Wynona Barua is a interdisciplinary storyteller and creative strategist working across writing, photography, film, illustration, & fashion.
Shaped by an upbringing spanning distinct cultures, nationalities, and languages, she is attuned to nuance, multiplicity, and the narrative construction of identity. She works across storytelling mediums to serve as an image-maker, reinterpreting both inherited and contemporary narratives for an increasingly global world.
This intersection of skills and perspectives has taken form in Gunaa — a heritage textile house she founded to house the stories embedded in Assamese silk, her native textile tradition from Northeast India, and to reimagine their expression through contemporary heirloom garments that are informed by a dialogue across time and culture.
Gunaa is also an ode to her mother, her collaborator, and the largely female-led world of Assamese sericulture — a recognition of feminine craft and labour too often diminished under the word “domestic,” and an attempt to place it within a global contemporary artistic and design context.
Shaped by an upbringing spanning distinct cultures, nationalities, and languages, she is attuned to nuance, multiplicity, and the narrative construction of identity. She works across storytelling mediums to serve as an image-maker, reinterpreting both inherited and contemporary narratives for an increasingly global world.
This intersection of skills and perspectives has taken form in Gunaa — a heritage textile house she founded to house the stories embedded in Assamese silk, her native textile tradition from Northeast India, and to reimagine their expression through contemporary heirloom garments that are informed by a dialogue across time and culture.
Gunaa is also an ode to her mother, her collaborator, and the largely female-led world of Assamese sericulture — a recognition of feminine craft and labour too often diminished under the word “domestic,” and an attempt to place it within a global contemporary artistic and design context.
Education
Barnard College of Columbia University
BA English Literature (Honors)
BA Film & Media Studies
2023
BA English Literature (Honors)
BA Film & Media Studies
2023
Employment
Gunaa
Mirabai Films
NPZ Law Group
Allen & Overy
Mirabai Films
NPZ Law Group
Allen & Overy
Recognition
Lenore Marshall Barnard Prize for Prose
‘Al-Qasm’
2023
Richard Macksey National Undergraduate Research Symposium
2022
‘Al-Qasm’
2023
Richard Macksey National Undergraduate Research Symposium
2022