Sahana Ramakrishnan
Sun Dog, 2025
Oil, acrylic, graphite and gold leaf on canvas
12 x 11 in
30.5 x 27.9 cm
30.5 x 27.9 cm
For its debut at India Art Fair, Rajiv Menon Contemporary will present recent drawings, paintings, and mixed media works by Nibha Akireddy, Shyama Golden, Melissa Joseph, Gisela McDaniel, Rajni Perera, Sahana Ramakrishnan, Maya Seas, Devi Seetharam, and Tarini Sethi—artists whose practices question, complicate, and reframe diasporic visibility on their own terms.
This marks a pivotal expansion for the gallery following Non-Residency, its critically lauded India debut at the Jaipur Centre for Art. Reinforcing its role as a leading interlocutor between South Asia and the West, the gallery will present a powerful, color-driven booth of diasporic female artists at one of the most consequential art fairs in the region.
The presentation examines the color palette of the diaspora as both cultural inheritance and a site of resistance. Reclaiming hues long exoticized in Western visual regimes—mango, marigold, and mehndi—the drawings and paintings on view each use color as both critical
material and expressive language. Rather than reiterating reductive tropes, the nine artists in the booth expand visual possibility while critiquing the limited lens through which South Asia has historically been viewed.
The booth features works by regional artists—Devi Seetharam and Tarini Sethi—alongside diasporic Indian artists—Nibha Akireddy, Shyama Golden, Melissa Joseph, Rajni Perera, Sahana Ramakrishnan, Maya Seas— who currently reside in North America. The gallery will also mark the India debut of Gisela McDaniel, an American visual artist of Indigenous Chamorro descent whose breakthrough institutional exhibition at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art this year signals her rapid ascent. Rajiv Menon Contemporary is proud to introduce McDaniel’s urgent and intimate work to Indian audiences, further enlarging the booth’s conversation across geographies and histories.
At the intersection of global contemporary discourse and diasporic cultural exchange, the presentation rearticulates notions of color, identity, and the narratives that bind and divide worlds.
