Aarti Pillai
About
Aarti Pillai (b. 2000, Singapore) is an artist and legal theorist working across sculptural installation, sound, poetry, and new media. Her practice moves through memory, myth, and material trace. Drawn from childhood memories of braiding grass, weaving fallen leaves, tracing patterns in sand, and playing amidst seafoam, her work gathers salt, bone, metal, and driftwood into assemblages that meditate on the porous dialectics between body and terrain, life and afterlife, origin and undoing. The sea—intimate, mnemonic, and insurgent—appears throughout her work as both subject and methodology. It is a living archive, a site of wonder and reciprocal care.
In salt skin~deer root (2025), developed for her graduate show during a residency at Cycladic Arts in Paros, Aarti assembled a sculptural and VR installation from foraged deer, fox, nāga and cuttlefish bones, seashells, driftwood, and sea salt. These materials were dived for, buried, charred, and crystallised with salt— materialising as architectures that unsettle the ontology of anatomy. Spinal forms thread through shells to evoke the creature-body as both relic and rite: salt skin, ash, sediment, future. The work stages the thresholds of creaturehood and regeneration in a world shaped by ecological rupture.
pulau minah~linah (2024) draws on the legend of the Sister Islands, where two sisters transform into land to escape patriarchal violence. Through an animation of suspended hyoid and hip bones interlaced with oceanic forms, the work renders their metamorphosis from girlhood into island-body.
Her legal research explores oceanic governance and affective jurisprudence, examining how water-based legal epistemologies—such as Indigenous maritime law and island sovereignty—can shape transdisciplinary approaches to environmental justice and legal aesthetics. She investigates how law encodes emotion, memory, and political visibility, positioning her studio practice in dialogue with legal-ecological thought.
She has exhibited in London, Berlin, Athens, Paros, Budapest, Prague, Leiden, and Singapore. She holds a Bachelor of Laws (Honours) and a Bachelor of Arts in Art Practice (Honours) from the National University of Singapore and Yale-NUS College.
Aarti is based between London and Singapore.
⊹₊⟡⋆𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓇼𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼⋆.⊹₊⟡⋆
website: www.aarti.studio
instagram: @aarti_paartiii
contact: contact@aarti.studio / 10044318@network.rca.ac.uk
Content Warning
The content on this website may contain themes and materials that some users find distressing or offensive. Further, the content on this website may not be suitable for individuals under the age of 18. User discretion is advised.
Any views and opinions expressed in this student profile represent the views and opinions of the student and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the Royal College of Art or its employees or affiliates. The appearance of any views or opinions on this page do not constitute endorsement of those views by the Royal College of Art. This student profile has been made available for informational purposes only. The Royal College of Art does not make any representations or warranties with regard to the accuracy of any information provided in this student profile, nor does it warrant the performance, effectiveness or applicability of any listed or linked sites. The Royal College of Art is not responsible for the content submitted by any user, or for the defamatory, offensive or illegal conduct of any user. If you wish to report any errors or inappropriate material that may cause offence, please email feedback@rca.ac.uk