Rakhi Peswani in residence courtesy Kosmopolis Hague

Rakhi Peswani was recently an artist in Residence courtesy Kosmopolis Hague. During her stay in the Netherlands she studied Dutch Art from Indian perspective apart from participating in the Hague India Month. She also had some teaching assignments with art academies, a collaboration project with a Dutch theatre Director and an exhibition of her works at Denneweg Today. A presentation of 'Bodies/Subterrain (Eurydice & Sita)', a Presentation of her residency work at Vrije Academie, also took place.

A recipient of Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art’s Emerging Artist Award, she obtained her Bachelor’s degree in painting and Master’s degree in sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M. S. U, Vadodara. Peswani’s solos include ‘Matters Under the Skin’ with The Guild, Mumbai at Art HK - Asia One 2011; ‘Intertwinings’, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2009; ‘Sonnet for Silent Machines’, at Jehangir Nicholson Gallery & The Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai, 2007. Among her selected group shows are ‘Generation in Transition’ Curated by Magda Kardasz,Warsaw; and ‘Bring Me A Lion’, The Hunt Gallery, St.Louis, Missouri(2010).

Her point of departure is to locate a visual / verbal / tangible language that blends the local character of our system and the global character of verbal language. The possible dual responsibility of a language allows her to articulate some of the present identities of an artist working within contemporary realities. She further layers this juxtaposition with the inclusion of verbal text, fabricating discreet ironies within the material processes to depict contemporary identities.

She titles her works with equal sensitivity with which she models her works. Her occupation with the former (i.e. naming the work) stems out of a semi-permanent process of conceiving a word or any linguistic unit by visualizing its nearest form through an image, and then executing the same with absolute equilibrated prowess.

Rakhi Peswani’s engagement with materials roots deep down to her social, cultural and intellectual being, therefore it is not just the image of the work that speaks on her behalf, but it is also the material which completes the chronicle.