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.

All, Humans

All, Humans builds itself from uniquely human faculty of language to construct conceptual categories that transverse the human condition. It arcs out like a canopy – suspended between a multiplicity of minds, hearts and hands, sheltering and anticipating the universal human aspiration and claim for freedom, equality and dignity.

Betaal / बे-ताल / Arrhythmic

Betaal / बे-ताल / Arrhythmic instigates an encounter with simulations of arrhythimic presences in an infrastructure-inflected landscape. The landscape of loops, knots, ties, ellipses, holes made of steel wires and metal bar creates a crisscross configuration suspended in space.

Time Travel: Board Game for Two Players

Time Travel : Board Game for Two Players Game board, scrabble squares, instructions 2022 and ongoing Time Travel was launched as a game during the Primary Forms 2, an exhibition of artists games for children of all ages under the curatorial supervision of Sebastian Cichocki and Helena Czernecka that is taking place through the school […]

Memes and Fables

Memes and Fables: …tick tock Newspaper, blackboard ink, chalk and screen print. 2021 70cm x 54.5cm Memes and Fables: …tock tick Newspaper, blackboard ink, chalk and screen print. 2021 68cm x 55.5cm Memes and Fables: …wicked Newspaper, blackboard ink, chalk and screen print. 2021 70cm x 57.5cm Memes and Fables: …let it be Newspaper, blackboard […]

Chromachron

Chromachron Paint, pantone colors of the years 2020 and 2021 The Laughter of Tears, Braunschweig, Germany (2021); Delhi Contemporary Art Week, Nature Morte, Bikaner House, New Delhi (2021) Unexpected arrivals (of a virus in one year) and departures (of a species in another) transform the colour of time. Each year gets a colour signature: a […]

The Sovereign and its Company & The Sovereign Takes a Walk

The Sovereign and its Company, 2021Velvet, silkscreen, 150 cm x 300 cmWallpaper 560 cm x 375 cm The Laughter of Tears, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2021) The Sovereign and its Company are multiple, and multiply formed. Anything can be deputized. The historical glory and moral authority of the sovereign and its company melts away, and then […]

Time Devices (2011- 18)

Whenever the Heart Skips a Beat | 4 min 31 seconds Animated Horological Video, Words Click here to watch the video (email us on studio@raqsmediacollective.net to request access) A Day in the Life of Kiribati Clock, nameplate, tape Exhibited at Asamayavali/Untimely Calendar at National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi (2014) The Ecliptic | […]

Workers and Robots Enter A Factory Canteen

Manga style text-image assemblage. Ten screen printed panels on newsprint. Unlimited Edition 2018 Graphics by Freddy Corasco An imagined conversation between real, embodied and artificial forms of intelligence, set in a moment of respite on a working day. First published in Wonderflux – a graphic novel anthology produced by e-Flux

Communard Biscuits

Communard Biscuits (2017) 3 D Printing, Silicone mould, flour, water, salt500 biscuits, 9 x 1 x 1 cm (each) Exhibited at Whitworth, Manchester A hard tack biscuit from the Paris Commune of 1871 was 3D scanned, 3D printed, a mould made and facsimile biscuits baked. History in facsimile, waiting for a bite.  Made in collaboration with the People’s […]

Perhaps

Site specific Installation Lincoln Brayford Pool, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK (2016) Perhaps (An Investigation Outside The Laws of Thought) The arcs in the sculpture are portals. And as portals, they recall George Boole’s (who was a lincoln person) ‘logic gates’ ‐ conceptual sites of entry and exit for answers to questions that can end […]

Night & Day, Day & Night

Night & Day, Day & Night 24-hour clock, words, 5 feet diameter Asamayavali/Untimely Calendar, NGMA (2014) In twenty four words about duration in Hindi, breath gives way to blink, the origin anticipates the end, revolutions and eclipses consider each other. It happens all the time.

Homo Speculos

Homo Speculos 5 true mirrors in matt-black columns (38 x 38 x 168 cm, 38 x 38 x 162 cm, 38 x 38 x 138 cm, 38 x 38 x 128 cm, 38 x 38 x 118 cm) Adam Aronson Gallery, Laumier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, Missouri (2015) Five true mirrors show you as you […]

Activo y Pasivo (Assets and Debts)

The rooms are as alike, or as apart, as  investment and insurance, two mechanisms designed to administer, anticipate and forestall, risk, speculation and the possibility of boom and bust. Does the imprint of one room on another indicate caution or audacity?

Autodidact’s Transport

Autodidact’s Transport Train carriage interior refurnishing, specially woven fabric, vinyl, short films, orations Public Art Project, Gwangju Folly, Gwangju Metro System, South Korea 2014 The Autodidact’s Transport is a transformation of the interior of a Gwangju local metro train with literal lines of conversation (originally diagrammed from Raqs’ computer conversations with each other), scripted orations that parse Erasmus’ ‘In Praise of Folly’ […]

It’s About Being Here and There at the Same Time

Installation Drawing on wall made of 3mm copper, brass and steel metal strips. 105 inches x 67 inches Part of ‘A Different Gravity’, solo booth, Project 88, India Art Fair (2012).; “Untimely calendar”, National Gallery of Modern Art | New Delhi (2014) Three metallic strips – brass, copper and steel– make a possible ‘doorway’ to […]

Forthcoming titles

Forthcoming Titles Books, jacket cover designs, frames (set of 10) Gallery Nature Morte, New Delhi (2012) Three unwritten books, each marking a whimsical relationship to specific influential texts (by Rosa Luxemburg, Vladimir Illyich Lenin and Antonio Gramsci) in the canon of Marxism, find their place amongst a set of echoing titles in a carefully laid […]

Reverse Engineering the Euphoria Machine

Euphoria Machine is the name we give to the apparatus of desire and cognition that seeks to create a consensus within society for boundless energy and wealth, and effaces all doubts and dissent about the ways in which this energy and wealth must be acquired.

Revoltage

Revoltage Shown at: Project 88, Mumbai (2010) | Reading Light’, Festival d’Automne, Espace Oscar Niemeyer, Paris (2011) | Art Unlimited Basel (2012) | Tel Aviv Museum (2012) | Zentrum für Internationale Lichtkunst, Unna (2014) | NGMA, New Delhi (2014) Text, lightbulbs, fixtures, acrylic, wire, synchroniser Revoltage fills the space it occupies with warmth, light, and […]

We the Fuel

We the Fuel | 2011 9 framed photographs, tape residue (210 x 180 cm) A collage made with treated film posters and dental X-rays Premonition, Experimenter Gallery, Kolkata (2011); Helsinki Photography Biennale, Finland (2014)

36 Planes of Emotion & One Meter of Truth (Emotion)

36 Planes of Emotions Laser engraved acrylic glass, furniture, lighting (180 x 150 x 60 cm) Surjection, Art Gallery of York University, Toronto (2011); Raqs Media Collective, The Photographers’ Gallery, London (2012) Graphic design: Amitabh Kumar + Satyabrata Rai. 36 Planes of Emotions extends the palette of emotions to include states of collective potential. These are embodied in […]

Impossibly Rare, Infinitely Valuable, Eternally Free

Impossibly Rare, Infinitely Valuable, Eternally Free Photograph. 21 x 15 cm Hard to Sell, Good to Have, Palais Sturany, Vienna (2010) To survive on love and fresh air is to thrive on next to nothing. Accordingly, this image bottles the two things that are precious but impossible to sell—love and fresh air.

Revolutionary Forces (The Three Tasters)

Revolutionary Forces (The Three Tasters) Performative installation with rotating platforms, 2 video monitors, 3 actors West Heavens, Shanghai (2010) Three volunteers tell three stories. The surface underneath them is in a state of permanent revolution. As the ground turns, as they turn inside out, one speaks about the shattering of illusions. Another about the balance […]

The Communist Latento

Fragments from a Communist Latento Photographs in lightboxes, Series of 8, each 71 x 51 x 13 cm Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid (2010); Shanghai Biennale (2010) The Communist Latento is an image/text series that features photographs of found minimalist hand-drawn signage on transparent surfaces (mainly arrows and direction markers) annotated by a set […]

Rules to be Invented

Rules to be Invented Acrylic. 60 x 60 x 60 cm Project 88, Mumbai (2010) A chessboard that scales peaks. The pieces climb up and down a terrain as uneven as history. All chess pieces save the knight have been eliminated. Because there is no king left to checkmate, no queen to trap, or pawn […]

Over Time

Over Time Assembled and framed found objects, Series of 7, each 48 x 38 x 8 cm Project 88, Mumbai (2010) Seven frames stand in for the seven days of the week. Each frame contains an assemblage of suspended objects. Sharpeners, erasers, notebooks, dividers, rulers, pencils, diaries, are caught between sheets of perspex like insects in amber. […]

On the Other Hand

On the Other Hand Wall-mounted LED, acrylic lightbox, 71 x 10 x 4 cm Frith Street Gallery, London (2009) The clock’s hands measure the stations of the hours, while human hands play their own game of silhouettes, closing in on the hour of fear only to then open out on the moment of ecstasy, as […]

Decomposition

Decomposition Site-specific installation at the Asia Art Archive with index cards, self-inking stamps, printed ceramic tiles, customized jigsaw puzzles Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong (2009) The installation uses found poetry and accidental discoveries in archives and takes the form of a playful gesture of appreciation of the labour of the archivist.

One Four Four Zero

One Four Four Zero Acrylic glass tubes in circular acrylic housing, 15 x 64 cm diameter Escapement, Frith Street Gallery, London (2009) One thousand four hundred and forty crystal perspex tubes, some square, some circular, some hexagonal, sit tightly packed in what looks like an transparent empty clock set on a plinth. Each handcrafted perspex […]

Love is Engineering

Love is Engineering Printed transparencies, acrylic glass, steel fixtures, 24 x 36 cm Signs Taken for Wonders: Recent Art from India and Pakistan, Aicon Gallery, London (2009) Fused transparencies of mechanical drawing encased in plexiglass sheets, the clouded light of dawn and the rudimentary text of the screenplay of an imaginary film sequence to speak […]

Anonymous Steel Worker

Anonymous Steel Worker | 2007Enamel screen print on stainless steel, 96 inches x 58.5 inchesMattress Factory, Pittsburgh (2007-08) Every factory has a time book. The time book is an index of the value of a worker’s time. It records hours, minutes and money, and acts as the memory machine of a factory. But time also […]

INSURANCE % INVESTMENT

Insurance%Investment  Three videos with sound tracks, wallpaper with photographic prints, 2007 Art of the Possible, Lunds Konsthall, Lund (2007) Insurance%Investment illustrates the mental arithmetic of investment and insurance, two mechanisms designed to administer, anticipate and forestall risk, speculation and the possibility of failure. Whirling motorcyclists in a fairground ‘well of death’, giant rotating fan blades, […]

Sightings & Four Figures

Sightings/ 2007 Altered photographs printed on vinyl. Series of 4, each 130 x 275 cm San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco (2007); 10th Istanbul Biennial (2007). Sightings is a photographic experiment with decaying architecture that suggests cartographic resonances. The images, taken together, seem to indicate the possibility of an entire map of the world that can […]

Just Passed Harmony

Just Passed Harmony Inkjet on galvanized aluminum. 18 x 182 cm Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh (2007-08) A long strip of galvanized steel bears the emboss of the high road, just past the town called harmony. On the way, possibly to Industry. 

The Mathematics of Anacoustic Reason

The Mathematics Of Anacoustic Reason Inkjet print, 182 x 120 cm Print containing images, text and mathematical symbols arranged in the form of an equation. “Out of the Equation: Roads to Reality” (a project curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist), NOW WHAT: Democracy and Contemporary Art, Space Hamilton and Insa Art Space, Seoul (2006) The Mathematics […]

With Respect to Residue

Sets of 4 Printed (Paper) Table Mats with gold pigment with maps and images | Installation with lightbox table, chair, ashtray, printed paper placemats Note: The work was first shown at the Liverpool Biennale, 2004 as Table Maps and then at 2nd Guangzhou Triennal, Guangzhou, China, 18 November 2005 – 15 January 2006 as an installation […]

The K.D.Vyas Correspondence

The KD Vyas Correspondence Vol. 1 is an installation that embodies an epistolary enigma. The basis of this work are a set of eighteen ‘letters’ between Raqs and a person or entity who is identified as K.D. Vyas, sometime redactor of the Mahabharata.

Ectropy Index

2005/ HTML The word “ectropy” means a general increase in organisation. It appears to have been developed in 196 by Willard V. Quine, a philosopher and mathematician, in the course of a series of discussions about information. It is now understood as an antonym of “entropy”. If entropy is the net increase in the tendency […]

 Erosion by Whispers

2005/ 2 lightboxes, galvanized wire, printed broadsheets, 66 x  76 x 13 cm | Exhibited at Ephemeral cities: A Project Space, Deptford X, London (2005) 

The Network of No_Des

The Network of No_Des HTML 12th International Symposium on Electronic Art (2004) “Nodes, when written, perhaps erroneously, as ‘no-des’ gives rise to an intriguing hybrid English/Eastern-Hindi neologism, a companion to the old words – ‘des’, and ‘par-des’. ‘Des‘ (in some eastern dialects of Hindi, spoken by many migrants to Delhi) is simply homeland or native place; ‘pardes’ suggests exile, and an alien […]

OPUS (Open Platform for Unlimited Signification)

OPUS (Open Platform for Unlimited Signification) Software | 2022 OPUS (Open Platform for Unlimited Signification) was an online space for people, machines, and codes to play and work together – to share, create and transform images, sounds, videos and texts. Opus was an attempt to create a digital commons in culture, based on the principle of […]