Dipika Kohli / Riga 2019

Kismuth’s Dipika Kohli was in architecture, design, and journalism in the United States and Western Europe, before relocating to Southeast Asia in 2013.

She published the first book in the Kismuth series, The Elopement, in 2012.

Others have included The Dive, Kanishka, and Breakfast in CambodiaEach book in the series asks, ‘What about if?’, as metaphilosophy takes a center stage.

Kohli’s TEDx talk is called ‘There’s Not That Much Time Left’; it asks people to think critically about how they want to spend their lives each day, and invites the audience to explore how to live with intention. Watch the 18-minute talk at this link: dipikakohli.com/talks.

Just 8 years after this talk, the world has witnessed the havoc wreaked by a global pandemic, which significantly changed how we move, work, life, love, and relate to one another.

 

Articles, podcast + columns

Currently

To research what it might be like to co-create zines on the spot in popup ateliers, from 2017-2019 she went to Northern Europe on multiple trips in order to continue to expand, explore, and discover. A quiet summer in northern Finland, urban hiking for the Art Nouveau scene in Latvia’s capital, and surmising what to do if it rained again while staying on a sailboat in Sweden got short stories written in bursts and shared through S P A C E, a subscription-and-crowdfunding supported zine.

Kohli was an editor for a weekly newspaper in southwest Ireland called the West Cork Advertiser. After 3 years in that country, she joined the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce as an editor and photographer for another 2 years. This experience helped her discover a wide network of people, and, by extension, explore new ways of thinking.

Through interviewing, connecting, hosting programs in real life, being interested in others, and generally staying ready to find the next new thing, she could listen, learn, and share.

Find reviews of her art, writing and design works at: http://dipikakohli.com.

Residencies + awards

Public appearances

See dipikakohli.com/talks