The exhibition showcases four different series of works, executed since 2011, up until 2015. Some of these works have graphic, linear quality of drawing, and a few others, voluminous three-dimensionality. The works are executed and installed, occupying three-dimensional space, floor, walls, ceiling, and are accompanied with soundscapes.
These works evolved from Rakhi's ongoing interest in the relationship between the human body, its capacity to sustain repetitive techniques and its ability to acquire skills and language. As a series with no first or last elements, these works contemplate craft from an action to a state within continuity, an expansive and evolving language, grounded in an ever-changing site, the human body. Endurance and cultivation of this language is through discipline, rigor, repetition and care of the self.
Just as the values of the craftsman have diminished from the world around us, the definitions of craftsmanship have slowly shifted. The root words - cræft, (Old English), chraft (Old High German), referred to power, physical strength, might, virtue of the body. In its modern and contemporary usage, the word is bereft of this early connotation, integral to the human body. The works shown here are reminders of this early implication of craft with the body.
The show amalgamates three tentative zones; Craft as a ‘meaningless’, provocative activity in today’s world, as an intimate condition, and as a necessary and unavoidable body process. From an exercise in foolery and subversion, to a composition in our nerves,the works explore the body as an active site for the play of Craft.