Zeenat Kulavoor is a multidisciplinary artist and designer based in Mumbai, India. Her practice spans typography, book design, printmaking, and spatial interventions — with a deep interest in tactility, material play, and the emotional weight of language and form.
In her personal work, Zeenat explores multilingual Indian scripts, with a particular fascination for Urdu lettering and calligraphy. Combining wit, social observation, and print experimentation, she uses type as a tool to recontextualise and reinsert script into the urban environment — reviving its presence in both public and private spaces. She regularly collaborates on zine and publication projects that examine how design intersects with language, memory, and identity.
Her work has been presented in group exhibitions including The Urdu Exhibit by Design Fabric, India (2017); WORD at Kult Gallery, Singapore (2018); Urdu Culture Now by Godrej India Culture Lab, India (2018); POP Lune by Lune, India (2024); and Protect Your Spirit by NorBlack NorWhite, India (2024). She co-curated Everyday India (2023), a research-based illustrated documentation of multiplicity and multiculturalism in the Indian graphic art and design landscape. She is also featured in Fire In The Belly, a posterzine by India Art Fair.
She is also the Design Director of Bombay Duck Designs, a boutique design studio that has been actively shaping visual culture for over a decade. At the studio, Zeenat leads projects across branding, publication design, murals, packaging, stage design, installations, and digital platforms for a wide spectrum of clients — from multinational companies and cultural institutions to independent artists and musicians. She has been an integral part of the conceptualisation, design, and production of a long-running series of self-published books and zines that celebrate and archive the nuances of everyday Indian visual culture.
For inquiries: ilm.zeenatkulavoor@gmail.com
PRESS :
https://ecruonline.com/blog/2021/04/14/love-shells-with-zeenat/
https://www.livemint.com/mint-lounge/features/for-the-love-of-urdu-1549088259995.html
https://www.pressreader.com/india/mid-day/20170914/282196536120272
https://www.dawn.com/news/1367862
https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-mumbai/Scripts-and-epistles/article14407293.ece
http://brownpaperbag.in/mumbai/intel/the-reluctant-fundamentalists-typographer-comes-bearing-gifts/
https://www.bombayperfumery.com/blog/notes-zeenat-kulavoor/
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http://www.vervemagazine.in/people/sibling-revelry-sameer-and-zeenat-kulavoor
