As part of its Platform initiative, Blueprint12 is excited to present the works of Bangalore based multi-disciplinary artist Koyal Raheja. In her practice, Koyal focuses on connecting her familial and autobiographical memory to public histories through drawings, paintings and physical spaces. In her work, she often questions systems and structures of the past and present through different lenses of conformity, rebellion and separation.

In her current body of works, she focuses on the body that has been controlled and manipulated to fit several political, cultural and sometimes even banal contexts. In Koyal’s explorations, she poses a question on the conundrum between the body as a living organism and a body that loses its signifying behavioural elements, reduced to a number and tool, regulated by its mechanical efficiency. Her works elaborate on the behaviours and transfigurations of a docile body that shifts to a dictated one. Exploring ideas around gesture, space and self - in, ‘1 arm distance’, she draws figures performing the regulatory gesture of a school assembly line, each equally distant from one another. Her bodies subsume regimented, lyrical and minute variations. 

Koyal graduated from Srishti Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Bengaluru in 2014 and completed her masters from Studio Arts Centre International, Florence in 2019. Her solo exhibitions include ‘Assembly Line’(2019), Jules Maidoff Palazzo, Florence and ‘Soak’ (2016), Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bengaluru. Some of Koyal’s group shows include ‘Incontatto’ (2019), Quer Galerie, Berlin; ‘Un Puncto D’Incontro’ (2019), Frittelli Arte Contemporanea, Florence; ‘Cenacolo Fiorentini #8’ (2018) at the San Marco Museum Library, Florence; ‘Bring into Play’ (2018) at Accaventiquatro Casa Galleria, Prato; ‘Re-Memory’ (2017) at OnArt Gallery, Florence; amongst others.

Koyal lives and works in Bengaluru, India.