Varsha Panikar is a trans-nonbinary interdisciplinary artist of Malayali heritage, currently based between Mumbai and Delhi. Their practice moves across film, poetry, graphic narrative, performance, zines, digital media, games and web-based experiments. Varsha works at the intersection of queer and trans intimacies, memory, kinship, folklore, and speculative futures, drawing from lived experience, visual ethnography, oral narratives and community-based research. 

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They are the co-founder of Star Hopper Studio, a trans-led creative studio and film production company  committed to brown, queer and women-led storytelling. In 2024, they founded Riot Ink Press, a self-publishing imprint dedicated to experimental writing, zines, graphic novellas and queer publishing practices. They also curate the Underground Film Observatory, a platform for experimental moving image work viewed through a brown, trans-feminist lens, and write Queerly in Flux, a personal blog exploring identity, desire, pop culture and cinematic language.

 

Across narrative, documentary, experimental and branded formats, Varsha has developed a body of work that is poetic, political, and rooted in queer and trans world-making. Their short film Bodies of Desire premiered on Nowness Asia, was selected for BFI Flare and the British Council’s #FiveFilmsForFreedom, and screened at over 60+ festivals globally, including Outfest LA and Berlin Commercials. It won Best International Short at the RIO LGBTQIA+ Film Festival and was included in the Otherness Archive.

 

Their 2024 campaign Words of Pride for Disney+ Star received widespread acclaim, winning a Grand Prix, three Golds, and a Bronze at The Drum Awards; the prestigious Purple Elephant (Zee Equality Award) at the Kyoorius Creative Awards; a Merit at One Show 2024; Silver and Bronze at the Spikes Asia Awards 2024; and Gold, Merit, and Bronze at the One Asia Creative Awards 2024. In the same year, GQ India named Varsha one of five young LGBTQIA+ change-makers to watch.

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Recent work includes their spoken word film After So Long, which premiered on Nowness Asia and screened at the Zebra Poetry Film Festival and Balkan Can Kino. Their film False Promises, adapted from their poem, received a Special Mention at the Dada Saheb Phalke Film Festival. In 2025, their narrative screenplay Operation: Gulzaar received the Runner-Up Award for the Kashish QDrishti Film Grant. Varsha has created work with platforms such as Disney Plus Star, Universal Music, UN Women, Google and Snapchat, with coverage in Nowness, Girls In Film, Directors Notes, GQ India, Rolling Stone India, The Hindu, The Telegraph and other international publications.

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Their interdisciplinary practice includes Ara Chronicles, a queer children’s graphic novel that reimagines South Indian folklore, fantasy and monster lore beyond Brahmanical cis-het frames. The project received the Chain Unchained Grant from Goethe-Institut and BeFantastic to develop an NFT-based immersive extension, and was showcased at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival 2024. They also created Archive of Imagined Kinships, a participatory web-based ritual where anonymous memories form a shifting field of connection and imagined kinship. As a BeFantastic C³ Fellow, Varsha continues to explore storytelling through NFTs, AR, mini-games and other hybrid forms.

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Varsha’s literary and mixed media work have been exhibited at Underground Zine Fest (Mumbai 2024), Opn Art House (Max Müller Bhavan, New Delhi), 47A Design Gallery (Mumbai) and Queer Futures Archives at Parramatta Riverside Theater (Sydney). Their publications have been collected by Zine Club Chicago, the State University of New York’s Sojourner Truth Library, Queer Zine Library UK and Grrrl Zine Fair, with additional work appearing in The Lipstick Politico, Munich Zine, Brown Girl Magazine, Nerve Zine, The Rights Collective, One Future Collective and more. Their horror graphic novella It Waits was praised by Readers’ Favorite for its vivid imagery and creeping dread, and their zine Conundrums on the Brink of Perception was described as “a mirror to our own contradictions and hypocrisies.”

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Rooted in queer feminist and decolonial approaches, Varsha’s work moves between rage and tenderness, between longing and refusal. Their process is research-driven, collaborative and guided by radical care, authorship and the politics of representation. They are drawn to narratives that hold complexity, resist erasure and imagine expansive futures shaped by queer kinship, collective memory and everyday acts of survival and joy.

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Varsha occasionally lends their voice to films and brands, performs spoken word, experiments with analogue image-making and indulges in their love for all things horror.

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For collaborations and inquiries, contact: varshapanikar@gmail.com.

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