Rithika Pandey is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Mumbai, India. Her practice spans painting, writing, and installation, and has long engaged themes such as hybridity, diasporic experience, speculative futures, and femininity. Through these concerns, she explores the possibility of forming new relationships between human and nonhuman forms of existence. Here, the term “nonhuman” extends beyond animals and natural ecologies to include technology, artificial life, and imagined modes of being. Pandey’s works often emerge from personal experience, while deftly interweaving mysticism with scientific thinking.
Methodologically, Pandey particularly employs the strategy of “worldbuilding.” The concept, commonly associated with science fiction and fantasy literature, refers to the gradual construction of a world with its own internal logic, history, and ecological systems. Drawing inspiration from ecology, mysticism, and science fiction, Pandey develops a series of interconnected narrative scenes that depict people struggling within various contradictions and paradoxes, while attempting to re-establish connections with others, their environment, and the unknown.
The Spiritual Practice of Rithika Pandey
I met Pandey at a café in the Bandra district of Mumbai. Our conversation began with her questions about the curatorial project I was preparing for the exhibition. I shared aspects of my earlier curatorial research, along with several personal mystical experiences that arose during the process. In the course of this exchange, Pandey gradually spoke about her own religious background and spiritual practice.
Pandey grew up immersed in a Hindu environment. Her grandfather was a priest, and the family home contained a small shrine dedicated to the god Hanuman, where he performed rituals each morning. Yet rather than framing her position in terms of “religious belief,” Pandey prefers to understand it as a form of spiritual practice and exploration, with yoga as her primary method. The origins of this path trace back to the summer of 2021, when she lost two close family members within a short period and encountered her spiritual teacher. This turning point led her to confront spiritual questions more deeply. Yoga became an essential support as she moved through grief, gradually rebuilding a sense of inner stability and strength.
For Pandey, yoga is not merely the physical stretching or exercise commonly associated with it, but rather a complete and rigorous system of practice. Her earliest training was in Kriya Yoga, whose core lies in breathing practices. Later, under the guidance of her spiritual teacher, she learned Sudarshan Kriya and gradually came to experience the deeper power contained within breath: breathing is not only a physiological regulation of the body, but also a tool capable of influencing states of consciousness and inner feeling. Through sustained breathing practice, she began to regard yoga as a way of entering into a direct dialogue with her own existence.
Rithika Pandey, Mother your memory lingers like an old river, Courtesy of the Artist.
Pandey’s spiritual practice is grounded in a cosmology broadly aligned with the principle of non-duality—the idea that all things are fundamentally interconnected rather than opposed. Within this worldview, the individual and the cosmos are inseparable: “I am the universe, and the universe is me.” The self is not fundamentally different from other beings or phenomena; rather, all are manifestations of the same underlying energy. Shiva represents the embodiment of this cosmic principle. In this framework, humans are not separate from the divine but expressions of it. Shiva does not exist somewhere outside the world but within every individual. We are divine, because only the divine can worship the divine. What mythology describes as cosmic drama ultimately unfolds within the human interior; we are, in this sense, living, breathing deities.
Yet Shiva is never understood as a solitary existence. He is always paired with Shakti, the primordial creative force of the universe. Borrowing a metaphor from modern cosmology, the void preceding the Big Bang might be compared to Shiva, while the energy that initiated the movement and formation of matter corresponds to Shakti. The interaction between the two forms the fundamental condition for cosmic creation.
Spirituality and Artistic Creation
Pandey’s spiritual practice has had a profound impact on her artistic work. Prior to 2021, her practice rarely addressed spirituality directly.
Although many of these works responded to unresolved personal experiences and the inner questions that accompanied her formative years, these early works were formally experimental. She often worked with found imagery, juxtaposing images from different sources and contexts on the same canvas. The resulting collisions generated tension and ambiguity, turning the paintings into something like visual laboratories for testing how images might form relationships. In retrospect, these experiments do not represent a rupture with her later work but rather a transitional stage that laid the groundwork for the more elaborate worldbuilding that now characterizes her practice.
After her father’s death in 2021, Pandey’s work took a decisive turn toward spiritual and metaphysical questions. At the same time, she began to focus on the relationship between humans and nature—not merely as an ecological issue but as a spiritual condition. For Pandey, this relationship is fundamentally non-dual: the self is not separate from nature but interwoven with it. This understanding draws on different layers of experience, from moments in Scotland when she felt inseparable from the surrounding landscape to meditative states in yoga practice in which she sensed a unity with all living things. Though arising in different contexts, these experiences converge in her work as expressions of the same existential awareness.
Works from this period also demonstrate a stronger sense of worldbuilding. Rather than presenting isolated images, Pandey’s paintings invite viewers into worlds in the process of formation. Scenes unfold gradually, characters emerge, and narratives begin to take shape. In one painting from 2024, for example, the atmosphere is almost devotional. The figures wear entirely white garments, which here signify purity, dedication, and spiritual concentration. Pandey has encountered similar attire among Sufi mystics, and practitioners within her own spiritual circles often wear white during ritual practice.
Another recurring figure in her paintings is a character with a dark—almost black—face. This imagery draws partly from Hindu mystical iconography but is also consciously transformed by Pandey into a decolonial metaphor. She recalls childhood memories of priests invited by her grandfather to perform rituals at the family shrine. During these ceremonies she saw figures whose bodies were completely dark, with only their eyes visible. These figures correspond to the Hindu goddess Kali, whose name literally means “she who is black.” Kali represents a fierce manifestation of Shakti and symbolizes destruction, rupture, and rebirth.
Pandey is acutely aware that the meaning of “blackness” differs profoundly between Western visual culture and its role within Indian mythological and religious traditions. By introducing colonial history and questions of otherness into the discussion of color, she allows these figures to operate simultaneously on mythological, spiritual, and political registers. The dark faces in her paintings are not entirely black but composed of interwoven tones of blue and black—a deep midnight hue. This color also refers to another major Hindu deity, Krishna, whose name is often associated with the color of the twilight sky. Krishna embodies attraction, love, and charisma. In essence, however, he is not fundamentally different from Shiva. Both deities share the same deep blue complexion, though their symbolic temperaments diverge. Shiva resembles an ascetic yogi—introspective and contemplative—while Krishna appears as a dancer or lover, animated by emotion and movement. For Pandey, they represent two sides of the same coin, distinct yet inseparable.
Rithika Pandey, Like a dream, everything’s forgotten. Now you’re free, Courtesy of the Artist.
The Influence of Indian Miniature Painting
One of the most distinctive features of Pandey’s paintings is her use of vivid, saturated color fields combined with a deliberate rejection of Western linear perspective. By flattening pictorial space, her compositions move closer to the logic of traditional religious painting rather than the illusionistic representation of the physical world. This is a conscious choice: the flattened space encourages viewers to enter a perceptual state of divinity different from everyday visual experience.
Pandey identifies Indian miniature painting as a key influence, particularly the Rajasthani and Himachal schools from northern India. These traditions are known for their rich colors, emotional intensity, and narrative depth, often depicting mythological scenes involving Krishna—especially his love stories with Radha. Despite their seemingly simple compositions, miniature paintings contain dense layers of symbolism and narrative detail. When encountering these works, Pandey experiences what she describes as a powerful sense of return—a feeling of belonging shaped by cultural memory, visual language, and spiritual imagination. This sensibility informs her own paintings, whose figures and compositions evoke the atmosphere of miniature painting without directly quoting traditional imagery.
Beyond these well-known traditions, Pandey is also drawn to lesser-known painting practices in Rajasthan rooted in Tantric philosophy. These works often reject idol worship and therefore avoid depicting divine figures directly. Instead, they employ abstract symbols—such as the linga representing Shiva or the triangle signifying Shakti. These forms are minimal yet charged with a strong sense of sacred presence. For Pandey, Tantric painting provides an essential conceptual and visual foundation, particularly in her exploration of how figurative and abstract elements might coexist.
Rithika Pandey, Two forms of desire and an experiment in soft science, Courtesy of the Artist.
The language of Tantra resonates with her long-standing interest in the boundaries between the material and the immaterial—those energies and relationships that cannot be fully seen but nevertheless shape reality. She also believes that Tantric imagery carries a distinctly futuristic quality. Because it is not tied to specific historical narratives or representations of everyday life, it resists being fixed within a particular moment in time. Instead, it points toward a temporal condition that transcends past, present, and future. This openness allows viewers to encounter the work anew within their own contemporary experience.
On Feminism
Pandey traces her feminist awakening to the works of science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin, widely considered one of the most influential speculative authors of the twentieth century. Le Guin’s writing offers an alternative to mainstream science fiction narratives dominated by masculine heroism, conquest, or technological supremacy. Instead, her stories imagine worlds that move beyond gender binaries, question narratives of linear progress, and maintain a critical distance from technological utopianism. Pandey encountered Le Guin’s novel The Left Hand of Darkness during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The book had a transformative impact on her understanding of gender, society, and the future. This reading led her to the theoretical work of Donna Haraway, including A Cyborg Manifesto, and to broader discussions of posthumanism. She later explored ecofeminism, particularly through Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble, developing a framework that interweaves technology, embodiment, ecology, and political structures. Through these readings Pandey sensed what she describes as a growing cultural energy—one that resonated with her own life experiences and artistic practice. She emphasizes that her interest lies not only in “women” as a social category but in the broader quality of the feminine. For her, the feminine signifies softness, relationality, and the capacity to nurture life while sustaining inner resilience.
Growing up in India, Pandey sometimes witnessed gender violence and systemic discrimination against women. Yet she stresses that these conditions are not limited to India but reflect global structures of power. In her view, feminism is not solely a women’s issue but concerns all forms of existence marginalized by patriarchal systems. She also links patriarchy to the unchecked expansion of contemporary capitalism, which often sacrifices human well-being. The capacities associated with the feminine—care, relational awareness, and ecological sensitivity—have historically been undervalued within such systems. Yet these very qualities may offer the resilience needed to imagine alternative futures. Feminism, in this sense, becomes not only a gender issue but an economic, ecological, and planetary one.
Rithika Pandey in her studio making Like a dream, everything’s forgotten. Now you’re free, Courtesy of the Artist.
Pandey encountered Le Guin’s novel The Left Hand of Darkness during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The book had a transformative impact on her understanding of gender, society, and the future. This reading led her to the theoretical work of Donna Haraway, including A Cyborg Manifesto, and to broader discussions of posthumanism. She later explored ecofeminism, particularly through Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble, developing a framework that interweaves technology, embodiment, ecology, and political structures. Through these readings Pandey sensed what she describes as a growing cultural energy—one that resonated with her own life experiences and artistic practice. She emphasizes that her interest lies not only in “women” as a social category but in the broader quality of the feminine. For her, the feminine signifies softness, relationality, and the capacity to nurture life while sustaining inner resilience.
Growing up in India, Pandey sometimes witnessed gender violence and systemic discrimination against women. Yet she stresses that these conditions are not limited to India but reflect global structures of power. In her view, feminism is not solely a women’s issue but concerns all forms of existence marginalized by patriarchal systems. She also links patriarchy to the unchecked expansion of contemporary capitalism, which often sacrifices human well-being. The capacities associated with the feminine—care, relational awareness, and ecological sensitivity—have historically been undervalued within such systems. Yet these very qualities may offer the resilience needed to imagine alternative futures. Feminism, in this sense, becomes not only a gender issue but an economic, ecological, and planetary one.
On the Caste System
Does religious cosmology shape gender relations within a society? For Pandey, the answer is inseparable from the caste system and its enduring influence in India. The system operates as a deeply entrenched structure of segregation and elitism, producing inequality at the institutional level and prejudice at the psychological level. Violence and discrimination thus become normalized within everyday life. Within this hierarchy, men remain at the top, while women occupy secondary positions across most social strata.
Echoes of this imbalance appear even in Hindu epic narratives. In the Mahabharata, episodes involving the humiliation of female characters are sometimes narrated with striking moral detachment. Historical practices such as sati—the ritual immolation of widows on their husbands’ funeral pyres, later banned under British colonial rule—further reveal the severity of these structures. Even outside such extreme cases, widows were often denied the possibility of rebuilding their lives and forced into conditions marked by stigma and restriction. For Pandey, such practices reflect not only the control of women’s bodies but a worldview that diminishes women as full subjects.
At the same time, Pandey cautions against attributing these injustices solely to the caste system itself. Many of them arise from the ways religious traditions have been repeatedly interpreted—and sometimes manipulated—by power structures throughout history. How scriptures are read, who interprets them, and for what purposes they are mobilized often proves more decisive than the texts themselves. In the Bhagavad Gita, for instance, Krishna’s discussion of social order differs significantly from the rigid hereditary caste hierarchy seen today. The text itself is a work of philosophical and poetic depth. Yet, Pandey argues, contemporary problems arise when passages are selectively cited to legitimize existing inequalities. She describes the Vedic tradition as having gradually evolved into what resembles an “exclusive club,” in which the priestly class accumulated knowledge that slowly transformed into authority and hierarchy. In this process, the sense of equality was lost. Yet the deeper philosophical spirit of the Vedas ultimately points toward unity. For Pandey, this contradiction reflects a central tension in contemporary Indian society: a culture still bound by caste hierarchies and moral judgment, making genuine equality difficult to realize.
Rithika Pandey in her studio, Courtesy of the Artist.
Is there a way forward? Pandey returns once again to spiritual practice. Rather than proposing new interpretations of scripture, she suggests rediscovering the fundamental relationship between each individual and the cosmos. This involves returning to the lived experience of unity—not as an intellectual concept but as a state accessed through meditation, stillness, and the renewed awareness of our connection with the world. This impulse also lies at the core of her artistic practice. Through her work, Pandey seeks to evoke a non-dual understanding of the relationship between humans and nature—a felt experience of unity with all beings.
Seen from this perspective, religion, feminism, and social critique are not separate domains in Pandey’s thinking but different layers of the same inquiry. Artistic creation does not provide answers; instead, it opens a space in which the world can be perceived anew—a space where humans are no longer fixed within categories of gender, class, or species but invited to inhabit a relational mode of existence. —[SCR]
＊「神秘女性主義書寫專輯」為策展人朱峯誼於國藝會策展研究專案與現象書寫專案之研究集結，內容探討神秘學與女性主義在理論上以及藝術創作實踐上的關聯性。收錄文章包括藝術家訪談、專家邀稿、展覽與創作評論等。
**Header Image: Rithika Pandey, How will our breaths save us in the age of fires, Courtesy of the Artist.
