Anoushka Agarwal

Anoushka Agarwal is an animator and communication designer from Kanpur, India. She is a storyteller, invested in themes around feminism, body, mind and equity.

Anoushka did her undergraduate degree in Communication Design at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and was awarded the Entry Scholarship (Academic) throughout her studies. She also studied at Oxford University during this period and did her Student Exchange Programme at Copenhagen School of Design and Technology (KEA). She had an internship at Kurikindi Center, South Korea, and worked as a communication designer at Ladyfingers. Co, India, before pursuing animation at the Royal College of Art.  She has also worked as an animator on Bussing Out, an immersive, multimedia installation produced by Theatre in the Mill.

Anoushka’s sensitivity and curiosity have been amplified by her educational, work and personal experiences around the globe. With animation, she found a medium to express these stories.

There is a darkness one can convey in animation, which provides the guise of being a child’s medium. One can portray the deepest emotions where verbal expression falls short. The itch that we all feel internally can be metaphorically depicted in animation, which is what I approach in my creative practice. 

I am an observer interested in the small interactions of our everyday existence. My work is often self-reflexive, capturing my experiences or of patterns of behaviours that I have noticed in those around me. Creating an animation is a cathartic exploration of my inner self and allows me a space to express my vulnerability. 

Materiality, tactility and textures are central to my work and inform every decision of my research, as I want to create a visceral journey for the viewer, to bridge the gap between the screen and the physical. I experiment with various techniques such as watercolour on paper, risograph printing, puppet stop motion, and paint on glass, alongside digital 2D animation. I picked up the handicraft of crochet during Covid as a way to deal with the anxiety of being trapped indoors, and this opened up a new territory of research for me as I started questioning the roles of women within households and what womanhood entails. It started from a place of anger but has transformed into a constructive pathway for me to analyse non-dominant groups within society. My works aim to create awareness and visibility of underrepresented narratives.