Rujuta Rao

March 24, 2026

Rujuta Rao (b. 1989, Goa, India) is an interdisciplinary artist based in the New York metropolitan area. 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); Dieu Donné Dual Workspace Residency (NY); 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). Rao is a recipient of the 2025 Jersey City Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship.

Can you tell us about your practice?

My practice spans sculpture, installation, book art, beverage, and social practice, alongside conceptual and functional garments under my company, RUGA. Research-driven and personal, my work uses material investigation to explore migration, place, family history, and hospitality. I activate artworks and publications as sites for communal gathering.

Let’s dive into the conversation where we will be sitting – tell me about your initial hopes for the space of the studio. How did you decide the layout and organization of things?

My first thought was how wonderful it would be to have a space to invite people into. I think of it as akin to setting up one’s home for guests. The meticulous arrangement of objects in my work isn’t only an aesthetic choice; these arrangements guide how people move, becoming scores for movement and for relating to one another. I’m interested in the ways of relating that the structures I create, books and bars that expand to demarcate architectural space for engagement, can offer.

I’d love to talk about materiality – you’re using many different types of materials throughout your art practice. What have been your recent material interests? What draws you to the diversity of materials?

My draw toward a particular material is always intuitive, almost like a hunger for a specific kind of food. The form and conceptual aspects of the work emerge through a tactile process of working with the material.

Recently, I’ve been making paper by hand as part of my residency at Dieu Donné, and I’m curious to see what will emerge. I’m currently leaning toward creating garments, glassware for serving beverages, and playable paper records using handmade paper.

So much of the ethos in your making practice is rooted in larger ideas of hospitality – could you share the origins of this focus in your work?

At the root of this is how I grew up in Goa, in a home that always had a steady stream of guests visiting as tourists. My parents, and to some extent I, were constantly engaged in performing hospitality. My grandfather also distilled cashew feni on a small scale for personal consumption, which informs my ongoing research into the beverage, its colonial roots, and the contexts in which it is produced and consumed.

Drawing from my training as a bartender and Japanese sake adviser, I stage relational encounters mediated by a menu of artist books and beverages, shared across the bar counter, conceived as both boundary and interface. I think through conditional, unconditional, parasitic, and mutualistic guest–host relations as frameworks for approaching borders and migration.

How has hospitality been tied to the ways in which you fold in socialization and interaction in your studio practice? What are the exciting parts of this invitation? In what ways do you protect yourself during these interactions?

I approach sharing art as an act of hospitality. I’m often present within the work, mediating a tactile engagement between objects and the audience, while the objects themselves catalyze dialogue between us.

At the same time, it can be exhausting to remain in a position of constant offering or service. I’ve begun to structure my work so that the roles of guest and host can shift and alternate, allowing for a more reciprocal exchange.

Tell me about your garment-making practice, RUGA. What pushes you to create clothing? In what ways do you see this work as different and similar to your art making and even book making?

RUGA is my gender-expansive clothing line and an extension of my interdisciplinary art practice. Both functional and conceptual, the pieces engage with questions of the body’s fragmentation and reunification, often through harness-like attachments. The garments are crafted equitably with organizations that empower women by training them in every step of garment production. The fabrics are sourced from organizations across India working to revive Indigenous Indian cotton, handloom techniques, and natural dyeing. They are also made with reclaimed deadstock and textile waste from the fashion industry. Production size is determined by fabric availability and harvest, minimizing environmental strain.

Books, garments, and art are separate but intersecting ecosystems. People can enter the work through multiple entry points, across different economies, allowing for a range of accessibility.

Rujuta Rao

You may also like