Radhika Agarwala (b. 1985) is from Kolkata, India. She recieved her MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, London, in 2011, Agarwala received her BFA in Painting from Rabindra Bharati University in Calcutta (2007), followed by a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Painting from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2008) and an MFA in Painting from the University of Florida, College of Fine Art (2010). Her works, in painting and sculpture, take form and direction from her upbringing in India and her cultural experiences in Western cities and capitals in the years since. The works invest in the spiritual dimensions at the core of vastly different ethics and visual languages between Asian and Western cultures, and make playful gesture towards a complex history and developing interconnection between the two. In her work hybridisation is actual and represented, actual through the conjunction of divergent cultural vantages that exhume the sacred with the secular, the profound with the mundane, and the figurative with the geometric.
Solo exhibitions include For Two Lovers, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2013); and Encounter, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2012). Recent group exhibitions include All the Days and Nights, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2020); Delhi Contemporary Art Week, Presented by Gallery Latitude 28, New Delhi (2019); India Art Fair, Presented by Gallery Latitude 28, New Delhi (2019); Art Exhibit, The India Story 4.0, Kolkata (2018); Babur Ki Gai, Latitude 28 & ArtDistrict XIII, New Delhi, curated by Adwait Singh (2018); Delhi Contemporary Art Weekend, Presented by Latitude 28 , New Delhi (2018); India Art Fair, Presented by Latitude 28, New Delhi (2018); Delhi Contemporary Art Weekend, Presented by Latitude 28, New Delhi (2017); G/rove, Latitude 28, New Delhi, curated by Bhavna Kakar & Adwait Singh (2017); What’s Next, The India Story, Kolkata (2016); The Tube Without Paint, A Fungal Lattice & The Bird That Never Flew Away, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai (2015); All S-He Ever Wanted To Be, Galleria M, Kolkata (2015); OMG! Elephant In The Room, Galleria M, Kolkata (2015); Beneath The Black, Gandhara Art Gallery, Kolkata (2014); Mapping Detours, Chitrakoot Art Gallery, Kolkata (2014); Paint Your Pain, Atlantic Health System, New Jersey (2014); Participate, Asian Arts Initiative, Philadelphia (2014); Snapshots of Utopia, Chitrakoot Art Gallery, Kolkata (2013); Every Breath I Take is One of Yours, Casa Dell’Arte, Turkey (2013);Unhinged Festival, London (2012), Saatchi Gallery, Auction by Tanya Baxter Gallery, London (2012); Stern Maguire, Mayfair, London Auction & Show (2012); Allegories, Art Konsult Gallery, Delhi, India (2012). Agarwala was shortlisted for the 2013 Threadneedle Prize for Painting and Sculpture as well as 100 Painters of Tomorrow (2013) and in 2009 won the Annual Fellowship from the University of Florida School of Art + Art History and Merit Scholarship from School of The Art Institute of Chicago.