TRUST ME I KNOW WHAT I'm DOING

Hi. I'm Rajiv Menon, and I'm the founder of Rajiv Menon Contemporary, one of the only art galleries in the US focused on art from South Asia and the diaspora. And you're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing.

Yeah. My name is Abhay Dandekar, and I share conversations with talented and interesting individuals linked to the global Indian and South Asian community.

It's informal and informative, adding insights to our evolving cultural expressions, where each person can proudly say, trust me, I know what I'm doing. Hi, everyone. On this episode of Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing, we share a conversation with art gallerist and curator, Rajiv Menon. Stay tuned.

So in the grand scheme of things, we all serve as constant curators of our own thoughts and expressions.
It forms our relationship with ourselves and often with the world around us. And, you know, it's a delicate task that hopefully we instinctively thrive with, but that curation is what houses our likes and interests and equally stimulates our curiosity for new and thoughtful input. And speaking of thoughtful input, thank you all once again for listening and watching. Trust me, I know what I'm doing and for sharing this with your friends and family. And if you're enjoying these, please please take a moment to share a kind rating and submit a written review wherever you're getting this right now.

I sincerely appreciate it. Now when it comes to curating artistic expressions, especially for a diasporic community like ours, this likely takes some expertise. And so Rajiv Menon has made it his mission to bridge the experience from the world of collector and connoisseur to the heart and soul of everyone in the community. With attention to the past, present, and future, the many global intersections that we all live in, the palette of moods and elements that are constantly shaping our identities, and the evolving modes of art consumption and appreciation, Rajiv is accelerating the promotion of artists who are reminding us of a rich heritage and helping embrace new explorations. Rajiv grew up in Texas and spent a lot of time in India during his formative years, always surrounded by art of every genre.

After receiving his PhD at NYU studying global media and visual culture, he's been based in Los Angeles as a gallerist with a particular focus on artists from South Asia and its diaspora. He founded Rajiv Menon Contemporary to amplify this work especially to the forefront of culture in LA, but also beyond. With showings like Item Number, Now Streaming, The Past is a Country, and Like, Share, Subscribe, his convening of art offers an important community venue for inquiry, depth, and interrogation of the evolving South Asian global culture. Rajiv shares his latest exhibition entitled 3 Steps of Land as an ode to the Onam Festival in Kerala. And so we caught up to talk about his work in LA, about art and race and the global South Asian, and even some of the barriers and lessons he's encountered along the way.

But I first wanted to get into his insights on what mobilizing art means for him:

That's a big part of my audience. I started the gallery knowing that I not only wanted to bring South Asian art and South Asian perspectives to the wider art landscape in Los Angeles, but I also wanted to bring South Asian people to the world of contemporary art, and that meant educating people from the ground up. People who maybe aren't familiar with going into galleries, who aren't familiar with the role of art in everyday life and how it could enhance their life. So I always tell people the first education you have to experience is your own sense of taste.

So how is the art making you feel? How what's it evoking in yourself? What is naturally drawing your attention? And from there, people ask me, how can we get involved? And the most clear cut way is obviously collecting, but that obviously isn't for everyone.

So amplifying. When you see something you like, share it with your friends. Tell them about it. Tell them about artists who are doing things you find compelling and interesting and spread the word. And then just be present in the world of art.

Go to museums. Go to galleries. Build it into your social calendar. I have been encouraging people to think about gallery openings as a way to start their evening. So before you go out to dinner in LA on a Thursday or a Friday, swing by Hollywood, go to the art district, and spend some time in art and really see the way that it builds your sense of the world.

So it's so multifaceted, but I'm so excited to get people as obsessed about art as I am. And little by little, I'm seeing that happening. You know, when you say that, it reminds me of 2 things. Number 1, it reminds me of someone sort of getting into wine and, like, saying, hey. You know what I mean?

Like, it's I had this great glass of wine. I really, really loved it. I wanna buy another bottle, but I also wanna share it with somebody else. And then on top of that, I love that making the artistic experience, particularly when it comes to a a living and a breathing experience that you don't have to, in fact, set aside an event based time for that you just do on an everyday basis, and you just go and experience it the same way that you would perhaps going to a movie or perhaps looking at anything for that matter. Does that come as sort of a surprise to people?

Do they need to sort of liberate themselves a little bit in order to make that happen? Art definitely has a reputation of something that's rarefied and that has barriers to entry. I think wine is a really good comparison. It's something that's come up quite a bit where there's a process to unlocking your palate that can be challenging. It can be demanding.

It asks you to sort of engage in a way that, you know, just sitting down and watching a video on YouTube doesn't or scrolling through Instagram doesn't. But what I like to remind people is that it's so rewarding. It's like unlocking a new sense. And then all of a sudden, when you find this appreciation for art and you know how to engage with it, you start viewing the world in a really different way. You start deriving pleasure from things that you didn't before.

You start thinking critically in ways that you hadn't. And art is not only a very spiritual and sensory exercise, it's also an intellectual one. And so there's so many different entry points in. You can really lead with your feeling and just follow and see what's moving you and what's evoking a reaction. You can dive deep into art history or you can dive deep into the cultural conversations that artists are engaging with and really go head forward and just think really deeply in there.

Or you can find some balance of the both, which is what most people do, but it's a process of discovery. And, yes, you're learning about a subject art, but, ultimately, you're learning so much about yourself. And I I think that's such a powerful and and really, really important part of just being part of the world and being part of the culture. Tell me something. I mean, this is an experience that perhaps no matter where you are in the United States, but definitely in Southern California is not always always foreign to people who are already in that world, but particularly to people who are entering that world.

It can be again, like a couple steps that you have to get through and then become more comfortable for you as you've had more and more of these conversations, and then particularly with people within our own communities. What sort of accelerators or for that matter, even barriers exist in our own communities that you've encountered in trying to create that velocity and trying to create momentum, especially to make representation and conversation around art that much more relevant? The biggest challenge, I actually just did a show that was taking this on because it's such a big part of my life, is the centrality of social media. I think when you're talking about velocity and reach, social media, especially Instagram, that's the fastest way to do it. But it comes with all these drawbacks, especially when it comes to art.

And to even back up, if you're interested in learning about music, there's so many different resources to go out there. You can you know, you're surrounded by it. If you're interested in film, you just go to the theater. It's an experience that's sort of been built in. But for visuality, the dominant form is our phone now.

If you wanna engage with the visual, you go through these platforms, you see stuff on Instagram, and you share it, and it's made so user friendly, and it's made so accessible and digestible. But, ultimately, it is driven by metrics of consumption. It's really about its ability to spread algorithmically and in a platform that's primarily designed to be a means of marketing. And what happens is the work that is the least challenging is what often gets the most promotion. That's the one sort of immediate problem I'm seeing.

Because I see a lot of people who really do wanna engage with art, and they go to Instagram first, and their sense of what they're looking for gets very skewed by what Instagram is feeding them. So, for example, this is something that I think is increasingly a serious problem, especially as AI comes to the forefront, but plagiarism is an issue. Yeah. And there aren't really any checks and balances on Instagram for that. So you might see someone who has 100,000 likes and so many followers, but the work is actually coming from someone else's creativity, and no gallerist would touch it.

Like, any of the people who are actively, you know, in roles to make sure that the art is being checked and verified and is actually culturally valuable would turn it away in a second. But in Instagram, there's no checks and balances to that degree, and all of a sudden you get these people who have the trappings of success or significance while actually are doing something quite dishonest. I think a little bit about this from, you know, in terms of medicine, right, where we have so many different ways to connect with people virtually, secure messaging, telehealth, video visits, etcetera. And yet there is nothing like actually seeing someone in the office there. I'm imagining in a similar way, there's nothing like actually sharing a real conversation around a piece or around a visual as opposed to picking up your phone and seeing an image that basically has gone viral perhaps, but that doesn't have the same kind of relationship development.

And, you know, is that barrier one that you find hard to get around, for just for the matter of sheer convenience? Well well, yes, you have the advantage of being able to accelerate the work. But on the other hand, boy, that doesn't make for great conversation if you're not there seeing it in person. I would even go a step further and say if you're not seeing a painting in person, you're not seeing art. Because so much of the experience of it is the texture of the material, and it's your relationship in physical space to the work.

It is the experience of art is you standing in front of it and placing your body in relationship to it and seeing where it fits in in your world view and your perspective. And unless something is designed specifically for the phone as a medium, which some art is, you're not getting that experience. Right. You have to, leave yourself open to being humbled by the work. You need to be potentially, like, subsumed by it.

You have to go in close. You have to step back far. You have to really see where it fits into your own place in the world and in the culture. And if you're not doing that, you're not getting the experience. And so I really push people to go out and see things in person.

Don't limit your art consumption to scrolling on your phone because it's not meant to last. Art is meant to leave an impression. And it's so easy to just scroll past something and never think about it again. But when you're in front of a painting that really speaks to you, that's a moment you'll remember for your life. It sticks with you even unconsciously and shapes the way that you experience the aesthetics.

Yeah. You know, there's certainly an emotional aspect to that. There's a physical aspect to it. There's almost a spiritual aspect to it, and you're talking about this kind of multifaceted sensory experience when you're engaging with art. And I'm I'm curious for you in that same light, when do you remember actually first developing in a way a trusting relationship with visual arts as an extension perhaps of your own experiences and your own journey growing up or or even, the switch going off to say that, hey.

This kind of multifaceted experience is one that I I can believe in and I can trust because it actually is a manifestation of all those different senses that we just talked about. Creativity was definitely something I was always drawn to as a kid and something my parents really strongly encouraged in all mediums. And I definitely grew up going to museums. I grew up in Houston that has a phenomenal art scene. I was exposed to a lot of work, but I would actually say, like, my real proper engagement with art started later.

It started when I moved to New York for grad school, and I was surrounded by galleries, and I was really young and just hungry for new experiences. But even beyond that, I do think my understanding of art is something that came with maturity. I don't think I would be able to take on this type of work that I'm doing now at age 25. I think I needed more world perspective, perspective, but I'm still developing. I needed a deeper sense of my own self and my sense of taste, and I needed language.

I needed to take a lot, and I was learning how to translate it and make things accessible, which I think comes with life experience. So the roots were always there, but I actually think my journey to art was later in life almost by design because of the nature and the complexity of the work I was taking on. And I I think that narrative doesn't get presented very often, especially in creative work. It's always like, oh, I just knew from the time I was a kid, this is what I was supposed to be doing. But I actually see my own relationship revealing something different where you only get clarity over your abilities or what you're meant to be doing with a little bit of life experience.

You know, and, how did your own perhaps South Asian Americanness factor in with this? Right? I mean, you have the touch points of ongoing maturity, life experiences, developing a vocabulary, if you will, with art and certainly the academics of it. And yet the South Asian Americanness and the identity piece, I'm sure has been something that is an anchor for you that's been there all along. So have there been some touch points particularly where that has been embedded or even infused into the work?

Absolutely. I think it touches on almost everything I'm doing because I think so much of my work is about not only understanding our shared culture, but helping me understand my place in the world. Yeah. And so my childhood was mostly in Texas, but very frequently in India. We would spend good chunks of the year there, and I always really loved being in India.

I I I always felt a sense of just comfort and familiarity there. And as I got older and when I started doing my PhD, my research was focused on South Asia and India. I was really thinking about the history of the South Asian diaspora in addition to this very specific cultural moment in contemporary India, thinking about liberalization and how the country was going through so much rapid change at that time. So I am someone, and I I encourage people to think this way, where I'm like, my lived experience is important, but it's not enough if I wanna present a sense of expertise about South Asian culture. It was really important for me to take that experience and then build and challenge and constantly research, research, research.

So I think that academic piece of me has also been a really big part of my personal journey. And Yeah. I really think so much of my work came not necessarily just from the experience of being South Asian in America, but the experience of going from that context and then being in India. Because one of the things I really stress to people is often in the US, our creativity centers whiteness. If it's a response to it, if it's a resistance to it, if it's a and no matter which way we're coming at it, no matter what our relationality is to whiteness, whiteness is always at the center, and we're always just sort of responding to it in some way.

And I see this really recurring a lot when I am in LA. I'm reading scripts all the time. I have so many friends in different kind of creative fields, and I find that that's the case. And my time in India, especially, I was sort of back and forth between the US and India through my late twenties. And Sure.

It was the first time creatively I was like, I can have the same kind of conversations I wanna have in the US, but I don't have to center the assumption of whiteness being a norm. Yeah. That was very, very liberating, and I wanted to imagine a space in Los Angeles where that was the central logic. We are at a gallery focused on South Asia and the diaspora, but we've showed artists from other backgrounds. It's just a space that imagines our cultural perspective at the center.

And I I think that's such a luxury in some ways, but it's also something that's so the norm in other parts of the world and other experiences. And so it's a small gesture that I think has been very inclusive. You know, that unlocking of being able to say in a very free way that untethering the conversation from the experience of how it's related to whiteness, Does that come oftentimes with a a real sense of, I wouldn't say surprise from from people who are novices, but, yeah, maybe even shock that, like, no. This is important to really unlock that. And it's important to come to some kind of negotiation with that, especially for those who live in a diasporic way, whether they're South Asian or, you know, from any nonwhite perspective.

Is that a conversation that people have to grapple with a little bit in order to experience and in in a way kind of get that full sort of sensory experience with the art? I think we are rarely taught to view the world on our own terms in the US, to really imagine our way of seeing the world as dominant or at least fully ours. I think because we're constantly having to negotiate this position of being a minority, and I think there's, you know, so much precedent in the writing about race in the US. That's really set forward how you know, like, W. E.

B. Du Bois is writing about double consciousness, for example, is something I'm constantly thinking about because we often perceive ourselves both as we see ourselves, but also the way we're being seen. I think being able to walk into a gallery space with artists who are depicting visuality so wholeheartedly from their individual and cultural perspective suddenly forces you to think differently. And one of the things I felt very strongly, and this was a big motivation for me starting the gallery, the discourse about our presence in the US in the last 10 to 15 years has been defined primarily by marginality. And I think there is a little bit of disingenuity to that.

I think there is a little bit of almost appropriating discourse, especially from the black community, and retrofitting it to our experience in a way that I think is all around harmful. Yeah. And then I don't want the effort of the gallery and my efforts around the art world to be a charity case. I don't want it to be because it's been marginalized in the past, which it has. Without a doubt, it has.

I want it to be centralized because it is some of the most important relevant art to our world right now. South Asian perspectives are engaged with questions of migration and precarity. They're questions of, you know, political upheaval. There's rich art historical engagement and aesthetic engagement. These are all reasons to place us at the center, not at the margins, and this is true of so many different cultures.

So in a way, I both wanna centralize our work, but also imagine a fully decentralized cultural approach to art and perspective. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's not not an easy needle to thread. Right? I mean, where you're really kind of having people straddle so many different ideas and thinking about who they are.

And I think that goes back to this whole idea that, like, you know, you really need to live this on a day to day basis as opposed to making it event based where you only think about it once in a while. You're listening to Trust Me. I Know What I'm Doing. After a quick break, we'll come back to our conversation with art gallerist and curator, Rajiv Menon. Stay tuned.

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New episodes weekly wherever you listen to your podcast. Hi, guys. I'm Karim Barar. I'm an actor, director, and producer here in LA, and you're listening to Trust Me. I Know What I'm Doing.

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My name is Richa Moorjani, and you're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing with Abhay Dandekar. Welcome back to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing. Let's rejoin our conversation now with art gallerist and curator, Rajiv Menon. I I am thinking about this idea of transporting yourself or even, like, thinking about, like, how you live in both worlds, especially for many of us growing up. You know, any I mean, South Asian Americans particularly, but, any diasporic community lives on this kind of spectrum of emotional and physical expression of art with, again, nostalgia at its core.

And and you've worked, you know, with this particularly with the past is is a country. And so I'm wondering if nostalgia you know, is nostalgia an inevitable and and in fact, important embrace in order to manifest contemporary artistic engagement? Do you does everyone have to really, really make sure that nostalgia is both a part of of their of this work? And yet also it's not the only part of the work. But do you have to find a way to embrace it no matter what?

There is a book I absolutely love called Rachel Mel Rachel Melancholia, Racial Dissociation on the Social and Psychic Lives of Asian Americans, by David l Eng and Shin Ki Han. It's a book that combines, like, clinical, psychological practices with humanistic approaches to thinking about race, immigration, and emotion. And so much of Asian American experience is often presented in more sociological terms, and this is a book that also informed later minor feelings by Cathy Park Hong to think about our lives in emotional terms. And if you think about immigration as an experience and then the experience of growing up second generation, loss is a tremendous part of it. You've lost so much of your connection to who you are and where you're coming from, and then you feel completely alienated in so many parts of the world.

And so many of our early great works of art have been about that. Like Jhumpa Lahiri, for example, is an artist who not only is a great chronicler of Indian American and Bengali American life, but she is a master of the aesthetics of alienation and thinking about how to translate that experience into a more sensory one. And, ultimately, aesthetics are questions of emotions. It's how do you evoke feeling? How do you evoke sensation?

And so thinking about our psychic lives and what characterizes our emotional history in this country is so important. Melancholia, nostalgia, the fact that we are by definition somewhat backwards facing through this experience of migration is inherent to our artistic practice. So I did the entire exhibition on Indo nostalgia, thinking about how this is a very culturally specific emotional expression, but every single show I've put on has at least one artist who's exploring this theme. I am Yeah. Consistently fascinated with how you take the sensory experience of memory, the feeling of having and remembering in your head, and translate it to the sensory material of visuality, whether it's through paint, whether it's through textile.

And every artist I've shown has done it in a completely different way, and I think that is such an important act in looking at our emotional lives, our emotional history as a community. First off, I'm always interested to hear about those people who can now navigate through Jhumpa Lahiri's work in Italian, so maybe that'll be, you know, something to also explore. And then second off, it reminds me that any art, no matter what its expression is, whether it's visual art, whether it's graphic art, you know, whether it's theater art and just, you know, kind of performance art. I had to officiate a wedding a few months ago now, and it reminded me that there is so much nostalgia into the rituals that we perform. And yet one of the themes and one of the important parts of officiating that ceremony was to actually create new nostalgia and create new themes and and traditions.

And I think you're right that there's so many mixed emotions that that come from both loss and also the, you know, optimism of of gain. I I was reflecting a little bit on the variety of shows that that you've, you know, put on and and the pieces that are involved in each of these. And and in reflecting upon item number and now streaming and like, share, subscribe, what dots do you think have been connected for you? And maybe not just as, an artist, but, again, as a sort of global South Asian citizen, if you will. Yeah.

I want every exhibition to take on a big cultural theme. I start almost with a hypothesis. I wanna think about how each show can answer a larger cultural question. So it's not just what's happening in the room, but it's actually participating in a larger discourse. So the first exhibition item number was largely about artists based in the diaspora and thinking about the idea of the exotic.

This is a theme that's often pushed at us. We're often framed in terms of exoticism in the west. But I wanted to think about how artists could reclaim it, reimagine it, turn into something empowering versus objectifying. And through that, come up with a example of what what does diaspora aesthetic look like. Like, what are the sort of visual and sensory principles that we're bringing together collectively.

And and I wanted to think about how we're forming almost a sense of genre, and the the exotic and the response to the exotic was a really fun but powerful road into that. And then with each show, I try to respond to the one that came before and really look critically at what I didn't do as well with that show and what I could work on in the next one. So now streaming, I was very aware the first show was very diaspora heavy, but there is incredible art happening in the subcontinent. And I spent a lot of time in India, and I really felt a sense of responsibility to start bringing the voices that don't get to show in the west very often and give them a platform. So now streaming really centralized a lot of perspectives of artists we're actively exhibiting, especially in India and Pakistan and Sri Lanka as well.

Yeah. The 3rd show, I wanted to really dive themed into that, theme of nostalgia. So I wanted it to be less about geography, and I wanted to really go on much more emotional terms. I wanted to think about South Asianness not as a geographic and identitarian construction, but as an emotional one. And I wanted to present a show that asked, what does being South Asian feel like?

And what does that emotional texture look like? That show was very heavy. It was a lot about grief. It was a lot about politics and really complicated history. So then the next show, like, share, subscribe, I was like, I need a fun pop pop summer show.

I wanna show people that art can be fun and funny and have levity and not be something that has to necessarily weigh you down, that can make you feel lighter and still provide some gravity as well. So there's there's a constant sort of back and forth happening with each show where I think about how they can respond and build on the one that came before him. I wonder if all those juxtapositions that you just, you know, narrated. Is this sort of a proxy for for how your own constant churn is is going when it comes to artistic expression, especially in the context of a gallery or or performance of a show? Completely.

And I I had to think a lot about what my own role is as a curator. For me, my form of expression is public speaking. I love speaking to a crowd. I'm a former academic. I really, really enjoy that, and I find that that's sort of the way that I can communicate what's going on.

And so I think about each show in terms of what larger conversation and dialogue I wanna create, and there is an element of performance of that. I'm constantly doing walk throughs. I encourage people to come to the gallery, and I will give them the full sort of tour and really help them understand what they're looking at and Yeah. Give them that kind of experience. And for the first few days, especially, we're looking at quite large crowds who are coming in.

And that's been, I think, one of the breakthroughs, both in terms of, you know, coming in touch with my own form of expression, but also really showing what the gallery can do in terms of creating connoisseurship, creating excitement about art, and creating community above all else. You know, if you if you put your roles in there as a docent, as an educator, as a director, as a choreographer, as an explainer. When you're actually going through some of these walk throughs or helping people to not just understand something, but to tap into their own thought process a little bit, what are some of the misconceptions that you find that are out there? The common ones that you're like, boy, this is an easy one, and maybe not the not so common ones that are they're a little bit, that require a little bit more unpacking too. The one that I get the most that's kind of in between those two categories is I don't get it.

Can you explain it to me? I don't get it. Right. And I'm, like, that's not what this is about. I think people come in expecting a painting to function kind of like a riddle that they have to, like, solve and there has to be a solution to it.

When in fact, there's quite a bit of trust between painter and audience for you to have your own experience and Sure. The answers are internal in a way that can often make people uncomfortable. Right. Because I I think sometimes if they don't have an immediate reaction, they feel there's something lacking and wanna push back on it. And then generally, I will say everybody has been very, very open minded and excited.

But, you know, every once in a while, I'll get someone who's, like, art is BS. This is all BS. This is all nonsense. And that is, I think, like, a really ongoing kind of battle I have to fight where I mean, I don't think I have to prove the function of art, something that is a very large part of human history. And, you know, like, that that work has already been done.

But I think, like, really showing that this is something you can participate in and it can enrich your life if you open come in with an open mind. One thing and and this is especially I I I go I'm so academic about the art a lot of the times. I go into detail about how it's made. But every once in a while, I get just, like, I it is a spiritual experience as well. And I I think that is the way my language sometimes gets about it.

And I think sometimes when people look at art and they're, like, okay, that's BS, They're actually protecting their own ego. They're actually protecting Almost like a defense mechanism? Exactly. Yeah. And I and I think I mean, you having, you know, been through the experience of med school can attest to this.

Like, one of the things you learn the more you study is to respect unknowns and what you don't know. But I think a lot of the times that unknown is really scary, and it becomes easier to dismiss an entire category of human expression than it is to face the fact that you haven't challenged yourself to take it on. And so I think, like, that is a conversation I find myself engaging with a lot, and I'm constantly thinking about how to do it better. The way I I put it is, honestly, if I couldn't taste sugar, I would think cake was BS. But Right.

Right. I would wanna make sure that I have that experience. So I or I would wanna understand my experience before making that assessment. And I I do think that there are elements of appreciation that can be taught if you come in with an open mind. And I want I wanna do that not because it's, like, homework and you should be doing it and you should be participating in this elite cultural activity.

You should be doing it because it'll make your life better. Yeah. Genuinely, it'll make your experience of the world better, and you'll be able to derive joy from places you didn't think you would before, and you'll just find something you potentially love. Such a reminder that, like, you know, empathy has to be at the core of any kind of joy that that's out there. Right?

I mean, like, there's you there's just so tethered and necessary for, hopefully, for people to, appreciate and, you know, grateful that you can taste sugar, by the way. You know, that there's some value at least to sugar in that way. Totally. You're listening to Trust Me. I Know What I'm Doing.

After a quick break, we'll come back to our conversation with Los Angeles based art gallerist, Rajiv Menon. Every story told is a lesson learned, and every lesson learned is a story waiting to be told. I'm Abhay Dandekar, and I share conversations with global Indians and South Asians so everyone can say, trust me, I know what I'm doing. New episodes weekly wherever you listen to your podcast. Hey.

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I'm Abhay Dandekar, and you're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing. Let's rejoin our conversation now with art gallerist and curator, Rajiv Menon. I I'm curious in in all of that. Right? Like, for each of these conversations that you end up having and now having gone through several iterations of a gallery show and and really sort of jump starting a lot of these conversations for people.

What have you had to maybe unlearn about yourself in finding some success here? What are some of the things that you've had to grapple with to maybe unspool a little bit about your own thinking and about yourself, you know, today compared to when you first started this? I think I've had to contend a lot with presenting myself in public and being present. And I can be a very private person, and I think a lot of the times my instinct is to withdraw or to be a little bit shy. But I think the gallery has really forced me to push myself to be more outgoing, to really not be afraid to speak up, and to really remind myself that in this particular case, I really do have something to say.

And it's not, you know, it's not attention seeking. It's not, like, like, bad to present yourself in that way if you have something to contribute to the conversation. I think this was something I found very frustrating when I first moved to LA is that there was a lot of noise on social media, on every everyone's constantly self promoting, and I think I was very reluctant to participate in that. True. And I think I I really wanna be very mindful about if I'm saying something, I want it to be worthwhile.

And I I think, like, that is a tight rope. You constantly have to walk in a place like Hollywood. And so I wanna be very, very thoughtful and making sure that I'm when I open my mouth, I'm doing it to make sure there's something important to say and that people are listening. Yeah. Right?

I mean, it's not deliberate grandstanding. It's more than anything else. It's just being authentic and and being who you are and finding comfort in that. I would want to think about that a little bit more from what you just mentioned regarding the ease of capturing and considering art on your phone. And when you think about a place like Hollywood, like Los Angeles, where there there's literally every single corner of art is is represented in in in some way in a very media heavy environment, how and why should a very specific South Asian contemporary art motif, how and why should that be relevant to a global audience that for the most part seeks a lot of harmony, but in a very, very increasingly digitally divided sort of world, You know, one that's siloed all the time.

So how does a niche area like this in a way stay relevant for connecting us? It's very important for me for visual art to be in conversation with other mediums, and that was my thinking behind starting the gallery in Los Angeles. I really soul searched a lot about where I wanted to start it. Thought about New York and London. I thought about Miami briefly.

But I kept coming back to Los Angeles because I saw this opportunity to bring the visual arts in the conversation with film and television, with music, to really create a much more cohesive ecosystem that wasn't happening. I saw so much success, especially for South Asian people, happening in film and television, but I saw similar success in visual arts not being acknowledged in the same way. The 2 worlds weren't in conversation and a healthy culture will have a constant flow between different mediums and constant dialogue happening. I instead see, you know, not just film and television, but then, like, influencer culture and digital media being a very firm center of gravity in a way that can be unhealthy. It can really rigidly shape the way that we view culture often in ways that aren't helpful.

And I think we just need diversity perspective, diversity of medium to flourish and and to constantly be exposing people to new possibilities of seeing. You know, LA seems like precisely the place that would provide energy for this. And at some point, there has to be sort of a synchronization of that swimming in the lane for for you at least and even for the community that you've been trying to galvanize. I I imagine that sort of if art is so boundless and it serves as a bridge to so many different intersections, is LA the it sounds like it's the right place because it provides that energy, that substrate for it. And yet, you know, there's so many other venues like you mentioned.

Right? Whether they're in the, you know, United States or whether they're in Europe or in Asia, Africa, the concept of it being boundless, both LA provides the energy for it, and yet it can't be bound by Los Angeles. Is that a juxtaposition that you have to still grapple with even though there is success behind this? The scope, even though we're very focused on LA, is always gonna be bigger. And one of the ways we do that is through museum acquisitions.

It's a really big goal of mine to get as much salvation work into permanent museum collections so that future generations can go and learn about art and see the role that Salvation plays in the wider history of right now. So I would love in, like, 2 generations of someone's is looking back in the history of 2024, and they see a work of art that was in one of my exhibitions, and that shapes their understanding of what it meant to have a visual culture at this moment. Yeah. And so from that possibility, the scope becomes infinite. And already, we've not been around for a year as yet, and we've placed 5 museum acquisitions and major collections to create that kind of generational permanence for South Asian culture.

And that continues to be one of my top priorities. And through that, I think I've been able to sort of see bigger and bigger and what's possible. And the gallery is growing. I envision a future in which there will be a larger presence in LA, potentially, you know, presences elsewhere. I'm constantly on the road when I'm not exhibiting because I feel like it is so important for me to be in studio with artists, viewing the work in person, understanding what makes them tick and what inspires them.

And so LA is very much a core and it's a launching pad, but the vision I have is much, much bigger, and I wanna be able to just touch on so many different parts of global community. And, I mean, I hope that they'll those will be in places where people don't necessarily expect them. Right? I mean, like, having great South Asian artists whose works are being viewed in Buenos Aires, or in Dar es Salaam, or someplace, again, completely unexpected, I hope will be the case. How much I know you have a show coming up, the, the 3 steps of land, and how much can you share, about that?

First off, 3 steps of land somehow reminds me of the epics or a story of Vaman. Yep. Is that related somehow to that? That is exactly it. So the show is all about artists from Kerala.

It's actually really personal. My family is from Kerala. My family has very deep ties to the state, and I wanted to, at the core, do something that was very much a tribute to where I'm coming from. Yeah. But, also, Kerala is this major art center in the world now that people don't realize.

The Kochi Biennale is one of the top South Asian art summits and and really showcases of some of the best global talent that happens in the region. You also have, historically, like Raja Ravi Verma, who shaped modern and contemporary Indian art in many ways. And so I wanted to put together an exhibition that looks at very regionally rooted perspectives in Kerala, but then also demonstrates how globally relevant they are. And Sure. This is, you know, with every show we're growing and this has been an exhibition where I feel like this scope and ambition is developing further.

So we're showcasing some of the most exciting young voices coming out of India right now. And then on top of that, we'll be showing an artist named Surendar Nair. He is one of India's top living artists. He is someone who has a very well established career and is one of genuinely my favorite painters. And if you had told me a year ago that I would be exhibiting his work, I would not have believed you.

So there's this just interweaving of the personal and the the cultural with this particular show that I think is gonna be really, really powerful. And it's, again, it's an opportunity for me to really talk about why art is so meaningful to me. And I think the opportunity to bring Kerala to life in Los Angeles is really, really important because I think, like we were talking earlier, so much of our experience in the country is defined by the distance from where we come from. And like food, like music, if I can use contemporary art to make the world feel a little bit smaller, that'll feel like a really big achievement, And I I can't wait to share this one. Yeah.

I'm sure I'm sure many are gonna be super excited by that and and finding a way to weave in the story of Onam with, all things Kerala. Yeah. I'm sure you know the holiday Onam. Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, that's where the the myth comes in. So I always felt was always I always found it funny that the rest of India had this story about Vaman defeating an arrogant king, but in Kerala, we're like, no. No. We're with the king. Like, that's our guy.

It's, like, completely flipped the story on its head. Right. Yeah. Well So that that's it's actually coinciding with Onum. So it's also an opportunity for me to bring this holiday to LA in a way that it's not often celebrated Awesome.

Specifically around art. I'm really excited. I think this one, I'm just really excited to share with my parents. It's really, in a way, a gift to them. And Yeah.

While showcasing some of the best work coming out of India, I think that I I'm really excited to be able to share with my family as well. Yeah. It certainly has a very different resonance that way. And I know that people are gonna be excited by this show and, of course, revisiting perhaps many of the artists and and the works that you've displayed in the past. You know, going forward for people and audiences that might be in fact experiencing, and discovering your work and shows for the first time, what questions do you hope they're asking themselves as soon as they're done experiencing this and as they move forward?

What are some of the sort of thought provoking or, you know, even introspective questions that you hope people are asking when they're experiencing your work? How could I get involved? I think I wanna reframe art from something you just go to and see and then move on to something that's like a movement. And especially when I look at our community, when we're so invested in questions of representation and visibility, this is a really straightforward way to take on those concerns. And it's not just showing up to the gallery, which is a first step, but also amplifying and thinking about how you can support artists.

I I don't expect everyone to start collecting art, but if that's something you're interested in, I I it's a conversation you can start. And I can help you, you know, like, navigate that very complicated process of bringing art into your home. If there's art that you absolutely love but you're not in a place to collect, think about how you can share it with others. Are there people you know that might be able to support that artist? Because collecting art isn't just about acquiring a good.

It's not just a consumer transaction. You're investing in an artist's long term career, and you're enabling them to go on and keep making work, keep contributing to the culture. And if there's someone you really believe in, you can be an emissary for their work. You can tell people about it and spread it. And art is yes.

I there's a big audience for it. There's so many people coming to the gallery, but, you know, it's a very smaller audience compared to film and television, and one person sharing and spreading the work can have a lot of impact. You can actually really make a difference for an artist. And so I think it's a chance to be like, wow. I actually you know, just by telling my community can make a difference and spreading the work can make a difference.

I don't have to be someone with this massive audience. I just have to know a few of the right people. So I I want art to be something that you can constantly be talking about and sharing. I love when people bring up art they've seen recently. It shows that it's really making an impact on their life and it's borrowing into their head.

And so I I hope to continue being able to create opportunities for that. Well, I know Rajiv that, you're creating impact for people. You're being an emissary for so much art and so many artists that are making their way into people's lives, and and I know people are asking those questions over and over again. Thank you so much for for joining us for a real treat of a conversation, and I hope we can visit with you again down the road. This was really great.

I'm happy to come back anytime. Thanks so much, Rajiv. Please go check out 3 Steps of Land in LA, and more about Rajiv is also in the show notes. Thanks again for listening. And as an important public health reminder, September is National Suicide Prevention Month here in the US.

So if you or someone you know is struggling or in a crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or go to 988 lifeline.org to reach the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline. A big shout out to all those mental health professionals for all you do. Till next time. I'm Abhay Dandekar.