Artist explores society, gender through personal narratives
"The Future Is Not My Gender" is a multidisciplinary exhibition showing different renditions of fabric and paper using drawings paper maché tie-dye and embroidery.
It is on at the Vahdera Art Gallery here till August 18.
It includes a large body of textile and embroidery works sculptures and twenty four monotypes selected from a larger series of three hundred prints.
The fabric works are mostly made with old garments of the artist s family and friends.
"This is a moment in a long-term exploration of expressing the aspects of my reality that are outside the material world " the Bengaluru-based artist said about the exhibition.
Rajiv described the prints as a "cathartic series" made while living in Melbourne.
Some drawings also weave visuals with verbal interjections -- sharp observations around gender and sexuality within the larger social context.
"With a strong inclination towards the spontaneously created "hand-made" works the exhibition accommodates the imaginative observational and autobiographical " Vahdera Art Gallery said in a statement.
Rajiv who narrates not verbally but visually says the "need for the visual arises from a need to communicate but this need to communicate remains outside the realm of verbal languages".
Rajiv was the recipient of the Emerging Artist Award (EAA) 2016 awarded by the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA) in collaboration with Pro Helvetia the Swiss Arts Council.
The exhibition is a culmination of the award process including a three-month residency in Switzerland in 2017.
--IANS sj/mag/vm