I partner with inter/national organisations to initiate risk-taking opportunities that challenge the status quo. I develop strategies for working sustainably, respectfully and ethically. Artist-led projects and collaboration are key to my creative development and success, expressing and developing my authorship and amplifying the politics of my work. I seek to reconstruct societal hierarchies, through creative producing and commissioning alongside making work.

whatsthebigmistry is Priya Mistry, multidisciplinary artist, socially engaged practitioner and creative producer straddling dance, performance, visual, performance and live art. Mistry’s practice adds  discourse to the topics of mental health/neurodiversity, feminist politics, identity, sex and queerness.  She deconstructing language, exploring  sensory/non-word based vocabularies, whilst rethinking objects as functional bodies and investigating human bodies as sculptural propositions, together making static and moving arrangements.

Mistry is an Associate Artist with DAO (Disability Arts Online), In Good Company consortium/Derby Theatre, Quarter Master for Artistic Mutiny, Artist Member Chisenhale Dance Space, East Side Projects and ONYX Collective.

In 2019 Priya was part of  a British Council funded cohort to attend IETM Rijeka, Croatia and was recipient of  DYCP (Developing Your Own Creative Practice) Grant from ACE. In 2020 this saw Priya partner with Critical Path (AUS) to design research, collaboration laboratories and exchange in Sydney and Research Creative Partnerships in Australia. With a sustainable to living, working and travel Priya attempted to get to Australia by land and sea, no flights in 2020, just as the Pandemic erupted.

Current projects and collaborations in 2021-22 include Percolate with Florence Peake and Harold Offeh at
Siobhan Davies Studio. Tools, Rolls, Frames & Folds with CCA Derry. A new Moving Image Commission entitled Boobs, Bananas & Guns withThe National Justice Museum exhibiting Spring – Winter 2021. Performer- Deviser on Emily Speed’s Flatland exhibition and film work showing at Tate Liverpool Sept 2021 – June 2022 Presently Mistry is working on a new moving image Commission with Unlimited for release in 2022.

Recent projects and collaborations include Tropical Awkward Bastard, Love, Lament Psycho Girlfriend, Artist is Absent and Intimate Conversations with Furniture, Radical Sabbatical Research Residency on The Unconditioned Mind with Eastside Projects and University of Birmingham, Rita Evans & Pepa Ubera collaboration on Instrument Sculptures and Emma Smith’s Touching Space.

Creative Producing projects include Glitter & Guilds in partnership with DAO, She He They BROWNNESS Programme Guest Curator De Montfort University Cultural Exchanges Festival and Curator Bursary Chisenhale Dance Space/Choreographers’ Gallery Trust. Sustainable practices Events: Axis Social Works? (Primary, Nottingham), Social Art Summit  (Site Gallery, Sheffield) LAB on with Elsa James and presently collaborating on a Mental Health Toolkit disability arts producer Alice Holland (Unlimited-Producers International) and partners.

Priya works as a project based artist, across artistic disciplines and extending the forms within which she works, creating scalable and transferable projects. Mistry’s work:

• Straddles performance, dance, live, visual art and digital online, working locally across U.K and internationally
• Makes provocations and adds discourse at the intersection of mental health, invisible dis/ability, Identity, POC, Queer and Feminist politics. Deconstructs language whilst exploring sensory/non-word based Vocabularies.
• Generates safe and social spaces for explorative modes of exchange, sharing and dialogues for
  artists, creatives, audiences, publics/ communities. Practices authorship, agency and sustainability in the ways she choose to work, live, make decisions whilst extending this approach to others
• Invests in Residency and Laboratory style working. Exploring in cycles of Research – Creative
  Processes – Sharing-Performing- Research. Incites and invite Collaborative approaches, embracing
  risk and the unknown.
• Explores possibilities and choreographies between bodies, objects and space. Rethinks bodies, objects as functional bodies and investigating them as sculptural propositions, as static and moving arrangements.

Mistry teamed with Bryony Kimmings, Director Joseph Mercier of Panic Lab to create her show Musical Mental Health Cabaret. Other Performance and Collaborations include Carnesky Productions’s ‘The Incredible Bleeding Woman’, Emma Frankland and Keir Cooper’s Don Quiojte, Florence Peak Make Remake project, Bobby Baker at Daily Life Limited- (Mental Dis/ability Arts Organisation) including  work with William Morris Gallery and The Wellcome Collection. Priya has also worked with New Art Club, Micheal Pinchbeck, Duckie, 2Magpies Theatre, Lucy Suggate Swarm Sculptures, Rebecca Davies ,The Bedfellows, Modern Clay among many others.

Commissions, Residencies and platforms with Theatres, Galleries and Festivals including METAL Culture, Eastside Projects, Terrestrial, Axis, LADA, Hatch, Little Wolf Parade, hÅb, Fierce, Birmingham REP Theatre, Dance 4, IGC Theatres, CCA, Bonnington Gallery, Critical Path, Australia, USF Verftet Norway, Tou Scene Norway, Emotional Bodies/Zona Dance Romania, Intercult Sweden amongst others.