“Rithika's roots place her in Varanasi — an ancient site of funeral rites and sacred waters – where she was born, and her characters enter onto this stage. Her boldly coloured and symbolically charged works imagine alternate worlds rooted in the ethos of adventure, transformation, and recovery. Her research and practice engage with myth, ecology & science fiction to propose new intimacies between the human and more-than-human, intricately woven together in ritualised dynamism” – Silvia’s Mother.
Artist statement
“Rithika’s practice draws from the intersections of ecology, spirituality, and science fiction to imagine new intimacies between the human and more-than-human. Her worldbuilding finds shape through multiform modalities such as painting, writing, research, and installation that gaze into the feminine capacity to make and remake worlds, creating necessary imaginaries that go beyond apocalypse as an endpoint. The works in the exhibition navigate complex emotional terrains of collective grief and lamentation and observe it as sites of transformation. It follows along the significant and ongoing exploration in her work around the emerging concept of ‘erotic ecology’ coined by the biologist and philosopher Andreas Weber. A branch of ecological theory that gazes into the intimate entanglements between the human and the larger living ecologies of the non-human world. Rithika’s paintings then serve as grounds for embodied narratives gazing into the worldbuilding aspect of ‘desire’ that follows the alchemical transmutation of grief.”
Image credit: (detail) Rithika Pandey, ‘A moment of silence before my sublunar orbit’, courtesy Silvia’s Mother.
About the artist
Rithika is a contemporary visual artist based out of Mumbai, India. She graduated with a BA(Hons) in Fine Art from Carmarthen School of Art, Wales following her studies at Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore. She is currently participating at the Institute of Postnatural Studies for their Postnatural Independent Program. Recent solo and group exhibitions include: Birth of Forgiveness, solo show at Hymn of Creation, solo show at ADA, Rome, IT (2022); Only What Is, Never Another, solo show at Grosvenor Gallery, London, UK (2022); Protect Your Spirit, Nor Black Nor White x India Art Fair, Delhi, India (2024); Contested Bodies, The Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds, UK(2023); Hawala, Paradise Row Projects curated by Shezad Dawood, London, UK (2021); A New Art World, Guts Gallery, London, UK (2021) among others.
