Amruta Patil | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 19 April 1979 (1979-04-19) (age 46) Pune, India |
| Occupation | Graphic novelist, painter, and writer |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Period | 2008 – present |
| Genre | Graphic novels |
| Subject | Mythology, ecology, and intersectional feminism |
Amruta Patil (born 19 April 1979) is an Indiangraphic novel author and painter.
Amruta Patil was raised in Goa, where her father served in the Indian Navy.[1][2] She has aBFA degree from Goa College of Art (1999), and Master of Fine Arts degree fromTufts University,School of the Museum of Fine Arts inBoston (2004).[3]
Amruta Patil worked as a copywriter at Enterprise Nexus (Mumbai) in 1999-2000.[2] She was the co-founder and editor of the quarterly magazine, 'Mindfields' (2007-2012).[4] She was awarded aTED Fellowship in 2009.[5]
Amruta Patil's debut graphic novel,Kari (2008), commissioned and published by VK Karthika atHarperCollins India, explored themes of sexuality, friendship, and death; and heralded Patil as India's first female graphic novelist.[6][7] A self proclaimed "oddball" who grew up in a small town without much exposure to comics culture, Patil has spoken about her autodidactic process and evolving style.[8]Kari has been the subject of various academic dissertations.[9][10]
Her two subsequent graphic novelsAdi Parva: Churning of the Ocean (2012) andSauptik: Blood and Flowers (2016)[11] form the Parva Duology which retells stories from theMahabharata from the viewpoint of the outlier narrators (sutradhar) Ganga andAshwatthama respectively. Speaking about these two novels, she talks about her decision to choose the two above-mentioned narrators because of their peripheral role in traditional retellings of the lore.[12] The importance of thesutradhar has been reiterated - as a "way of bringing the stories closer to the present."[13]
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Her work has been translated intoFrench andItalian.[14]
In 2009, Patil became the first Indian artist-in-residence at Maison des Auteurs inAngoulême, France, where she lived and worked for nearly a decade, participating in the city’s comics and visual arts community.[15]
Her fourth graphic novel -Aranyaka[16] - came about after conversations with her friend, the mythologistDevdutt Pattanaik.[17]Aranyaka was first published by Westland in 2019, and then by HarperCollins India in 2023.[18]
After a decade-long association with "comic book capital" Angoulême (France) and La Maison des Auteurs,[19] a juried residency for comic book auteurs, Patil relocated to India in 2019.
Amruta Patil had a solo show calledAltar[20][21] at the Serendipity Arts Festival 2019. She started painting grand-format acrylic tableaus in 2020.
She is the co-founder of Qomix, the world’s first non-fiction comics app.
Patil’s visual practice includes large-scale paintings and mixed media works. Her first solo exhibition,Altar, was presented at the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa in December 2019. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, she focused extensively on painting, which she has described as an important phase in the development of her artistic practice.[15]
Amruta Patil was a speaker at the ZeeJaipur Literature Festival in 2017.[22]
In 2018, she was a speaker and artist in residence at the School of Divinity, University of Chicago.[23]
Amruta Patil was awarded theMinistry of Women and Child Development'sNari Shakti Puraskar in March 2017 at the hands of the 13th President of India,Pranab Mukherjee.[29][30]
