Rithika Merchant – Triennial (QAGOMA)

Seventy artists, collectives and projects from more than 30 countries feature in the eleventh chapter of the flagship Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) exhibition series, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art.

Rithika Merchant: 

Meet Triennial artist Rithika Merchant.

From Mumbai, India, Merchant crafts vivid worlds where mythology, science, and speculative fiction intertwine. Her work brims with creatures and symbols that form her personal visual vocabulary.

For the Triennial, her latest series, ‘Terraformation’ 2022–23, envisions beings venturing beyond Earth, reshaping new planets into habitable realms. The fantasy softly veils the reality of our own threatened world, where the eventual need to seek survival elsewhere in the universe seems as impossible as living harmoniously together in our present.

She has us wondering… in imagining far-off possibilities, perhaps we can reimagine our own world, here in the present?

Step into Merchant’s otherworldly watercolours at QAG, and let your imagination take flight.

P.S. Little dreamers can help shape new worlds in ‘If the Seeds Chose Where to Grow’ 2024, an enchanting interactive at GOMA’s Children’s Art Centre.

The Triennial is free entry.

FIND OUT MORE HERE: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art