Pravah Khandekar is a composer, vocalist, and an artist from India, currently based in New York City. Mediating international relations, cinema, and human rights, he pursues experiments to complicate political, temporal, and aesthetic dimensions that write, alter, or damage the limits of contemporary culture and public life.

Pravah’s musical practice centers in the traditions of Dhrupad - his mother is his first Guru, further to which he received training from Ustad Rahim Fahimmuddin Dagar, in Dagar-vaani Dhrupad lineage. Pravah holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Sir JJ School of Arts, Bombay, India, and a Master’s in Design Studies (Ecologies) from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.

Straddling the edges of documentary and fiction, his master’s dissertation involved extensive ethnographic fieldwork (Documentary film and Photography) in Tangiers, Morocco, with illegally smuggled migrants, where I investigated the contemporary European migration crisis and political economy of citizenship in the Mediterranean region. The project culminated as a trans-media exhibition and performance with text, image, and sound, curated at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University. In addition, He is currently collaborating with FAST (Foundation for Achieving Seamless Territory), IOM-UN (International Organization of Migration) and the UN Peacebuilding Fund in Mauritania, focusing on climate, peace, and security, and developing spatial design strategies, scenarios, and policy recommendations for displaced population in M’Bera Camp on Mali-Mauritania border. Last year, He had collaborations with the United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs, New York, for a visual and sonic exhibition to address nuclear activism, emphasizing gender-based violence, and the role of art, design, and artificial intelligence in envisioning a sustainable and equitable future.

Before joining Harvard, Pravah was based on the Nepal-Tibet Border, where I conducted a mobile ethnographic fieldwork on the ancient Salt trade Route on the trans- Himalayan landscape which lead to an exhibition and photo-essay, investigating climate resilience and infrastructure on the borderlands, and its impact on the indigenous nomadic community.

He continues to think through, and with his roots in Hindustani musical practice and improvisation, contemporary jazz, and world traditions.

Get in touch

pravahkhandekar@gsd.harvard.edu