Portia Roy in Conversation: What Happens When an Artist Refuses to Look Away

In our recent session, where we had a conversation with artist Portia Roy around "Not an Extra", our ongoing virtual exhibition. What followed was one of the most genuine discussions we have had around art, politics, and the very personal act of making something out of frustration, love, and a refusal to stop paying attention.

Just honest, sometimes uncomfortable, always illuminating reflection on what it means to make work about the world as it actually is.

Where the Title Not an Extra Actually Came From

The conversation opened with a question Vikas Garg (Host) had been sitting with for a while. What made Roy choose the word extras for her series?

Her answer was immediate and quietly devastating.

"Extra people. People belonging to no country. On a boat. Being denied entry to different countries. Unwanted people. Extra things that you don't know what to do with."

She was talking about the millions of displaced people who appear briefly in the news before disappearing from public attention entirely. Migrants are described not by their names or their stories but by their country of origin and their destination. As Roy put it, "Migrants from Syria, migrants from this country. Who are they? Do they have a name? Do they have a family? Do they have feelings? These were the things that became secondary."

The title did not come from a theoretical framework. It came from watching the world reduce human beings to a problem to be managed.

Personal Is Political: How Roy's Practice Found Its Voice

One of the most revealing parts of the conversation was when Vikas asked Roy about the shift in her work from personal expression to something more politically engaged. Was there a single moment when that happened?

"It began as a personal expression very early," she said. "I have been painting every day since I was seven."

But the political awakening came gradually, through reading Angela Davis and Ambedkar. When Roy moved to Chennai, she encountered Ambedkarite philosophy for the first time, met scholars who introduced her to ideas about caste and intersectionality, and began to understand what she described as the politics of personal identity.

"I never realised the privilege I had because of my caste before I moved to Chennai. There, I became very much aware of how my life has been designed because of where I was born, in which family, in which geographical demography."

And then something else happened in Chennai. Her colour palette exploded. So using colours also becomes a form of resistance.

When Roy returned to Noida, she noticed the colours fading again. "There is a greyness over everything. And that was something that only charcoal could capture." It was a small detail that said something enormous about how deeply place shapes an artist's inner world.

Works Are Carved and Not Painted: Instinct Over Technique

Vikas asked Roy about the relationship between technique and instinct in her practice. Which one leads?

"Instinct dominates," she said without hesitation. "Technique is also there. But I invented the language based on my instinct."

She spoke about abandoning printmaking because the technique felt like it was winning over the feeling. And about how she eventually stopped taking prints from her engravings altogether, because once the engraving was done, the story was already told.

"That direct contact needs to be there. I need to feel the touch for my body to be more aligned with the image I am creating."

It is a practice rooted in the body. In sensation. In the belief that art made through physical contact with a surface carries something that more distanced methods cannot. As Roy put it, charcoal, clay and engraving, these are fundamental materials. "They humble us."

Do Bold Colours Soften the Blow or Intensify It?

Vikas raised something he had been curious about for a long time. Roy consistently uses vivid, almost jarring colour to depict subjects of extreme suffering. Is that a way of softening the emotional impact or does it intensify it?

Roy laughed gently. For her, the question had a very practical answer.

"When I was creating the Extras series, I had one red, one yellow, three primary colours and one black and one white. Whatever I created, I had to create within those colours."

But her use of red is always intentional. "Red emphasises. It brings tension. My use of red is intentional. My use of colour is never intentional. It is simple play."

She spoke about the joy of playing with materials. About how an artist who stops playing stops growing. "I have a lot of fun when I am working. Whatever tool you give me, I'll play a little."

Relevance of Art, irrespective of the times

When Vikas asked whether the works themselves ever feel unresolved to Roy, her answer was characteristically direct.

"Once I am done with the work, it is a liability for me. I have to pack it, keep it somewhere, and find a storage room for it. I have 10 new ideas in my head."

But the themes, those are a different matter entirely.

"Dehumanisation of migrant workers in the cities of our country is terrible. It is far, far away from being resolved. It is absolutely the same as when I created that work four years ago."

She spoke about what is happening in Noida right now. Migrant workers are facing an LPG crisis, unable to afford cooking gas, cooking together in community kitchens, and many are returning to their home states. The same conditions that drove works like Home is Where I Prefer to Die are not historical. They are ongoing.

And when Vikas asked whether the continued relevance of her work frustrates her or validates her practice, Roy did not hesitate.

"Both. Of course, it validates the stories I am telling. And of course it frustrates me."

The Exhibition Is Live: Come and See for Yourself

Not an Extra is a virtual exhibition of Portia Roy, presented by Artlune in collaboration with Grapa, an independent art gallery based in Spain. It is free, entirely virtual, and open to anyone in the world.

Explore "Not an Extra"

The exhibition runs until 15 May 2026. Alongside the works, you will find in-depth case studies, curatorial writing, and a series of upcoming events that force you to think deeper.

As Vikas said at the close of the session, "Each work talks about its own story. And each story is more than enough reason to visit.

Explore Not an Extra now at https://www.artlune.com/projects/not-an-extra