Statement

 

Rujuta Rao’s practice spans sculpture, installation, book art, beverage, and social practice, alongside conceptual and functional garments under the company RUGA. Research-driven and personal, her work uses material investigation to explore migration, place, family history, and hospitality. Rao activates artworks and publications as sites for communal gathering. Drawing from her training as a bartender and Japanese sake adviser, she stages relational encounters mediated by a menu of artist books and beverages, shared across the bar counter, conceived as both boundary and interface. She considers conditional, unconditional, parasitic, and mutualistic guest–host relations as frameworks for approaching borders and migration. In a moment of geopolitical precarity, her portable, modular architectures explore how hospitality might render boundaries porous.

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Bio

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Rao received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from Parsons School of Design, New York, and her BFA in Sculpture from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. She is a certified Japanese Sake Adviser through the Sake Service Institute International, Tokyo, and a sake sommelier candidate. Rao has participated in residencies and fellowships including the Bemis Center (Omaha, NE); SOMA Summer (MX); Center for Book Arts (NY); The Here & There Co. (NY), CCA Islands Travel Fellowship (Japan); and the Civita Institute Fellowship (Italy). Rao’s work has been exhibited at the State of Fashion Biennale 2024 (NL), The Kitchen (NY), the New York Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1 (NY), Printed Matter / St. Marks (NY), New York Live Arts (NY), Tufts University Art Galleries (MA), and Experimenter Gallery (IN). In 2026, Rao began the Dieu Donné Dual Workspace Residency and will participate in the Artists Alliance Inc. LES Studio Program in New York.

 

Rao lives and works in the New York metropolitan area and is a recipient of the 2025 Jersey City Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship.