BIO
Born in Sri Lanka in 1983, Raki Nikahetiya and his parents left the country during times of civil war. They moved to Austria, and reality ruptured between two cultural poles. He studied Economics in Vienna and started working as a photojournalist, before joining the United Nations in 2009. After a five year posting and a cache of experience in international development work, he moved to London. He continued his engagement in trade development and environmental conservation in Asia and Africa before fully focussing on his art practice. Now working and traversing between New Delhi, London, Vienna and Colombo, Raki focuses on interdisciplinary exploration. Self-taught in documentary photography he started his interdisciplinary path after completing a foundation course at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. As an artist with a migrant background, the documentary aspect focused on individual as well as collective heritage, culture and identity.
Today his interdisciplinary work pushes this further through the use of photographic negatives, traditional and digital painting, use of artisanal handwork, land art as well as scientific processes. Raki is interested in the interdisciplinary approach as a tool to depict interconnectivity of things and the interdependency between different realms - to question our understanding of self and what we accept as reality. Raki is the co-founder of sā, the highest land art Biennale in Asia.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I am interested in memory and in objects. They influence the creation of identity, culture and belonging. How do we construct value, reality, meaning, culture? What do we accept as the self and what as our origins?
Growing up as an (im)migrant deeply changed the way I saw the world and led me into an interdisciplinary path in my process. My work lies in the intersection of classical visual art, process oriented abstraction, traditional handcrafts and scientific exploration. I am interested in ancient embroidery and marble in-lay techniques as well as digital painting methods. I use land art to connect to surroundings, culture and soil. I use photographic negatives and electron microscope photography to unsee. My interdisciplinary pursuit is to find the most suitable processes and means to express, discover and explore the fundamental questions in my practice.