SANGEET SATIRE, HALDI HUMOUR

Artist Rajiv Menon has big feelings about Indian weddings

- SADIBA HASAN

When Rajiv Menon opened his contemporary art gallery in Hollywood, California, in February, it was a tumultuous period in the art world in Los Angeles, with many galleries shutting their doors amid the wildfires that had devastated the city.

Menon knew the timing was risky, but he was determined to create a space to showcase perspectives from South Asia and the diaspora.

“It was driving me crazy how that wasn’t happening on the West Coast,” said Menon, 36. “We're seeing one-off artists here or there, but never is the work contextualised.”

The opening for Rajiv Menon Contemporary brought out about 400 people, from art fans to community members in the area, including writer Jay Shetty. Since then, the gallery has become a cultural hub for conversation in Los Angeles, as one of the few spaces in the United States to specialise in contemporary South Asian art.

The gallery's new exhibition, “Why Did I Say Yes?” which opened to the public on Saturday, features the work of Viraj Khanna, a visual artist from Kolkata, India, who primarily works with textiles. The exhibition, curated by Menon, examines the global phenomenon that the Indian wedding has become.

In his work, Khanna, 29, frequently explores topics around conspicuous consumption, excess and social media anxieties. The Indian wedding felt like the perfect grounds to explore those forces, he said.

Khanna, a son of renowned Indian designer Anamika Khanna’s, pulls from his upbringing in India's fashion elite to satirise the lavish, big fat Indian weddings he grew up attending. Each artwork is paired with a caption of dialogue — snippets of chatter, gossip or internal thoughts that help recreate scenes from Khanna’s experiences navigating the wedding circuit.