Samarth (he/him) is an artist, graphic narrativist and an arts educator, based in a village near Ranikhet, in Uttarakhand. He works with the pen name ‘roeqin’ and his practice is primarily centred around sequential art. His first graphic novel, ‘Suit’, was published by Yodapress in 2022. His stories are situated within the contexts he inhabits—The people, settings, and ecologies that surround him constitute the fabric through which his stories are woven. As an arts-educator, he has been associated with the Happy Children’s Library, where he has been conducting weekly Comics and Arts workshops. These workshops, titled ‘Comic Karname,’ are an effort to develop a contextual arts pedagogy using comics and sequential art, for which he received the Leela Mukherjee Artist-Educator Grant in 2024.
This residency was part of Sunaparanta's Artist-in-Residence Lab (AIR-L), and also as part of the Institut Français en Inde & Villa Swagatham.