India, March 12 -- In contemporary Indian art, where visibility is often currency, Natasha Preenja spent years doing the opposite. She created a character: Princess Pea, a woman with a bulbous, oversized pea for a head and allowed that figure to circulate freely through galleries, performances, and images while the artist herself remained largely unseen.

Princess Pea wasn't merely a gimmick but a character that moved through different spaces and bodies, allowing it to become many women at once. Looking back, Natasha Preenja describes that shift (from solitary character to collective presence) as the moment the work truly changed shape. "In 2015, I began expanding the character to embody many women," she says. "The headgears were passed o...