Shubigi Rao: All Our Elephants Are in Rooms
In her first exhibition in the United States, Rao will present the newest chapter in Pulp. Amplifying individual acts of resistance, solidarity, and witnessing, Rao’s work deconstructs the destruction of knowledge as a calculated element of war, oppression, genocide, and even ecocide to reveal histories of power and stubborn survival. At the Harnett Museum of Art, Rao will shift her focus beyond human agency to explore how we make sense of the natural world by integrating wondrous objects—rocks, minerals, ceramics, and other specimens—from the Lora Robins Gallery natural history collection.
Shubigi Rao (born Mumbai, India, 1974) is an artist, writer, and filmmaker working with histories and lies, literature and violence, ecologies and natural history, libraries and knowledge hierarchies. She makes layered installations of books, etchings, drawings, pseudo-scientific machines, metaphysical puzzles, video, ideological board games, garbage, and archives. Her films, art, and books critically, wittily, and poetically scrutinize current and historical flashpoints and crises of displacement, of people, languages, cultures, and knowledge bodies. Her current 'Pulp' project has won the 2018 APB Signature Prize Juror's Choice Award and the Singapore Literature Prize for nonfiction twice (2020 and 2024). Recent solos include a year-long solo at Bildmuseet, Sweden, and exhibitions at Tensta Konsthall, Sweden, Ngutu Kaka Gallery, New Zealand, Rockbund Art Museum, China, and Rossi & Rossi Gallery, Hong Kong. She was also featured in the Sharjah Biennale, Asia-Pacific Triennial, March Meets, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Taipei Biennial, Singapore Biennale, Auckland Writers Festival, Umea Littfest, and Singapore Writers Festival, among others. Rao represented Singapore at the National Pavilion in the 2022 Venice Biennale with the third installment of the Pulp project. She was the Artistic Director for the 2022 Kochi-Muziris Biennale.
Shubigi Rao is organized by the University of Richmond Museums and is curated by Orianna Cacchione, Deputy Director and Curator of Exhibitions. Major support for the exhibition is provided by the Booth Endowment for the Arts.