Sanika Phawde

Hi! I am an writer-illustrator, educator, cartoonist and reportage artist born and raised in Thane (Near Mumbai), India and currently working between New York City and Boston. Through autobiographical comics, visual essays, reportage drawings and illustrated interviews with members of my local community, my work captures and communicates instances of emotional connection and intimacy, queer immigrant culture and conversations people have over meals. I have worked with clients such as Spotify, Simply Gum, Ole & Steen, Uber, The New Yorker, Food & Wine Magazine among others. My work has been awarded and recognized and featured by the One Club for Creativity, D&AD (Design and Art Direction), VICE, PRINT Mag, Creative Boom, American Illustration, Boston Globe, The Nation, The Society of Illustrators New York, and the Comics Beat among others. I have exhibited work in group shows at Rendez-vous Carnet Du Voyage (Clermont-Ferrand, France), Jamestown Arts Centre, Pao Arts Center (Boston), Woods-Gerry Gallery (Providence), SVA Gramercy gallery and the SVA Chelsea gallery, City Hall (Jersey City) and Secrets Risograph show in Hamburg, among others, and I have been invited to exhibit my work at numerous book fairs (MoCCA fest, Comic Arts Brooklyn, TCAF, Short Run Seattle, Boston Book Arts Fair, Queer Trans Zine Fair in Providence, Pittsburgh Zine Fair, Philly Comics Expo, etc.).

When I am not making comics I work as a freelance illustrator and teach in the Illustration department at Massachusetts College of Art. I have been making and self-publishing comics since 2016 during which time I have self-published approximately 50 mini-comics and 2 graphic novels. I table at as many festivals I can every year (approximately 8 every year). I really enjoy tabling at festivals because making comics can be an isolating experience and it is so rewarding and validating to get to talk to people who actually read and buy and care about my comics. And to get to see new books by other artists who I feel deeply inspired by, and who make me feel excited about making new work and trying new things in my comics.

Sanika Phawde, Maid of Honour, Self-Published, 2024 © Sanika Phawde

Issue 1 of my brand new comic series, Wedding Juice and Other Melodramas. This series of autobiographical comics is based on my own experience of returning to India after 4 years of being unable to travel to visit my family, and marrying my American partner in a traditional ceremony in India. These comics are my attempt at documenting, processing, and coping with the comedy of errors that ensued during it. Through this book I am also trying to explore how in my desi community, a marriage or weddings have never been a traditionally private or personal affair between just the two people getting married but instead an occasion for the whole extended community, and how the process of throwing together an Indian wedding within the span of a month, forced me to confront my identity and Indian-ness, while simultaneously trying to introduce my entire family to my partner for the first time.

[+]

Sanika Phawde, Translated from the geese, Self-Published, 2023 © Sanika Phawde

This image is the cover page of the comic I made to memorialize the moment when I finally made my peace with leaving New York City, and decided to work on putting down roots in my new state and home. You can read the rest of it here: https://www.sanikap.com/translated-from-the-geese

[+]

Sanika Phawde, Poem for the Girlies Sharing Toilet Paper in the AMC Restroom Before the Barbie Movie, Self-Published, 2023 © Sanika Phawde

This image is the cover page of the comic I made to celebrate the experience of watching the Barbie movie after it was released in theaters this past summer, and how it helped me introspect over big questions of gender identity. You can read the rest of the comic here: https://www.sanikap.com/poem-for-the-girlies

[+]