Dear friends,
We must share the sad news that at 6:15 am yesterday, Civitellian Kanishka Raja passed away peacefully in his sleep in the company of his parents and two cousins.
Kanishka Raja was a painter working across media, at the intersection of representation, craft, ornament and multiple textile and printing technologies. In interconnected bodies of work that consider the visual politics of neutral and contested territories and reflect the multivalent, multilayered hybridity of post colonial urban spaces, Raja’s paintings and their woven, scanned, printed, embroidered and reproduced counterparts interlock in complex visual fields charged with colliding realms of the foreign and the familiar.
The artist was born in Calcutta and lived and worked in New York and Kolkata. As per his wishes, In two months time, there will be a celebration of his life in New York.
In New York, Kanishka’s work is on view in the current group show at Experimenter/Bridget Donahue (https://www.bridgetdonahue.nyc/exhibitions/condo-new-york-experimenter-bridget-donahue/).
In Kolkata, his work will be in an exhibition at Experimenter in August.
His work will live on forever, and that is his gift to us. He was a great artist, friend, and loved-one. Join us in saying goodbye to a friend and comrade, across the two Bengals.