nirali desai
I cook, build and perform with what’s been cast off.
Community
Five years building schools, NGOs, and ceremonies alongside the Tlingit community in Sitka, Alaska — centering knowledge and people that institutions have long pushed to the margins.
Dean of Students at Outer Coast, a new liberal arts college grounded in Indigenous Studies. Built the student support pedagogy for our 2024 launch.
Lead organizer, 2023 and 2025 Herring Ḵu.eex' — a 600-person potlatch tied to a land back victory with the Herring Protectors
art
Ten years making puppetry and performance from discarded material, staged in places where those bodies and objects usually aren't.
Performed Birds of Passage, solo traveling exhibition of puppets across Colorado. Debuted at Steeprock Residency (shown above).
In residence at Bread and Puppet Theater, the country's oldest political theater company, choreographing and performing in their summer show
Performed Simone Forti's Dance Constructions at the National Gallery of Singapore, challenging the idea that dance belongs only to formally trained bodies
Collaborated with Ruchi Anadkat on "performed geometry" at Fructose, Dunkerque
Food
Four years on a small boat in coastal Alaska, cooking mostly from what the commercial industry throws back — bycatch, collars, heads, scraps — and feeding it to the people who taught me how.
Horselegs— ongoing project cooking with commercial fish waste: black cod collars, yellow-eye rockfish bycatch, salmon heads
Jarred hundreds of servings of bull-kelp salsa for Yukon elders (2022–25)
Built a traditional Tlingit smokehouse with architect Billie Tsien (2023)
Ran a gluten-free bakery and coffee pop-up in Sitka (2021–25)
