Reliquaries: The Remembered Self A Walkthrough with Artists Rithika Merchant and Suruchi Choksi

Rithika Merchant deals with creating mosaics of myths that question received histories that are available to us throughout culture. In 2008, she graduated with a Bachelors in Fine Arts from Parsons the New School for Design in New York. She has studied painting and conceptual practice at the Hellenic International Studies In The Arts in Paros, Greece. In 2008 she was a resident at the Convento Sao Francisco Mertola in Mertola, Portugal. Her recent projects include an international residency where she researched the folk culture of the native German speaking Swabians in Garana a village in Banaat region of Romania as a part of Arthouse Wolfberg/Garana where she was commissioned for a triptych for the regional art museum. She was a participant at the Swab Art Far in Barcelona. She has had two solo showings at Gallery Art and Soul, Bombay - “Origin of Species” in 2011, followed by “Mythography” in 2013. In 2014, she had a solo show “Encyclopaedia of the Strange” in Nuremberg, Germany. Her work was also included in multiple group shows at Stephen Romano Gallery in New York. She is currently preparing for her debut solo show in New York at Stephen Romano Gallery. Born in Bombay she now divides her time between Bombay and Barcelona.

Suruchi Choksi is a self-taught artist. She grapples with the issues of space, limits, absence and elsewhere. Her practice includes the creation of photographs, drawings, sculptures and installations. By applying abstraction, she creates images that are often just suggestions, referencing no recognizable form. She tries to absorb the tradition of archiving into daily practice and uses her art as a register of wordless narratives, working within an ambiguous space. She has had two solo shows, one showcasing paintings and mixed media in 2008 and the other displaying her video installation in 2014. Born in Calcutta, she lives and works in Bombay.