June 9th, 2026
4:41 min read 1289 words
This work is an early experiment exploring how knowledge passes between generations through
song and oral history. At its centre is a folksong about a crow, something my grandmother sang
to me as a child in a language I don’t speak and never learned, yet somehow inherited parts of
anyway.
The song is still in me.
It is a visual poetry narrative of eight phrases and eight drawings, built through layering and
repetition, trying to hold something that was only ever meant to be passed on.
Aadya Naik is an illustrator, animator, dancer, and designer from Bangalore, India. Her practice lives at the intersection of archiving and anthropology, crafting narratives that uncover memory, emotion, and the textures of lived experience. She is interested in what is passed down, what gets forgotten, and what lives stubbornly in between. She makes work that tries to hold all of it.
drawing
experience
oral history
memory
ritual
linguistics
poetry
