Harshit Agrawal

Harshit is an Indian artist working with emerging technologies, primarily artificial intelligence. His practice centres on the poetics of technology: how our contemporary reality is significantly shaped by these technologies, seen through a lens of both criticality and creative possibility. He is a graduate of the MIT Media Lab (USA) and IIT Guwahati.

His works are part of major international collections, both institutional and private. He was Google Arts and Culture’s first artist in residence in India, and has held other residencies at Diriyah Art Futures (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), the Museum of Tomorrow (Brazil), Art Center Nabi (Korea) and X-Lab (Japan). He has authored several publications and patents about his work at the intersection of technology and creative expression.

Harshit has been working in the field of AI and creative expression for over a decade. He held India’s first solo exhibition of AI art at the Emami Art Gallery in Kolkata in September 2021. In 2018 he was the only Indian artist among seven international AI art pioneers in the first global exhibition of AI art in a contemporary gallery, at Nature Morte Gallery. His work has been nominated three times for the Lumen Prize, the leading prize for art and technology, placing among the top 3% of works worldwide. In 2023 he received the Sanatan Sangeet Puraskar for Digital Art, one of India’s top arts awards, alongside luminaries in music, literature and dance; it was the only year the Digital Arts category was included, to recognise his work. His work is part of the permanent exhibition at the HNF museum in Germany, the largest computer museum in the world.

He has exhibited at premier museums, galleries and festivals around the world, including Ars Electronica Festival (Austria), Asia Culture Center (Gwangju, Korea), Tate Modern (UK), Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA, India), Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC, India), Alt-AI at the School for Poetic Computation (USA), Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti di Torino (Italy), Artissima (Italy) and India Art Fair. He curated India’s first AI NFT exhibition, Intertwined Intelligences, with six global AI artists (including himself) on the Terrain.art platform.

He has given talks on AI and art internationally, including TEDx, INK Talks, the Designup conference and the G20 Cultural Tracker, and has led workshops on AI and creativity at institutions such as the National Institute of Design, the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, and the Industrial Design Centre at IIT Bombay.

His work has been covered extensively by international media, including the BBC, the New York Times, Artnet and STIR World.