Shubigi Rao

All Projects

Shubigi Rao (b. 1975, Mumbai, India) is a multidisciplinary artist and writer whose work investigates the intersections of history, knowledge, violence and erasure. After training in architecture and art, Rao’s practice expanded into research‑based projects that combine installation, drawing, photography, text, and archival excavation. She lives and works between Singapore and Goa. Central to Rao’s art is the idea that systems of knowledge are imbued with power: what is collected, catalogued, preserved or forgotten reveals as much about political and cultural structures as the material objects themselves. Her work often engages with libraries, archives, books and the built environment as sites where histories are inscribed, contested and erased. 

Rao’s projects unfold over long durations and involve deep research into archives, texts and institutional histories, generating bodies of work that function as speculative histories and critical interventions. Recurring themes include colonialism and its afterlives, environmental destruction, linguistic disappearance, the politics of preservation and the violences of documentation. Rao’s practice also addresses the violence inherent in categorization itself, exploring how systems of classification shape what we consider knowledge and who is permitted to produce it. Across her work she uses juxtaposition, fragmentation and narrative layering to foreground absence and loss as much as presence and recovery.

Her major projects include Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book, an expansive multi‑year investigation into the global destruction of libraries and books, and Sea Change, a long‑term study of submerged histories and ecological futures. Rao has exhibited widely in international museum and biennale contexts. Major exhibitions include the Singapore Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, Taipei Biennial, Kunsthalle Wien, M+ Museum (Hong Kong), Queens Museum (New York), Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Sifang Art Museum, and the Ludwig Museum. Her work has also been featured in documenta and other prominent group presentations, reflecting her critical engagement with history, archives and the politics of knowledge in contemporary practice.