Visual artist Divya Sharma Follow.Art Card

About me

Divya Sharma is a London based multi-disciplinary artist and a Royal College of Art alumni, originally from India. Rooted in her mother tongue Tamil, her practice weaves myth, story, and cultural memory into large-scale tapestry installations. As part of the diaspora in the UK, Divya is questioning, ascribing value and trying to understand where she stands in this hierarchy of social order, whether it is in the art canon or the larger society in general. Divya’s practise could be described as a process of sculpting with textiles, fusing salvaged or constructed materials and layering embroidery to bring to life imagined landscapes. For her, process is central—the repetitive actions of tufting, stitching, and beading become a portal for transcendence, as a means of understanding she is part of a larger ancestral and universal lineage.

Divya is inspired by the self-taught technique of folk artists that is imbued with the personal and thus feels much more relevant than the institutional or academic technique. The imperfect perfection in the work of folk artists is the crookedness, the disproportional, a puzzle that does not fit. It allows for imperfection and error, reintroducing the “jittery hand” and the critical rejection of artistic perfection and virtuosity. She often combines tufting with glass beads, exploring how their surfaces catch and refract light in ways that deepen the visual and emotional resonance of her textiles.

Divya holds an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art (2021) and a BA from Wimbledon College of Arts (2019). She has co-curated six exhibitions as a founding member of the Neulinge Collective and exhibited widely.She was awarded Arts Council England funding in 2023 and has presented public artworks through CroydonBID. She was awarded the Visual Artists Association International Scholarship Award in 2025. She is also the founder and host of the ARTiculate Podcast, which explores art and culture through conversation.