Practice is the daily ‘work’ (as verb) of art. It represents the sum of all the moves – practical, conceptual, affective, cognitive, philosophical, analytical and aesthetic – that occupies/de-occupies the state of our triangulation at any given point of time. Being contingent, this practice is a shape-shifting thing, prone to surprise itself as much it surprises others. Like a mycelial inhabitation, indeterminate and unbounded, it expands.

Unruly Iris of Dissent (U.I.D 2), Swamp & Marsh

Unruly Iris of Dissent (U.I.D 2)Shown at: ‘Archeology of the self: Archives, Anarchives & the Artist‘, Art Heritage Gallery, New Delhi (2023) Projection of Video Loop 12 years after The Untold Intimacy of Digits (2011), which animated a nineteenth century Bengali peasant’s handprint found in a London archive into a spectral count towards infinity, Raqs […]

Ghost Floating Legs

Ghost Floating LegsShown at: FirstSite, Colchester, United Kingdom (2018) | ‘Spinal’, Frith Street Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2019) VideoDuration, 6’3″ The First World War produced the greatest number of amputated limbs, especially when soldiers lost arms and legs as a result of stepping on mines. These bodies without limbs, and limbs without bodies, became ‘phantoms’  […]

Spinal

SpinalShown at: ‘Not Yet at Ease’, FirstSite, Colchester, United Kingdom (2018) | ‘Spinal’, Frith Street Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2019) Video Duration, 10′ 24″ Spinal is a study of the vertebral column that brings together an anatomical model and a dancer’s body in a conversation of gestures, stances, steps, positions, and caresses. The positions traced […]

Diver’s at Work

The diver, maybe she is a specter, maybe he is a submarine apparition. Diving, we are  closer to the surface of the earth than an astronaut, but the paradoxical nature of a submarine horizon makes for an experience that envelopes and recedes at the same time. We could recognize this paradox as key to an awareness of our experience of the contemporary. 

Future Plans

In the world of labour, men and women, animals and devices come together and diverge in all sorts of interesting ways.

Equinox

Equinox is made by Raqs in response to the collection at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. The video plays on the sense of the night coming alive with animal forms, and echoes their experience during a flashlight midnight tour of the museum where they sensed a different animatedness in the objects of the collection. 

Will you, Beloved Stranger

Will you, Beloved Stranger? is a performance piece for two readers in a designed setting featuring a rendition of two bodies of poetic work — those of the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai (writing in Hebrew) and the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (writing in Arabic)