Mrinalini is an artist, designer, researcher and archivist from Kotgarh, Himachal Pradesh currently exploring participatory and immersive experiences as a decolonizing act of remembering our pasts and imagining our futures. She is the co-founder of Himalayan Folk Collective where their two fold vision is to both archive the tangible and intangible heritage of their land as well as facilitate fertile ground for new contemporary folk cultures, ways of being and public imaginaries to emerge and evolve. In the face of homogenization, erasure and exploitation through the processes of colonization and contemporary nation state politics, there is urgency to preserve the local cosmologies, ecologies and ways of being in the region. Thus, through a collaborative, open source and experimental ethos, the collective hopes to initiate meaningful discourse and artistic practices first in Himachal Pradesh and then in the Himalayan Region. For a living culture is one that keeps getting reclaimed, remixed, re-imagined and co-created.
Mrinalini completed her B.Des in Film and Visual Design from the National Institute of Design where, as a Ford Foundation Fellow, she explored Kotgarh’s folklore and alternative histories. One result of this was the short fiction film, Bali. Currently, she is pursuing her M.Sc in Art, Culture and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her work can be found at mrinalini.xyz.