Fragmented identity and multiple perspectives give Raghava K K the material for his art.
Ever since Raghava K K was named one of the “10 most fascinating people you’ve never heard of” by CNN in 2010, people — from musician Bob Dylan to actress Meg Ryan to former US Vice-President Al Gore — have been curious to know more about him.
You, too, can examine Raghava’s work. His solo exhibition, “Exquisite Cadaver”, is on at the Art Musings Gallery in Colaba until November 30.
Raghava, 31, is known for his watercolours painted with hands and feet, and has constantly looked for new ways to express himself. Among other things, he developed an iPad application (or “app”) to teach children, through art, about same-sex parenting. With Yann Vasnier, a French perfumer, he created paintings based on his interpretations of Vasnier’s scents. This year he collaborated with singer-songwriter Paul Simon to create art while Simon sang.
Raghava describes his current work, on show in “Exquisite Cadaver”, as a series that emanated from a diasporic dilemma. “I perform many roles — artist, Indian, American, father, husband, parent, child, student, teacher,” says Raghava, who shifted to New York from Bangalore in 2008. “Even within the art world, I am a thinker, a philosopher, an ingénue, and also a seller of beauty, a businessman, a politician. So fragmented is my identity that I find it rather caricatured to identify with any one predominant role.”
The self-taught artist, who started as a cartoonist in 1997, says he has always been interested in the “uses and purposes of history”. To Raghava, history is not an authentic form of record-keeping. “It is, rather, a fabulous imaging tool,” and he uses it in “Exquisite Cadaver”.
“My wife Netra Srikanth is a history teacher at a public school here in New York,” he says in an email interview. “I never cared for history, until after a series of arguments with Netra I came to realise that history is a beautiful tool for image-building and to offer dignity to a people. Now I see the act of writing history as a creative act. I also think it is impossible to have a story without a bias. We are all biased. We can, however, make people realise that it’s only a point of view. I’m happy to help shape this generation in my own little way by offering stories with multiple perspectives.”
His own perspective changed drastically when he moved abroad four years ago. It transformed him as an artist, he says. As he travelled more, he says he became aware of what “you are not”: “You explore the negative space around you. You start becoming a caricature of what you are in order to assert your difference. I am more ‘Indian’ when I am here in New York City, and I am more aware of my American traits when I am there in India.”
From his body of work it appears as though one of his objectives as an artist is to make his life an art. Is that true? “Yes,” he says, “I always believe in living art. [...] I’m happy to dream and construct worlds within worlds but at the same time I have to dirty my hands. I believe I’m not an artist by profession but an artist by life — in that art for me is the tool of life-exploration.”
