Indian American artist Raghava KK will return to New York in December with Calling All Gods, a solo exhibition at Parsons School of Design featuring two monumental paintings exploring the relationship between Indian dharma and American liberty.
The exhibition will open to the public on Monday, Dec. 14, at 7 p.m. at the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery, located at 66 Fifth Avenue, at 13th Street in Manhattan. It will remain on view for three months.
According to an advance announcement released by Raghava KK Studio on Nov. 6, the exhibition marks Raghava’s first institutional solo show in New York in more than a decade. The two paintings, which took four years to complete, are each approximately the size of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica and will be displayed together on one gallery wall.
The exhibition centers on two works, Vishwaroopa and La Liberté de Guernica, which examine cultural identity, belief, freedom and the contradictions shaping contemporary life.
Vishwaroopa, an acrylic painting measuring 12.5 by 26 feet, brings together Hindu goddess Kali, the Infant Jesus, actor Rajinikanth, Donald Duck, Spider-Man and several other figures in a single cosmic composition. The painting draws on the concept of Vishwaroopa, the universal form of Lord Krishna described in the Bhagavad Gita. The artist’s interpretation brings religious figures and popular cultural icons into the same visual space, challenging conventional distinctions between the sacred and the everyday.
The second work, La Liberté de Guernica, measures 11.5 by 23.5 feet and is part of Raghava’s decade-long Guernica Project, which reinterprets Picasso’s 1937 anti-war painting.
The work depicts a woman standing amid rubble alongside a two-headed tiger. Drawing on conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and Myanmar, the painting explores the meaning of liberty in a world marked by continuing violence and uncertainty.
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“Liberty is what you do with your hands while the tiger is still there,” Raghava said, describing the work.
The exhibition brings together two inheritances that have shaped the artist’s life: dharma, associated with the country where he was raised, and liberty, associated with the country where he has spent half his life. “None of this is about belief. It is about standing in the middle of a contradiction without falling over,” Raghava said in the exhibition announcement.
Alongside the paintings, the exhibition will feature a collection of toys and zines created by the artist. The toys represent figures of power reimagined at a child’s height, while the zines document ideas and reflections developed throughout his artistic practice.
Raghava will present the exhibition in his voice, without a curator, in an academic setting. He has also produced a book titled Calling All Gods: The Guernica Project for the exhibition, tracing the ideas and personal experiences behind the two paintings. The exhibition is being presented by Parsons School of Design in collaboration with Volte Art Projects.
Born in Bengaluru, Raghava began his career as a newspaper cartoonist at 17 before moving into contemporary art. His multidisciplinary practice includes painting, sculpture, performance, conceptual art and technology-driven projects.
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He has delivered five TED talks and was inducted into the National Geographic Society as an Emerging Explorer. He also co-curated an exhibition of AI-generated art in 2018 and became the first Indian artist to sell an NFT at Sotheby’s in October 2021, according to his official biography.
Raghava has worked between Bengaluru and New York, with his practice exploring identity, culture, technology and the ways people understand the world through different perspectives.
The December 14 opening will be open to the public. The studio is also offering interviews with the artist by phone or video ahead of the exhibition and in person in New York from the first week of December.