Solo exhibitions include (Upcoming) Terraformation, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, UK (2023); Festival of the Phoenix Sun, Galerie LJ, Paris (2022); TARQ, Mumbai, India (2021); Birth of a New World,  TARQ, Mumbai, India (2021); Mirror of the Mind, Gallery LJ, Paris, France (2019);Where the Water Takes Us, TARQ, Mumbai, India (2017); Ancestral Home, Galería Bien Cuadrado, Barcelona, Spain (2017); Intersections, Galeria Combustion Espontanea, Madrid, Spain (2016); Luna Tabulatorum, Stephan Romano Gallery, New York, U.S.A. (2015);  Reliquaries: The Remembered Self’, TARQ, Mumbai (avec Suruchi Choksi), India (2015); Encyclopedia of the Strange, Tiny Griffon Gallery, Nuremberg, Germany (2014); Mythography, Gallery Art & Soul, Mumbai, India (2013); Mitologia Comparada, Swab Art Fair, with Galeria Espai b, Barcelona, Spain (2012); Origin of Species, Gallery Art & Soul, Mumbai, India (2011); Worlds Within Words, Fabrica do Braco de Prata, Lisbon, Portugal (2009); Conversations With Myself, Pois. Cafe, Lisbon, Portugal (2009); Collection of Dreams, Convento Sao Francisco De Mertola, Mertola, Portugal (2008); 

 

Group exhibitions include Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka, Bangladesh (2023); Mining Mythology, Sarmaya Foundation, Mumbai, India (2022); Uprising, Schloss Görne, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2022); Asia Now, Paris, with Galerie LJ, France (2022); Art India, New Delhi, with Tarq Mumbai, India (2022); CFHILL, Stockholm, Mentors, curated by Sanra Weil, also with Olafur Eliassion, The Gee’s Bend, Marie-Louise Eckman Miki Krastman, Anne Samat and Barbara Kruger (2021); Sovereign Asian Art Prize Finalist Exhibition, Hong Kong (2021); In Orbit, Two Person Show, Rachel Garrad and Rithika Merchant, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2021); DESSIN art fair, with Galerie LJ, Paris, France (2021); Metamorphosis, Two Person Show with Benoît Huot, Brussels, Belgium (2021); Work in Progress, Galeria Bien Cuadrado, Barcelona, Spain (2019); Chloe Couture, National Art Museum of Ukraine, Kiev, Ukraine (2019); Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam / The World Is One Family, Kolkata Centre For Creativity, Emami Art, Kolkata, India (2019); The Dot that went for a walk, The Royal Opera House, Mumbai, India (2019); Spring!, Galerie LJ, Paris, France (2019); Breaking Barriers, Jehangir Art Gallery / Gallery Art & Soul, Mumbai, India (2018); We See You, We Hear You, The Hospital Club Gallery, London, U.K. (2018); Fashion Inside and Out, The Michelangelo Foundation, Venice, Italy (2018); Homo Faber, Michelangelo Foundation, Venice; Italy (2018); Portal, October Gallery, London, UK (2018); Sensorium / The End Is Only The Beginning, Sunaparanta, Goa Centre for the Arts, Goa (2018); India Art Fair, with TARQ, New Delhi, India (2018); State of Art Mazda Space, with galleria Bien Cuadrado and Barcelona Young Gallery Weekend, Barcelona, Spain (2017); This Burning Land Belongs To You, Swiss Cottage Gallery, London, UK (2017); The talk between worms and the stars, The New Gallery, Calgary, Canada (2017); G / rove Latitude 28, New Delhi, India (2017); Roots of Healing, Northrup Gallery, Goldstein Museum of Design, Minneapolis, Minnesota (2017); Gallery III, Stephen Romano Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A. (2016); Romania Statim Finis, Stephen Romano Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A. (2016). 

This series of works is the latest development of an ongoing narrative in which Merchant draws on her imagination and the ancient knowledge of nature to consider how humanity might leave behind traditional ways of existing to evolve across different spaces, times, and dimensions. Her creatures, in their various guises, can be seen as proxies for us, caught in various stages of becoming. In Cosmic Crucible, for example, the recurring figure with the head of a vulture – a representation of humanity in its current state – is pictured passing through a portal that seems to separate the polluted past and a more fertile future. This process requires the figure to relinquish not only their current environment but also their physicality – as they move through a kind of nebulous membrane, they are rendered weightless and transparent. The motif of the eyes floating within space and attached to tentacle-like tendrils, meanwhile, are, as throughout Merchant’s practice, symbols of a higher consciousness. In this way, the work can be seen not only as a literal imagining of a voyage to a new world, but also as a psychological journey towards greater peace and enlightenment.

 

Similarly, the painting titled The Requiem depicts the death of the body while also signalling an entrance into a new kind of life. Red-painted tendrils extend from the deceased figure, some reaching down to a landscape defined by barren trees and erupting volcanoes while others appear to have been severed from that vision. There is a joyousness to the scene – the platform on which the body lays is sprouting flowers while the surrounding characters carry branches and celestial orbs. They are, perhaps, guides from another planet, leading the body on its first steps to rebirth.

‘My work is an act of self-soothing, a way of helping me to see hope in the future,’ says Merchant. That hopefulness is found in and described through nature. Her creatures appear wrapped in vines and leaves, while the desaturated colour palette, interspersed with more vivid hues, recalls the aesthetics of botanical illustrations. Plant Medicine, depicting a deity-like figure growing plants and mushrooms, makes the most direct reference to this idea of healing, with mirrored imagery and a central circular motif symbolising balance, but it is also conveyed in complex works such as The Albatross. Here, like in Cosmic Crucible and The Requiem, we encounter a creature caught in a state of transformation – the matter spilling from its mouth perhaps representing the purging of its past life, while the birds are symbols of good luck as well as mediators between the earthly and spiritual realms.

 

In these works, Merchant is playing on the scientific idea of terraforming – of deliberately modifying the atmosphere and ecology of another planet to make it habitable for humans to live on – to not only remind us of our ability to influence the environments that surround us, but also that we have the power to change things for the better by reflecting on our past behaviours and drawing on the wisdom of the natural world. Each of these delicate paintings is an invitation to think more imaginatively, to welcome transformation and to seek more harmonious ways of living.