India's only book artist Priya Pereira on creating an art form that skirts the line between publishing and art

These days the best way to check the different time zones between continents is to do a quick Google search or look it up on a smartphone. Back in 1993 when Priya Pereira was in Memphis for her studies, she realised that she needed something to help her manoeuvre the time difference between there and Mumbai where her boyfriend Tony was living. She created ‘Timebound’ — a hand-stitched book with laminated pages that told the difference in time between Mumbai and Memphis. The book was bound in brown suede and had a strap that was wound around an American coin. Another version of this book  with an Indian coin — was sent to Tony. Although she didn’t know it then, that book would set her on a path that establishes her as India’s only, and completely self-taught, book artist.


The Brazil book is like a puzzle, divided into blue, green and yellow, each of which open up to reveal interesting information about the country.

It took  her  a decade of creating these artists’ books before she learnt of the term. “We were in San Francisco and it was on that trip that I had started showing my work to people there. I met an artist in San Francisco who told me to go to Centre for The Book. There, I learned this was an art form and what it was called,” she says. It was on that trip that Priya sold one of her works, Evil Eye to the Guggenheim Museum store. “When I received the email from them and later the invoice saying ‘artists book’, I was thrilled. I finally had a word for what I was doing,” she says.

Priya has a degree in graphic designing, has learned computer art and paper-making and has been freelancing in the advertising industry but it is books that hold her interest. In the last 20 years  she has created a collection of 40 books. The creation of an artists’ book follows a standard system – first the idea (the easy part), she researches it, plans out the formation and takes her husband Tony’s views before creating a dummy version, which are sent to museums and art lovers. If they like it, she starts producing them. “I do limited editions,” she says. “I do not want my work to become mass-produced or cheap.”

Her  work has to be seen to be believed and even understood. These are books with spines, pages and content – that are made using cloth, handmade paper, plastic, stones and any material she sees fit. But, each are pieces of art. For instance, The Holy Rosary has separate pages (the beads of the rosary) that have the Our Father, Hail Mary’s and Glory Be’s written on them, with a thread running through them and decorated with images inspired by the tiles of Pereira’s home.

The Wish Grill is based on the dargah at Fatehpur Sikri on the grills of which people tie threads asking for their prayers to be answered – the exact grills are replicated and the thread is provided.
The content in this case are the wishes/ prayers you say in your mind while tying the thread. “In this, you bind the book and you create the content yourself,” says the artist.  The But book has the word BUT written in cursive possessing two hooks at either ends which hold different (and corresponding) messages written on paper. Eg  “I could lend you the money, ” but “No thanks”. “In the early days when I was creating these artists’ books, people would say, ‘these books look nice but why don’t you try doing something useful,” she says, but  her books don’t answer to pedantics . Ode to an Onion is a small book made using onion skin and onion paper. Until death Do Us Part features two brackets {} that hold cards that feature the stories of known lovers - the idea is to present the fact that like an opening bracket that needs a partner to complete it, so do people.

Some of her  artists’ books have been bought and exhibited by museums all over the world. Last year she gave a presentation at Rhode Island School of Design and the Pratt Institute, New York. “There is actually a market abroad. In India, people are interested and love the concept but not enough to buy the books,” she says.  But, that doesn’t deter her. “I want to keep doing this,” she says.