Rujuta Rao

Born in Goa, India in 1989, Rujuta Rao completed her MFA in interdisciplinary art from Parsons School of Design, New York, and her BFA in sculpture from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. Rao’s work spans sculpture, installation, performance, video, and sound art, alongside a parallel practice of conceptual and functional garments, which has grown into the company RUGA. Her practice is at once research-led and intensely personal, investigating the fragility and limitations of various everyday and specialized materials alongside themes and topics that she returns to cyclically. In habitually returning to subjects and materials over time, Rao challenges a linear and singular reading of her expansive artistic practice, and of our understanding of focus. While largely conceptual and abstract, her work addresses foundational questions of human existence, including of the nature of relationships, the edges of truth and fiction, and the fragmenting after-effects of trauma.