AT A GLANCE
Rohini Sen
Area of Practice: Contemporary Art Practices; Textile Arts; Craft Practices; Drawing;
OVERVIEW
Rohini Sen is an artist, educator, and researcher whose practice moves fluidly between contemporary art, pedagogy, drawing, printmaking, textiles, and material culture. She is currently Faculty at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, where she teaches across Contemporary Art Practices, Foundation Studies and other interdisciplinary programmes. Her teaching is grounded in the belief that making, observation, play, and intuition are powerful modes of inquiry, and that art education can cultivate both critical thinking and attentive ways of being in the world.
She holds an MA in Art Education from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), USA, where she specialised in Community Art Education and Printmaking. Her artist’s thesis, The Unvisited Repository: Intuition in Teaching and Learning, was acquired by the RISD Fleet Library Special Collections and later recognised as a benchmark in arts education research. Alongside her teaching, Rohini maintains an active studio practice, exhibiting nationally and internationally, with work held in public, private, and institutional collections.
Her recent work explores care, memory, inherited knowledge, and the poetic possibilities of everyday materials through drawing, embroidery, crochet, artist books, and sculpture. She is equally interested in how objects carry histories, emotions, and ways of knowing that often escape conventional archives.
Away from the classroom, Rohini is an enthusiastic collector and restorer of historic vehicles, as well as a collector of antique porcelain and toys. Rohini is a member of the Karnataka Vintage & Classic Car Club (KVCCC) & the Federation of Historic Vehicles of India (FHVI). These pursuits reflect the same curiosity that informs her artistic practice: a fascination with craftsmanship, forgotten narratives, and the quiet lives of objects across time. Whether teaching, making, or restoring, she is drawn to practices that honour patience, imagination, and the transformative potential of careful attention.
Education
Masters in Teaching + Learning in Art & Design Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, USA Bachelors of Visual Arts Karnataka Chitrakala Parishat, Bangalore, India.
Work Experience
Rohini Sen’s professional journey spans schools, community arts, higher education, and interdisciplinary creative practice. She began her career teaching at Mallya Aditi International School and Vidyashilp Academy in Bengaluru before working with Project Open Door at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she taught in public schools across Rhode Island. She has also recently collaborated with kindergarten students at First Steps School and design students to create a large-scale mural celebrating unity in diversity, fostering meaningful encounters with art through collaborative making and encouraging young learners to see schools as creative spaces. Rohini was formerly part of the Centre for Education, Research, Teaching and Design (CERTAD) at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, contributing to curriculum development, teacher education, and Foundation Studies. She subsequently served as Visiting Faculty at Srishti, Bangalore and Trivandrum, Kerala, and later returned as full time faculty at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology. Alongside her academic work, she has collaborated on set design for films and independently conceived and facilitated the workshop series Returning to the Crafts, which explores crochet, embroidery, and introspective journaling as creative, reflective, and community-building practices.
INTEREST AREAS
Pedagogy of Care; Gandhi Studies; Craft Revival; Craft Centric Education; Wellness and Art intersections; History of Medicine; the Medicalised Body; Body, Experience and Art.
CURRENT PRACTICE AT SRISHTI
Contemporary Art Practices
Foundation Studies Program
General Studies
Teaching Portfolio
Contextual Enquiry – Body and Context : Body as Landscape: Navigating Loss and Absence.
Art for Children
Small is Beautiful : Understanding the Miniature
General Studies: Large in Small, Small in Large: Situating the Miniature in the Politics of Space.
Creative/Professional Practise
Visual Art; Textile arts and crafts; Artist Books; Non-fiction writing.
