Purvai Rai
Purvai Rai | My Country-1 | 2023

Purvai Rai is a Delhi-based graphic and textile designer and multimedia artist. Rai’s delicate graphite and ink drawings on rice paper are conceived in response to social and political events, specifically those caused by religious and cultural discord. Distilled into an abstract visual language consisting of circles and elliptical patterns, Rai alludes and (re-)presents the precariousness of existing on the margins. She also works with natural materials like jute, cotton, and yarn. She is particularly interested in the tactility of these natural fabrics, and how in the recesses of its weaves reside familial and generational memory, waiting to be inherited much as clothes are passed on from parent to child.
Purvai Rai completed her Bachelor’s degree from Srishti Institute for Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore in 2017. She has been a part of several group shows, among them ‘Abstract Notations’ curated by Jesal Thacker at Gallery Espace in 2020, ‘All is not lost’ curated by Saloni Doshi at Sakshi Gallery in 2020, ‘What is contemporary?’ curated by Anushka Rajendran at Art Alive Gallery in 2019, and ‘Art Now’ curated by Sunaina Anand at Lalit Kala Akademi in 2019.
The artist lives and works in Delhi.