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Raki Nikahetiya

@rakiography

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Migration and Regeneration.
Colombo • Leh • Vienna • London • New Delhi
Director & Co-Founder @sabiennale

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Repost • @indiaartfair Discover 𝙊𝙪𝙩𝙙𝙤𝙤𝙧 𝘼𝙧𝙩 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙟𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙨 at India Art Fair 2026 where, every year, the fairgrounds open up into a vibrant, open-air gallery of large-scale works and new commissions.

This year’s lineup brings together bold and boundary-pushing installations that respond to urgent questions around ecology, gender, technology, and material experimentation, inviting visitors to move through the fair differently, and allow opportunities for moments of wonder, play, and deep reflection.

KULPREET SINGH (@kulpreet_singh), Extinction Archive, Commissioned and presented by Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) (@knmaindia)

JUDY CHICAGO (@judy.chicago), What If Women Ruled the World?, Presented by DMINTI (@dminti.io)

RAKI NIKAHETIYA (@rakiography), FOREST II, Presented by Max Estates (@maxestates)

PARESH MAITY (@pareshmaityofficial), Recycle of Life, Supported by Art Alive Gallery (@artalivegallery)

AARTI VIR (@aartivir), Shadow Crossing, Supported by Indian Ceramics Triennale (@indianceramicstriennale)

AYUSH KASLIWAL X GOJI (@ayushkasliwal, @goji__, The Charpai Project, Commissioned by Serendipity Arts (@serendipityartsfoundation , @serendipityartsfestival )

AKU ZELIANG (@aku1068), Huh Tu Vessels, Supported by Public Arts Trust of India (PATI) (@publicartstrustofindia)

DEEPAK KUMAR (@deepak_kumar3527), Breathing Space, Supported by Exhibit 320 (@exhibit320)

UHA (UPTON-HANSEN ARCHITECTS) (@uhaglobal), Pentad – Jaquar Pavilion Park, ADFF:STIR Mumbai, Supported by STIR (@stir_world)

DUMIDUNI ILLANGASINGHE (@dumi_illangasinghe_), Soft Armours, Presented by IAF Artist-in-Residence Programme in partnership with KALĀ South Asia (@kalasouthasia)

ARUN B. (@arun_edathatt), Duration, Supported by IAF Artist-in-Residence Programme and SoulTree (@soultree.in) taken in India Art Fair by @rakiography

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8 months ago

Via @the_hindu @_niddee_

@indiaartfair @maxestates

Link in bio.

#regenrativeart taken in Delhi, India by @rakiography

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8 months ago

Via @archdigestindia FOREST II is a living installation at the India Art Fair that reimagines home as a shared ecosystem. Conceived as a walled grove, it is grown using the Miyawaki method with 25–30 native species selected for Delhi’s soil and climate, planted densely to enable rapid, natural growth—reflecting Max Estates’ approach to integrating forests within communities.
Created in collaboration with artist Raki Nikahetiya, co-founder and director of the sā Ladakh Biennale, the installation is built from discarded construction materials sourced from Max Estates’ sites and reassembled into the structure of a living forest. Trees, shrubs, and groundcover support urban biodiversity over time. After the fair, FOREST II will be relocated to a Max Estates development, where it will continue to grow as a community forest.

Catch FOREST II at the India Art Fair 2026.

Sculptors: Rakesh Kumar, Sumit Maurya, Virender Singh, Neeraj
Realisation: Sagardeep Singh (Excecution), Botanical Bias (Planting), Kaushik Banerjee (Recroding and Sound) taken in India Art Fair by @rakiography

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8 months ago

What is a nation?

What constitutes a nation when its histories are encountered not through monuments, borders or political narratives, but through matter?

A five-year investigation began following a relocation to the United Kingdom in 2014, spanning more than thirty historically significant sites. Minute samples of natural and human-made materials were collected, from plant matter found along the Norfolk coast, near the earliest known human footprints outside of Africa, dating to approximately 800,000 years ago and revealed following a storm, to corroded metal gathered at the world’s first iron bridge in Shropshire.

Coated in gold dust, the samples were examined using a scanning electron microscope at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), New Delhi. Magnified beyond ordinary perception, their immediate historical identities dissolve. What emerges instead are surfaces, particles, structures and traces: matter shaped by geological time, human presence and processes of transformation.

At this scale, distinctions between the natural and the cultural, the ancient and the contemporary, become uncertain. History appears not as something monumental or fixed, but as something embedded in the physical world.

The series considers nationhood as a material condition, locating questions of identity, heritage and belonging within the fragments through which places are formed and remembered. Seemingly negligible matter becomes a means of tracing time, connecting the intimate scale of a fragment with the expansive and often abstract idea of a nation.

All images were produced at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), New Delhi, with guidance from King’s College London. The series was shortlisted for the Royal Photographic Society International Exhibition 2021 and the IPE163 Award.

Image: KALĀ South Asia, 2024

Site Visit (2016). Richborough, Kent - the first Roman Fort in the Great Britain.

Institute of Technology New Delhi, 2020. Gold-coated samples of soil and found objects at various sites prior to Electron-Microscope imaging.

IRONBRIDGE I
1781 AD. A metal rust sample taken near the Iron Bridge, Shropshire – often arguably titled the Birthplace of the Industri taken in United Kingdom by @rakiography

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2 days ago

🌱🐕 taken in Home by @rakiography

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5 days ago

Earlier works with @austrianculturalforumnewdelhi
@austrianembassy_newdelhi

"A Simpler Life explores memory, belonging, and migration through portraits drawn from the artist’s family photographs in Sri Lanka. Images of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and parents are first translated through painting and then reconstituted in silk thread, where lines dissolve into stitches, surfaces acquire relief, and photographic fragments become tactile objects. Made in collaboration with embroiderer Reyas Ali in Kolkata, each work records the slow passage of the image through hand, fabric, and thread, transforming recollection into something that can be touched and inhabited. Symbolic objects embedded within the portraits further connect intimate memories to questions of inheritance, lineage, and displacement. Drawing on Sri Lankan embroidery traditions associated with the recording of family and heritage, the series treats thread as both image and archive, revealing memory as a material process - layered, fragile, and continually remade through distance, loss, and return."

LOKU ATTHAMMA
2021
Raki Nikahetiya
Hand-embroidery on pure silk
100 x 100 x 5 CM
[Sold] taken in New Delhi by @rakiography

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13 days ago

@heni

#migratorystudio taken in London by @rakiography

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13 days ago

Self portrait
ca 1992
Raki Nikahetiya
Oil pastels on paper
26x37cm
[Sold] taken in Siyambalape, Sri Lanka by @rakiography

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16 days ago

"I was born in New Zealand in 1972. My father was also born in New Zealand, but his parents were originally from Croatia, specifically the Dalmatian coast. They settled in a region of the North Island where many Croatians immigrated during the 1800’s and again in the 1930s and 1940s (my grandparents). These Croatian immigrants were commonly referred to as "Deli’s" (short for Dalmatians).

On my mother’s side, I have Māori heritage through her mother, while her father - like my father's parents - was a Croatian from the Dalmatia region. The Māori had their own nickname for Croatians: "Tarara," a playful reference to the “fast-paced” way they spoke. I come from a proud and rich lineage on both sides of my family, and that heritage is something I carry with great pride."

Simone Pirovich

FIFTY THOUSAND YEARS, 2025, by Raki Nikahetiya, brings together soil, sound, photography, embroidery and personal artefacts to explore belonging as something carried through memory, material and place. Centred on the stories and voices of eight individuals whose lives have been shaped by movement, refuge and settlement, the work traces personal and ancestral histories across geographies and generations, considering how experiences of place, memory and belonging endure beyond written record.

Supported by the Fremantle Biennale and Mary Harrison Hill. All embroidery works in collaboration with Reyas Ali.

Image 1: Simone Pirovich
Image 2 and 3: Rebecca Mansell taken in Western Australia by @rakiography

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18 days ago

Ladakh is often seen through the lens of its landscape. But beyond the postcard lies a more complex question: Who gets to tell Ladakh’s story?

For this conversation, @thirdspace_podcast brings together four voices to look at representation, authorship, memory and the many ways Ladakh is experienced and understood.

Beyond the Landscape: Who Gets to Tell Ladakh’s Story?
16 September 2026

With @devikas_atelier, @amit_stir, @rakiography and @vibhagalhotra.
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#TheThirdSpace #sāLadakh #Ladakh #BeyondTheLandscape #LadakhBiennale

[ Design And Culture, Art And Culture, Contemporary Art, Cultural Dialogue, Ladakh Stories, Representation, Place And Identity ] by @rakiography

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23 days ago

Connecting ancient stories to dark skies with Shared Skies ✨
#kalacommune #kalasouthasia #southasianart

Produced by @ifilm_srilanka
Recorded at @ifilm_studio_

🔔 Subscribe and stay tuned to the KALĀ YouTube channel! Link in bio

FULL PODCAST LINK IN BIO by @rakiography

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a month ago

Attha
ca 1954
Raki Nikahetiya
Oil pastels on paper
26x37cm
2026 taken in Siyambalape, Sri Lanka by @rakiography

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a month ago