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Rajni Perera

@rajniperera

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In Minor Keys @labiennale May 9 - Nov 22
Himoya @tselinnycenter Oct 15 - Apr 4
@kunsthallema Nov 12 - Mar 7

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‘Dark Matter’ continues a thread of inquiry into the historical and mythological relevance of the serpent as a descriptor-in-place for the notion of antimatter or dark matter, which appears to hold the universe together in the shape we know and recognize today. All non-western cultures have solid, beautiful theoretical frameworks in place to explain what is observable yet intangible. In many cases these explanations join hands with mythology, especially in relation to the cosmos.

Past works investigating the idea including ‘Joyous Procession/Infinite Serpent’, and ‘Waiting for Sanni Yaka’. I am deeply fascinated by pre-scientific attempts at describing the natural world and although most needed more time 🙂 some still hold true today, in a much more colourful and playful way that the finality of contemporary scientific research and discourse doesn’t necessarily fulfill.

Slide 2: Dark Matter as installed in the exhibition Dhum Lōkaya, @rajivmenoncontemporary in Los Angeles (home of the Griffith Observatory 🤩) in October.

Slide 6: The Back :)

Dark Matter | 8’ X 12’ | polyester, aluminum, acrylic and acrylic gouache paint, polymer clay, cotton and polyester thread, glass and freshwater pearls

Thanks to dear techs @ualthum and @keithakeeshigtobias ✨

📸 @raidendingo

🌌🌌🌌 by @rajniperera

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4 months ago

We are pleased to announce Rajni Perera’s Primitive has been acquired by the Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art for its permanent collection.

This highly ambitious work was included in her solo exhibition Dhum Lōkaya (Smoke World), at the gallery last fall.

We extend our gratitude to everyone at LACMA ––including Michael Govan, Dhyandra Lawson, Susie Ferrell, Clarissa Esguerra, and Rachel Du—for their engagement and care in bringing this work into the collection, and our most heartfelt thanks to Preetha Nooyi, for her generous support that made this acquisition possible.

We are thrilled to announce this major milestone in advance of Rajni’s forthcoming participation in the 61st Biennale di Venezia, where she is included in In Minor Keys, curated by Koyo Kouoh. taken in LACMA Los Angeles County Museum of Art by @rajniperera

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6 months ago

#wip “Knife” @expochicago

🌞 by @rajniperera

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3 years ago

POINTS OF ENTRY — Rajni Perera: South Asian Futurism
What does the future look like on a planet becoming harder to inhabit?
In Rajni Perera’s world, the future arrives in extraordinary forms: hybrid bodies, elaborate headgear, sculptural masks, armour and richly layered adornment. Her futuristic Travellers seem to have crossed vast distances, carrying traces of other worlds—and of the histories that made them leave.
Born in Sri Lanka and based in Toronto, Perera draws on mythology, science fiction, ancestral knowledge and the experience of diaspora to imagine beings who exist beyond the boundaries of familiar identities. Her Travellers offer a kind of South Asian futurism, where the future is shaped by cultural memory as much as by speculation.
Their masks and elaborate headpieces are particularly striking. They suggest protection from hostile environments, but also transformation: ways of moving through unfamiliar worlds while concealing, enhancing or reinventing the self. These figures are not simply visitors from some distant tomorrow. They evoke migrants navigating uncertain terrain, adapting to new conditions while carrying parts of their histories with them.
Perera’s concept of “Pollution Wear” brings this imagined future into sharper focus. Clothing and bodily protection become responses to a world altered by environmental damage. The boundary between fashion, armour and survival begins to dissolve. What might look fantastical becomes unsettlingly plausible when we consider the air we breathe, the landscapes we inhabit, and the people most exposed to environmental precarity.
I’m drawn to the way Perera makes these futures so visually extravagant. Her figures are strange, beautiful and formidable, adorned for worlds we can barely imagine. Yet their presence feels grounded in the realities of migration, ecological crisis and the ongoing negotiation between inherited identity and transformation.
Here, the future doesn’t mean leaving the past behind. It means carrying memory into unfamiliar territory—and finding new ways to survive, adapt and become.
#RajniPerera #ContemporaryArt #DiasporaArt #womenartists #sciencefiction by @rajniperera

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9 days ago

‘Heritage Sports’ (2026) booth of @naturemorte_india curated by @ddotpalmer for this past @thearmoryshow in NY

Heritage sports remarks on the absurd nature of identity performance in contemporary art and other cultural arenas. While immigrant culture is, and has always been, multifaceted and subtly complex, the phenomenon of performing one’s ethnicity in colonizing nations remains alive and well, and can be likened with all its simplifying theatrics to a circus of sorts. This allows the colonizing nation to continue consuming other cultures.

5’ x 7’ | acrylic gouache, freshwater pearls, glass pearls, polymer clay beads and cotton and polyester thread on polyester, aluminum | photo courtesy of the artist (2026)

Beading help from the amazing @keithakeeshigtobias

👹👹👹 by @rajniperera

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12 days ago

Happily returning to @thearmoryshow this year at the Javits Centre, NY.

New work in the booth of @naturemorte_india ✨ taken in Javits Center by @rajniperera

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a month ago

Being this weird is a full time job

#wip for a busy fall and winter

👹 by @rajniperera

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a month ago

“I am interested in the story of who is alive after we burn the world.”

-Rajni Perera

Dark Opacities Lab Director Balbir K Singh has a chapter in the recently published Fashion and Literature anthology, edited by Elizabeth Sheehan. Drawn from her book manuscript “Militant Bodies: Race/Religion and the Art of Opaque Matter,” Singh writes on the brilliant work of artist Rajni Perera. Close reading Perera’s 2020 photo-essay “A Primordial Culture,” Singh theorizes divine adornment to consider how Perera’s work illustrates methods of climate conscious navigation of our coming and current worlds, especially for the racialized, the feminine, and the migrant. Donned in Nep Sidhu’s Paradise Sportif drip—which Singh has written about previously—Perera’s work catalyzed thinking and writing for this chapter, and Singh is excited to have this chapter out. Special thanks as always to Rajni Perera, Nep Sidhu, and Elizabeth Sheehan. by @rajniperera

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a month ago

So excited to be a part of the upcoming exhibition ‘Himoya’ at the stunning @tselinnycenter in Almaty, Kazakhstan running from October 15th 2026, to April 4th 2027, curated by Natasha Ginwala.

From the Tselinny site: “Across multiple linguistic traditions, Himoya evokes protection, shelter, guardianship, and the defence of vulnerability. Reading this notion anew, the exhibition and its embodied research, workshops and learning programme attune to oracular knowledge systems and ancestral intelligence as constellations inherent to cultural production and artmaking today. Himoya charts intersecting paths that renew artistic relations with matrilineal energies, anti-imperial cosmologies and environmental custodianship while navigating colonial tensions, ideological erasures, and civic repression evidenced in epic losses of languages, rites, and localized ways of life. 20 artists actively involved with these areas participate with newly commissioned projects, site-responsive and existing works.

Through sculpture, moving image, installation, painting, textile, performance, and sound, the participating artists engage questions of shame, migration, historical traumadreaming, societal transformation, and collective survival. Together, they propose alternative forms of relation rooted in reciprocity, devotional protocols, reparative justice, and matriarchal memory."
-Natasha Ginwala

Participating artists: Ahmed Umar, Almagul Menlibayeva, Ana María Millán, Areez Katki, Aziza Kadyri, Citra Sasmita, Guzel Zakir, Haegue Yang, Hoa Dung Clerget, Jazgul Madazimova, Nara Beibit, NAOMI, Oyjon Khayrullayeva, Radina Yasueva, Rajni Perera, Rithika Pandey, Thania Petersen, Umida Akhmedova, Yelaman Muqtarkhan, Zilola Saidova.

Exhibition design by Diogo Passarinho Studio @diogopassarinhostudio and poster design by @isulu.design

See you in Almaty!

🦋🦋🦋 taken in Almaty, Kazakhstan by @rajniperera

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2 months ago

‘I Dreamt I Visited Earth’ tells the story of an off-world predecessor with blood memory of a now long-uninhabitable planet.

Smells of mutated pollen and the feeling of gentle, poisonous wind come to them in a dream, leaving them with confusing and sweet feelings of nostalgia.

36” x 48” | acryl-gouache, gel pen, chalk, charcoal on stretched paper | 2026

Private commission

🧬🧬🧬 by @rajniperera

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2 months ago

‘Ancestor 1’ and ‘Ancestor 2’ (2019) safely back in the exquisite home of Anjli and Parambir (and sweetest babas ever).

The works toured throughout Canada in the travelling exhibition ‘FUTURES’ put together by the @mcmichaelgallery in the museum’s longest touring show to date.

‘FUTURES’ included the series ‘Traveller’, among others, which asks questions (and fantasizes) about the future of borders, immigration, the global south, climate catastrophe, mutation, and the fall of capitalist white supremacy. The works ‘Ancestor 1’ and ‘Ancestor 2’ introduce the idea of a timeline into the Traveller series and attempts to historicize and memorialize fictional ‘pioneers’ in a speculated renaissance of space travel after the end of militarization. Throughout the series, the spectacle of power makes itself present and insists on an opulent, victorious and fruitful outcome, following a final skirmish for the planet itself.

🧬 by @rajniperera

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2 months ago

Hi everyone! Just wanted to share something I’ve been working on recently, that I’ve been kinda shy about on my page ☺️

This year on January 1st, with the love and care of many, myself and an incredible board of directors opened the artist-run nonprofit @capsulesstudio in the Bathurst and Dupont Neighbourhood. We were able to take the place of Space Unltd as it unfortunately closed - and by mixing many revenue streams, and a few art angels flying around us! the space began to take its first form: a pilot space to prove a new type of artist run centre no longer fully dependant on the grant system. What we wanted to highlight is that by making the resources and skills of a few available to the many, careers, security and stability for artists, and most importantly community, begin to move forward and make cities beautiful and interesting to be in. And a stronger foundation begins to show itself.

As a dedicated maker and advocate for the importance of creative lives in the fabric of cities, I brought something up to @gutflora_ about 4 years ago needing their help (and great knowledge) to develop it into an idea. I realized we would need to urgently work on this change when curators and directors starting travelling to visit my studio, and finding me without, or moving from place to place, or making my work in holes, with flooding, pests, or electricity and water cutoffs in different places around Toronto. Then the big studio providers started to close.

My team to move this project is and has been, so patient and incredible. I do realize how lucky I am. It is still on the way to perfect and we work every day to make it better. There have been so many thoughtful and game-changing donations to our tool library, and allies for access to making coming out of the woodwork (ha!).

The studio is now full with a waitlist, and we provide free (or close to free!) programming and skillbuilding by and for artists all year long. We have just begun our summer series of programming, inside a beautiful interactive installation so go have a look!

If you would like to chat more about Capsules, work with us, or support us, give us a shout at capsules.office@gmail.com

✨ by @rajniperera

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2 months ago