art}, 2022
Material Conditions, 2022
Primer 2020
Story of Space, Goa, 2017
NH7 Weekender, 2017
UnBox Festival, New Delhi, 2014

EXHIBITIONS

AWARDS & FEATURES

TALKS & PRESENTATIONS

DETAILS