Tanvi Ranjan (b. 1995, India) is a multimedia artist whose works include textile, sculpture, moving image, and sound. Her practice methodically explores language structures and communication between humans and machines by elaborating on techniques of textile making, more often knitting. She uses knitting techniques like loop-based structure of knits, and other tools and machinery as a metaphor to inform the feedback loop mechanism as she investigates and reflects upon her inquiries. She uses coded languages like ASCII binary codes, morse codes and QR codes to explore how language oscillates between the said and unsaid, seen and unseen.

The artist reflects on her own experience of working in knitting factories in India to address discourses around industrialization which remains entangled within India’s colonized history. In her recent works, she juxtaposes the sociopolitical nature of language with the binary logic in computers and analyses it with a decolonial lens. The artist often evidences cyberfeminist takes on language by foregrounding coded information, visual and sonic patterns in her works, thus stressing on the labour of handling secrecy systems and investigating what the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein calls the “private language”. Through a method of conscious concealment, the artist illuminates the slow, deliberate art of textile-making in an age where information is both hidden and laid bare.

Tanvi Ranjan completed her Bachelor of Design in Knitwear Design at National Institute of Fashion Technology, India (2017) and Master of Fine Arts at Kingston School of Art, London (2023). A new body of works by the artist were recently displayed in solo exhibitions Seek.&.Hide, curated by Nayanika Singh, at Swan Public House, London (2023); Industrial Evolution at Fuse Box, London (2023). Other group shows include Sustainable Futures by Dhaga at Fuse Box, London (2023); Metamorphosis at Stanley Picker Gallery (2023); Fibres at AIR Gallery, Manchester (2023); Global Voices Local Places at Not My Beautiful House, London (2022); Visibility of the Invisible at Stanley Picker Gallery, London (2022).

The aritst was awarded grant and mentorship under the Creative Talent Programme in 2022 by Creative Youth. Now she is one of their artist ambassadors under the Young Creatives scheme. She also received Stanley Picker Scholarship in 2022 for a course in Salzburg Summer Academy.