KANISHKA RAJA

Raja was deeply interested and influenced by handloom textile weaving, having grown up within a family steeped in textile design and weaving, a craft needing exceptional control and skill, and whose fundamental structure underlay in the grid – a form that was a consistent source of exploration. Raja also played several field sports growing up, and remained interested in them, especially because these sports are defined by lines and rules that qualify these lines.

At the core of the exhibition is one of Raja’s initial visions of a series of pandals that he envisioned in drawings, notes, sketches and digital renditions, influenced by the Durga Puja pandals in Kolkata that appear every year in the city, bringing art, craft, public and private space, music, installation and interactivity. Together with the musician Mike Ladd, a long-standing collaborator, he created soundscapes for these pandals sourced from the ambient, deeply contextually loaded and layered sounds.

Kanishka Raja straddled multiple worlds simultaneously. Acutely erudite in music and equally conversant in literature, politics, philosophy and history, he was an artist who could lead the viewer to enter his work from different points of view and emerge from it with several kaleidoscopic visions of how we may understand our world. Ground Control sheds light on Raja’s multiform practice, underscoring a constant pursuit in plurality of thought, materials and processes that held influential positions in his life and work.

Kanishka Raja (1970 – 2018) born in Kolkata. Lived and worked in New York and Kolkata.