Rahul Reddy is a textile artist based in New Delhi, India, who uses traditional Indian crafts to address the present. He layers several techniques in each piece: hand-block printing, discharge and resist printing, natural indigo dyeing, patchwork, quilting and hand embroidery. Garments and embroidered bugs recur throughout his work, standing for the clothes we wear and the appetites that consume them.
His subjects range from fast fashion and overconsumption to gender equality, migration, the invisibility of the common man, and the power imbalances of conflict, past and present. Alongside these, he finds stillness in ordinary domestic spaces. Textile, a material associated with comfort, becomes his way of holding difficult subjects.
Rahul has worked in the Indian fashion industry since graduating from the National Institute of Fashion Technology, New Delhi, in 2001, drawing inspiration, methods, and techniques from those decades as a fashion and textile practitioner. He lives and works in New Delhi with his wife, Shruti, and their incorrigible mutt, Pablo.
Group shows
Summer Exhibition 2024, Royal Academy of Arts, London
Summer Exhibition 2023, Royal Academy of Arts, London
Recognition
Shortlisted, Vogue India Fashion Fund (2012)
Nominated, Marie Claire Fashion Awards (2009)