Radhika was born in Kolkata in 1985. She currently lives and works in Goa. She is a multi-disciplinary artist exploring environmental ecologies, preservation and consciousness. Her practice spans across sculpture, installation, drawing and painting.
Radhika Agarwala has completed her MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London (2011), MFA in Painting from School of Fine Art, University of Florida (2010) and Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Painting from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2008) followed by BFA in Painting from Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata (2007). She lived and worked in London until 2014.
Her works have been exhibited for ‘Planetary Scale’, curated by Jasone Miranda-Bilbao at Filet, London (2024) , Art Dubai at Latitude 28 (2022) ,'When The Other Stares Back' , curated by Adwait Singh at Kaee Contemporary, Kolkata (2022), 'Memory Leaves' ,Curated by Uma Nair at Art Exposure, Kolkata (2022), ‘All The Days and Nights’ at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2020), with Latitude 28 at Delhi Contemporary Art Week (2021-2017), India Art Fair (2023,2022,2019 & 2018); ‘Babur ki Gai’ (2018) and ‘G/rove’ (2017), 'Participate', Asians Arts Initiative (2014). Solo exhibits include 'For Two Lovers' (2013) & 'Encounter' (2012) at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London.
Artist residencies include 'Ancestral Futures', Galaxidi, Greece, initiative led by curator Damian Christinger (2023),Kaee Kolkata City Lab (KKCL), initiative by curator Premjish Achari, Kaee Contemporary (2023) , Atelierhaus Salzamt, Austria & Casa Dell'Arte, Turkey (2013). She has participated in the Saatchi Gallery Auction, London (2012) and was shortlisted for the 100 Painters of Tomorrow, by Kurt Beers, Cecily Brown & Jack Klein and Threadneedle Prize for Painting and Sculpture, UK (2013), Scholarship from Goldsmiths, University of London, Annual Scholarship from University OF Florida School of Art + Art History, U.S.A and Merit Scholarship from School of The Art Institute of Chicago.
“Radhika’s work contemplates humanity's relationship to the natural world with visual wonderment. Her approach is wide-ranging, a transhistorical approach that traces kinships and affinities between artistic methods and practices, to create new layers of meaning to bridge the present and past. What emerges is a historical narrative that is built around forms of symbiosis, solidarity, and human hood. Her works transcends the graph of time and many of the stories told in Radhika’s time capsules thus participate in the complex process of rewriting and rereading ecological history that has marked the last few months, when it has become clearer than ever that no historical narrative can ever be considered final. We are introduced to post human ecologies spanning nature’s moods. The devolved and dispersed character of human agency and moral responsibility in the contemporary condition appears linked with the deepening global trauma of ‘in-humanism’ as a paradox of the Anthropocene for Radhika. Reclaiming human agency and accountability is crucial and critical for collective resistance to the unprecedented state of environmental and social collapse resulting from the inhumanity of contemporary capitalist geopolitics. Understanding the potential for such resistance in the post-human condition requires urgent new thinking about the nature of human influence in complex interactional systems, and about the nature of such systems when conceived in a non-anthropocentric way.
Radhika’s oeuvre is a visual vernacular that emerges from a thoughtful , deliberately in-depth engagement. Conceived like time capsules, it provides additional tools of investigation and introspection, weaving a web of references and echoes that link the past and the present. ‘’