Rithika Merchant's 'Pillars of Fruit and Bone' Series Builds a Speculative Cosmology
Rithika Merchant, a contemporary artist, presents her newest series, 'Pillars of Fruit and Bone,' marking the fifth chapter in her expansive mythology. Utilizing watercolor, gouache, and collage on paper, this series transitions from themes of collapse to the imagination of innovative survival systems. Merchant poetically delves into Abiogenesis, illustrating hybrid entities that merge the lines between organisms and their surroundings. Her symbols and creatures encourage viewer interpretation, suggesting avenues for nurturing a new world influenced by engineered pollination and self-organizing ecosystems. Engaging with the Anthropocene's ecological truths, the series reflects on cyclical processes and reconsiders historical concepts. Key pieces include 'Exoskeleton' (2024), 'The Observatory' (2025), 'Aerial Superstructure I' (2023), 'Regolith' (2023), and 'Silo' (2023), with installation views set for 2025.
Key facts
- Rithika Merchant's 'Pillars of Fruit and Bone' is the fifth part of a sequential, world-building mythology
- The series uses watercolor, gouache, and collage on paper
- Works shift focus from understanding collapse to constructing new systems
- Merchant draws on Abiogenesis as a poetic and metaphysical proposition
- Hybrid beings blur distinctions between organism and environment, body and cosmos
- The artist employs a personal lexicon of universally recognizable symbols
- Works propose systems inspired by engineered pollination and ant colony ecosystems
- The series engages with ecological realities of the Anthropocene
Entities
Artists
- Rithika Merchant
Institutions
- My Modern Met