Art + Artists

Preetika Rajgariah explores layered identities as an immigrant, a brown queer woman, and a Southerner. Working with yoga mats, sari fabric, and other culturally charged materials, she reflects on visibility, consumption, and matrilineal legacy. Her vibrant assemblages transform acts of making into meditation, challenging systems of erasure while celebrating resilience and care.

Preetika Rajgariah is a multidisciplinary artist whose works examine the complicated intersections of queer identity, belonging, and cultural commodification while referencing her traditional upbringing as an Indian-born, Texas raised American. She has been in residence at the Momentary at Crystal Bridges, Oxbow School of Art, ACRE, Vermont Studio Center, and the School of Visual Arts NYC. She has exhibited or performed in spaces including Material Art Fair in CDMX, Untitled at Miami Basel, the Asia Society Texas Center, Roots & Culture and the Donnelley Foundation in Chicago, SOMArts in San Francisco, Women & Their Work in Austin, and Diverseworks and Art League in Houston. She received her MFA from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and currently lives and works in Houston, TX.

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My work is an exploration of my layered identity – as an immigrant, as a brown woman, as an “American”, as a Southerner, as a queer person. I work with a range of materials inspired by my personal and cultural history that delve into discussions of feminism, cultural appropriation, standards of body, intersectionality, and notions of longing.

I create large scale self portraits combining upcycled yoga mats, which carry associations of mass production and the simultaneous consumption + erasure of South Asian people, and inherited saris that hold patterns and textures of diasporic movements and matrilineal legacy. Together, the collaged paintings are sites for my contemplation and care, formed into landscapes where rhythmic patterns and textures flow, built by intuition and practice.

Through this exploration of non-traditional materials and unlearning capitalist programming, I embody making as meditation while challenging oppressive systems, championing marginalized voices, and promoting healing and accessibility to wellness and self care.