Artist Highlight: Indrani Pal-Chaudhuri

Indrani Pal-Chaudhuri and Elley Cheng

Hi everyone, I’m Elley Cheng, the Co-founder and CEO of Useful Arts. Late last year, I had the pleasure of sharing a stage with Indrani at the Worth Media Conference on AI and Creativity. We hit it off right away, and she even agreed to sit down for a Q&A with me for the Useful Arts audience. 

First, a quick intro:

Indrani Pal-Chaudhuri is a Tribeca Film Festival award-winning Disruptive Innovation Fellow and multidisciplinary artist, director, and entrepreneur whose work spans film, technology, and systems change. 

With over two decades of experience scaling organizations across the arts, policy, finance, and nonprofits, she is the founder of Open Origin and the Shakti Regeneration Institute, advancing green energy and infrastructure, as well as cultural preservation initiatives globally.

She serves at the United Nations as a Convener of the Science Summit and Co-Host of the Global People’s Summit.  Indrani also served as a Visiting Lecturer at Princeton, where she created and taught the seminar “Mobilizing Millions with Art and Film for Human Rights and Social Change.” The seminar was delivered at Harvard, Yale, and TEDx as well.

Mentored by David Bowie and Iman, she has collaborated with global artists and brands such as Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, Nike, and LVMH. Her work has been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, the Centre Pompidou, and the Brooklyn Museum, earning more than 40 international awards and features across major media outlets worldwide.

Just to get started

Elley Cheng: Thank you so much for sitting down with me today and sharing your perspective with the Useful Arts audience. As a warm-up, every conversation in this Artist Highlight series starts off with a funny or silly question that the prior artist had chosen and answered.  As it turns out, our last writer and architect, Jim Keen, yelled at AI before apologizing to it, you know, just to be safe. So let’s start with that. Have you ever yelled at a piece of technology?

Indrani Pal-Chaudhuri: Yes! I’ve yelled at technology, especially when it claims neutrality.

Technology that scales without responsibility deserves resistance. There is so much baked into technological systems, especially AI. None of it is neutral, and none of it is equally accessible.

That tension is central to the work I do now in energy and AI infrastructure.

On beginnings and why images mattered

Elley:  You are absolutely right. When it comes to technology and tools, we often forget that assumptions and biases, whether intentional or not, are deeply embedded in the design. Even a hammer is built with assumptions about the user and use cases.  

So let’s take a step back so we can learn about your story. For those who may know your images but not your full journey, can you take us back to the beginning? How and why did you first come to photography and film?

Indrani: I came to photography and film not as an end in itself. I was trying to understand systems before I had language for them. Moving between cultures early on, I wanted to understand how people make the decisions that shape their lives.

Images became my first analytical tool. I still use them to bridge differences and to find connections. What always motivated me was finding that spark, the divine inspiration in each person that coalesces their life’s work and creates connection.

It was always about connection and about helping to inspire transformation in the viewer.

On photography versus film

Elley: You moved from photography into film quite naturally. What drew you there?

Indrani: A photograph captures a moment, and that moment can stay in one’s imagination forever. There is great power in that distillation.

With film, you can really look at transformation. You can show change over time. To understand systems, you need multiple images. That’s the power of film, seeing patterns emerge.

Film also allows us to transmit knowledge the way mythmaking has throughout human history, but with intimacy and emotional connection. Not just intellect, but all the senses. Empathy through the screen is incredibly powerful.

On learning the power of images early

Elley: At what point did you realize just how powerful these media could be?

Indrani: I started as a photographer at 14, professionally speaking. I worked with some of the greatest photographers and filmmakers, and I traveled as a model and actress to learn.

But the power of images was visceral for me as an immigrant child. Leaving my family and relationships behind, images and stories were what still connected me to the people I loved.

Later, I came to understand that representation functions like governance. Whose images count. Whose knowledge matters. Whose futures are investable. Whose losses are acceptable. Photography and film shape those decisions.

On representation, power, and responsibility

Elley: How did that realization change the way you approached your work?

Indrani: When I understood the power of representation and the importance of who tells the story, everything shifted.

That’s why I started the Shakti Regeneration Institute when I was 19. It began as a school in India because empowering women’s futures, especially in low-income communities, was essential.

My creative work has always been accompanied by real work on the ground. Education is the through line. Creative work shapes how audiences think, but it can also shape real outcomes when paired with action.

On decision-making across disciplines

Elley: You’ve worked across fashion, music, film, activism, and infrastructure. What stays constant in how you make creative decisions?

Indrani: I make decisions the same way regardless of medium by evaluating tradeoffs, incentives, and downstream consequences.

The language of business has always been baked into my decision-making. The core question is always whether something increases long-term resilience or short-term extraction.

That distinction should drive our decisions as a species, especially now.

On a project that transformed itself

Elley: Can you share a project that didn’t turn out as expected but became stronger?

Indrani: The Regeneration Generation began as a film and became an alliance.

We realized the crises we were documenting, climate instability, biodiversity collapse, governance failures, couldn’t be addressed through storytelling alone. The project evolved to integrate film, Indigenous leadership, scientific evidence, investor dialogue, and policy engagement.

Through deep listening and trust-building, it grew far beyond what we initially imagined.

On AI as a creative tool

Elley: What was your initial reaction to AI as it emerged?

Indrani: Honestly, I was extremely excited. I’m deeply curious about emerging tools.

AI has been extraordinary for synthesizing the many strands of work I do across different modalities. The opportunity to solve humanity’s challenges is enormous.

But the costs are often invisible. Environmental costs, intergenerational costs, and human costs are not properly priced. Accountability is the real issue.

On infrastructure and imagination

Elley: What drew you as an artist into energy and infrastructure?

Indrani: I came to realize that imagination without infrastructure collapses.

I’ve met incredible artists with powerful ideas that never reach the world because the infrastructure isn’t there. On a planetary scale, it’s the same problem.

Open Origin exists to align advanced AI and supercomputing with renewable, resilient energy systems. It’s not theoretical. It’s about building systems that allow creativity, science, and capital to operate responsibly.

On progress and assumptions

Elley: If you could change one assumption the creative industry makes about technology or sustainability, what would it be?

Indrani: The assumption that progress is neutral, or automatically good.

Progress reflects values, and capital follows narratives. The question is whether those narratives build resilience or disguise extraction.

Artificial intelligence without ancestral intelligence invites instability. Science severed from conscience leads to extraction and instability spreads. Indigenous communities and artists have safeguarded this balance for millennia.

The question for the next artist

Elley: Before we finish, we always end the interview with a fun question for the next artist. What is your fun question to ask?

Indrani: If your ideas came with a warning label, what would it say?

For me, the warning would be: this work may require long-term capital, shared stewardship, and measurable accountability. And optimism. A belief in humanity that together we can solve what we’ve created.

Elley: Thank you so much, Indrani, for such an insightful discussion.  Hopefully, we will get to hang out again soon in New York. 

Indrani: For sure - thanks for having me!