Creative

Rakini Devi

She/her

Rakini Devi is an Australian multidisciplinary artist with an Indian-Burmese heritage. She integrates her knowledge of Indian Classical dance, painting, writing and live art. Her inquiry into the female body as symbol, using hybrid religious female iconography protests misogynist atrocities including female infanticide, dowry deaths and femicide, and are illustrated in her performances The Female Pope (Sydney, New York, Sweden Mexico), The Widow, The Two Madonnas (Mexico 2014, Kolkata 2019), Kali Madonna, and Urban Kali.

She completed a DCA (Doctor of Creative Arts, UOW) in 2018, presenting her exegesis, Urban Kali, From Sacred Dance to Secular Performance, and her doctoral presentation, Urban Kali.

Devi’s 2001 Australia Council Dance Fellowship, amongst other awards and subsequent overseas residencies and performances, contributed towards her practice and exploration of new intercultural performance methodologies.

In Australia, she has presented her live art installations at the MCA, AGNSW, The Lock Up, Carriageworks, and in venues in the US, Europe, Japan, Indonesia, and India. In 2021 she presented her first major art exhibition Inhabiting Erasures, embodying traces of the feminine at Articulate Gallery, Sydney.

In 2022 she presented The Female Pope at Monumental (AGNSW) and Reliquary Body for Sydney Contemporary (Carriageworks).

Rakini Devi

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