Amari Priya Kukreja

When Amari Priya Kukreja was looking for a university, she worried she’d be forced to focus on just one of her artistic pursuits. 

“I didn’t want to enter college feeling like I had to leave parts of myself behind in order to be taken seriously in one discipline,” says Kukreja, who has studied classical violin performance for 13 years, creates visual art and writes and performs R&B music. “That was a major part of why Wisconsin became the right choice for me. I realized I didn’t necessarily have to choose one artistic identity — I could allow all of them to inform each other.” 

As a violin performance major in the Mead Witter School of Music, Kukreja participates in various symphony, chamber and ensemble groups. She is a member of the First Wave Hip Hop & Urban Arts Scholarship Program and lived her first year in Sellery Hall’s The Studio Creative Arts Learning Community. This spring, Kukreja even released her debut single, “Begging You.” 

“The Studio has encouraged me to take ideas that might have stayed in my head and actually turn them into projects,” says Kukreja, who received a Creative Arts Award for her mural project, Women’s Bodies, Witnessed. “You’re living alongside people who are constantly creating, experimenting, performing, and thinking about how they want to contribute to the world.” 

First Wave also offered the interdisciplinary artistic community she craved.

“I didn’t have to explain why I wanted to be both a classical musician and an R&B artist, or why visual art, activism, and storytelling mattered to me. Those things were understood as connected,” Kukreja says. “Being surrounded by artists who approach their work differently has taught me just as much about collaboration and creative practice as formal instruction has.” 

Now in her second year, Kukreja remains grateful that UW–Madison allowed her to explore all parts of her artistic identity — without boundaries.   

“One of the biggest things I’ve learned is that these disciplines don’t actually feel separate to me,” says Kukreja. “I’d love for my future work to make those connections more visible.”