Poorvi Garag is a social designer, educator and researcher working at the intersection of material culture, social design, decolonial design practice and community-centered design. She is based between Amsterdam and India.
Her work lies at the intertwining of art, design and academic research. As an artist and designer, her work manifests as workshops or designed objects, text and images in exhibitions and as a researcher her work is found as workshops, academic papers and conferences presentations.
Her work begins across archives, craft communities, and field sites, and concludes in diverse creative formats informed by the fields of sociology, anthropology, decolonial studies, developmental studies and futurology. Through archival research, critical fabulation, ethnographic fieldwork, and co-design, she investigates how material culture across eco-socio-political complexities carry layered histories and narrate complex present realities.
She is co-founder of studio samayam, an Amsterdam–India design research studio focused on cultural production and decolonial discourse. The studio bridges the Netherlands and India through exhibitions, workshops, and collaborative projects with a focus on craft communities, contested international heritage, material culture and product design.
She holds a Master's in Social Design from Design Academy Eindhoven and a Bachelor's in Industrial Design from Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore.