Raqs Media Collective

Raqs Media Collective (Jeebesh Bagchi, b.1965, New Delhi, Monica Narula, b. 1969, New Delhi, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, b. 1968, New Delhi) have been variously described as artists, media practitioners, curators, researchers, editors and catalysts of cultural processes. Their work is located at the intersections of contemporary art, historical enquiry, philosophical speculation, research and theory, often taking the form of installations, online and offline media objects, performances and encounters. Raqs follow their self-declared imperative of ‘kinetic contemplation’ to produce work that demands the viewer look anew at what they take for granted. Myths and histories of diverse provenances, a deep ambivalence towards modernity and a quiet but consistent critique of the operations of power and property inform their diverse oeuvre. 

In 2015, Raqs interrupted the Giardini at the Venice Biennale with Coronation Park, an assemblage of plinths, sculptures and plaques. These fragments of ceremonial regalia, residues of authoritative stances and the accoutrements of dematerialized power commemorate neither victory nor defeat. They offer nine meditations on hubris and a provocation to think about power's deepest anxiety: the inevitability of abdication. These formations are annotated by statements adapted from George Orwell's parable about the brittleness of Imperial authority, Shooting an Elephant (1936). Orwell is also a touchstone for their video Provisions for Everybody (2018), which travels between abandoned coal seams in Northern England and an incomplete bridge in East Champaran, India to mark two cardinal points in the compass of Orwell’s life.

In 2023 the collective was invited to a residency at The Cosmic House, London where they realised the film work The Bicyclist Who Fell into a Time Cone (2023), commissioned by The Jencks Foundation. The film is a poetic reflection on perceptions of a particular moment in history while moving through time, past and present, interrogating varied geographies of perceived centres and peripheries.