Disha Sahu
Bio
Disha is an architect, urban planner, and artist whose creative practice explores spatial observation, travel, and visual storytelling. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Indraprastha University, Delhi, and a Master’s degree in Community and Regional Planning from The University of Texas at Austin. Her interdisciplinary training allows her to read space across scales—from architectural form and materiality to urban systems, public life, and quotidian experiences.
Alongside professional work in urban planning, my art practice has evolved through urban sketching, travelogues, and mixed-media photo collages that attempt to capture the Genius Loci—the spirit of place—as it emerges through movement, pause, and lived experiences.
Residency Practice
The core theme of this residency is drawing as a way of understanding place. Drawing is often perceived as a performative skill or aesthetic outcome. This project reframes drawing as a cognitive and experiential tool, one that allows people to observe, document, and interpret their surroundings more deeply.Through slow observation, travel journaling, and on-site sketching, the project explores how everyday environments are shaped by the interaction between built form, landscape, and human presence. The residency builds upon my existing artistic practice of observational drawing and mixed-media collage while expanding it into participatory and collaborative formats. It also aligns with Quest Learning Observatory’s emphasis of values on learning through curiosity, making, and reflection.
Ultimately, the project investigates how drawing can function as: a method of spatial inquiry, a tool for collective urban understanding, a medium for memory-making and storytelling. Through a body of mixed-media watercolor photomontages based on travel archives, Disha aims to engage the community through workshops, participatory mapping, and artist demonstrations.
The residency will use drawing as a way to explore how people perceive and remember environments, from urban cartographies of Kengeri to personal artifacts crafted from memory and sensory experiences such as food traditions.
The work strongly aligns with QLO’s emphasis on experiential learning, curiosity-driven inquiry, and assessing how a makerspace can enable multimedia, process-based art exploration. Through studio practice, collaborative workshops, and public demonstrations, the residency will explore how drawing activates observation, reflection, and brings out embodied learning. The anticipated outcome includes a new body of artworks, participatory mapping experiments, craft-based workshops, and a public exhibition at QLO.
