Rithika Merchant is a visual artist from Bombay (Mumbai), India. Her work explores both comparative mythology as well as science and speculative fiction, featuring creatures and symbolism that are part of her personal visual vocabulary. She creates bodies of work that visually link to our collective past as well as imagine possible new worlds which we may come to inhabit.
Nature plays a pivotal role in her work and is emphasised by the use of organic shapes and non-saturated colours. Her paintings and collages are made using a combination of watercolour and cut paper elements, drawing on 17th century botanical prints and folk art.
Merchant received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design, New York. Her solo shows include Terraformation at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2023); Festival of the Phoenix Sun at Galerie LJ, Paris (2022); Birth of a New World at TARQ, Mumbai (2021); Mirror of the Mind at Galerie LJ, Paris (2019); Where the Water Takes us at TARQ, Mumbai (2017); Ancestral Home at Galeria Bien Cuadrado, Barcelona (2017); Intersections at Galeria Combustion Espontanea, Madrid (2016); and Luna Tabulatorum at Stephen Romano Gallery, New York (2015).
Her recent group exhibitions include Bonna curated by Diana Campbell Betancourt at The Dhaka Art Summit (2023), Mentors curated by Sandra Weil at CFHILL, Stockholm (2021), In Orbit at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Berlin,(2021), Osmosis at TARQ, Mumbai (2019), Spring! A Group Show of Contemporary Drawing at Galerie LJ, Paris (2019); Homo Faber at The Michaelangelo Foundation, Venice ( 2018) ; Portal at October Gallery, London (2018); Sensorium / The End Is Only The Beginning at Sunaparanta, Goa Centre for the Arts, Goa (2018); This Burning Land Belongs To You at the Swiss Cottage Gallery, London (presented by TARQ for Camden Kala, UK/ India Year of Culture 2017); Language of the Birds: Occult and Art at 80WSE Gallery, New York (2016); and Reliquaries: The Remembered Self at TARQ, Mumbai (2015). Her work has also been included in group shows at The New Gallery, Calgary (2017); Summerhall, Edinburgh (2015); and The Morbid Anatomy Museum, New York (2015).
Merchant collaborated with Chloé, a French fashion house on multiple collections for which she was awarded the Vogue India Young Achiever of the Year Award at its Women of the Year Awards 2018, as well as named one of Vogue Magazine’s VogueWorld 100 Creative Voices. She is also the winner of the Sovereign Asian Art Prize 2021 - Vogue Hong Kong Women’s Art Prize for her painting “Saudade” and Le Prix DDessin Paris '21.
Her work has been written about in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Verve Magazine, The Hindu, The Indian Express, Hyperallergic, Architectural Digest, and others. Merchants work is held in public and private collections including the Chloe Archive, Collection de Bueil & Ract-Madoux, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Samdani Arts Foundation and The Sarmaya Arts Foundation and The Bunker Artspace, Collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody.