Varsha Panikar

Varsha Panikar (aka Alex) is a trans-nonbinary interdisciplinary artist of Malayali heritage, currently based between Mumbai and Delhi. Their work, shaped by their South Indian lineage and urban upbringing, bridges cultural memory, radical imagination, and queer, trans-feminist storytelling across film, writing, and visual art.

They are the co-founder of Star Hopper, a trans-led creative studio and film production company crafting narratives that are brown, queer, and women-led. In 2024, they founded Riot Ink Press, a self-publishing imprint for radical, queer storytelling across zines, anthologies, and graphic novellas. They also curate and blog at the Underground Film Observatory (UFO), a platform spotlighting experimental moving image work through a brown, trans-feminist lens, and write Queerly in Flux, a personal blog on pop culture, identity, and politics.

Over the past 15 years, Varsha has worked across experimental, narrative, documentary, and branded formats, guided by a punk, poetic, and deeply political approach. Their short film Bodies of Desire premiered on Nowness Asia, was selected for BFI Flare and the British Council’s #FiveFilmsForFreedom, and screened at over 60 festivals globally, including Outfest LA and Berlin Commercials. It won Best International Short at the RIO LGBTQIA+ Film Festival.

Their 2024 campaign Words of Pride for Disney+ Star received widespread acclaim, winning a Grand Prix, three Golds, and a Bronze at The Drum Awards; the prestigious Purple Elephant (Zee Equality Award) at the Kyoorius Creative Awards; a Merit at One Show 2024; Silver and Bronze at the Spikes Asia Awards 2024; and Gold, Merit, and Bronze at the One Asia Creative Awards 2024. In the same year, GQ India named Varsha one of five young LGBTQIA+ change-makers to watch.

Most recently, in 2025, Varsha was named Runner-Up for the Kashish QDrishti Film Grant for their short narrative script Operation: Gulzaar. Their spoken word film After So Long premiered on Nowness Asia and was featured at the Zebra Poetry Film Festival and Balkan Can Kino. False Promises, based on their poem, received a Special Mention at the Dada Saheb Phalke Film Festival. Varsha has collaborated with platforms including Disney+ Star, Universal Music, UN Women, Google, and Snapchat, with their work featured in Nowness, Rolling Stone India, Directors Notes, GiF, The Hindu, The Telegraph, and Otherness Archive.

Beyond film, Varsha’s artistic practice spans poetry, zines, graphic novellas, performance, and digital storytelling. Their horror graphic novella It Waits was praised by Readers’ Favorite for its vivid imagery and creeping dread, unfolding a chilling climax while exploring themes of obsession, isolation, and the unknown. Their zine Conundrums on the Brink of Perception was described as “a mirror to our own contradictions and hypocrisies.”

Varsha’s Ara Chronicles, a queer children’s graphic novel in development, blends South Indian folklore with fantasy and magic realism. In 2024, it received the Chain Unchained Grant from Goethe-Institut and BeFantastic to develop an NFT-based immersive extension, and was showcased at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival. As a BeFantastic C³ Fellow, they continue exploring storytelling through NFTs, AR, and games.

Their literary and artistic works have been featured at Underground Zine Fest (Mumbai 2024), Opn Art House (Max Müller Bhavan, New Delhi), 47A Design Gallery (Mumbai), and Queer Futures Archives at Parramatta Riverside Theater (Sydney, 2020). Their zines have been curated and archived by Zine Club Chicago, the State University of New York’s Sojourner Truth Library, Queer Zine Library (UK), and Grrrl Zine Fair (Oxford). Other publications include The Lipstick Politico, Munich Zine, Brown Girl Magazine, Nerve Zine, The Rights Collective, One Future Collective, Pinjratod, and more.

Varsha lends their voice to films and brands, performs spoken word, experiments with analog image-making, and indulges in their love for all things horror. They curate and blog at the Underground Film Observatory (UFO), a platform spotlighting experimental moving image work through a distinctly brown, trans-feminist lens, and write Queerly in Flux, a personal blog exploring pop culture, politics, and identity.

Varsha’s work moves between rage and tenderness, between longing and disruption. A non-conformist at heart, they follow ideas where they want to unfold, bending genre, structure, and tone. Rooted in queer futures and speculative imagination, their storytelling becomes a space for play, refusal, and reimagining. They are drawn to narratives that hold complexity, resist erasure, and make space for joy, transformation, collective healing, and dreaming. Their process is punk in defiance, tender in introspection, feminist in urgency, and queer in essence.