Ruhee Maknojia

Ruhee Maknojia is a Houston-based artist. She was born and raised in the United States in a culturally Indo-Pakistani home. It is through the lens of this cultural experience that she views aesthetic choice. Empowered by the concept of “tradition” that appears stagnant, but in practice, ever-shifting to meet contemporary life demands, she uses her art practice to raise questions about power, ethics, and values.

In 2019 Maknojia received her M.F.A. in Visual Arts from Columbia University in New York City, where she did a concentration in painting; since then her art practice has expanded to installation, video, and printmaking. In 2016 She received her B.A. in Middle Eastern Studies and a B.A. in Studio Art from The University of Texas at Austin.

Select exhibitions include The Big Show, Lawndale Art Center, Houston, Texas (2021) The Happiness Curriculum, Eastern Connecticut State University Gallery, Willimantic Connecticut (2019); Harlem Perspectives II, Faction Art Projects Gallery, New York City (2019); Feel That Other Day Running Underneath This One, Time Square Space, New York City (2018), 42/18, LeRoy Neiman Gallery, New York City (2018)

Can you tell us a bit about the process of making your work?

Detail from **Visualizing the Tradition of Folklore,** 2019

My art process is rooted in patience. I often work with hand-painted patterns and repetitive strokes, a process that can take a lot of time, especially when working on large-scale projects. My work ranges from immersive installations to small-scale paintings, with the play in scale inspired by Mughal-era miniature paintings and large architectural gardens.

Sometimes my detail-oriented process can feel frustrating due to the labor and time it takes to complete a painting or installation. However, as frustrating as the process may be, it is also rewarding. The slow process of making helps to root out which visual ideas and concepts are worth spending time on. Because I know a painting or installation might take months or even years to complete, it is important to ensure that the concept or idea continues to hold relevance beyond the present moment.

Tell us more about your work in the show.

I have two paintings in the show Time Won’t Tell. The first painting, titled Infected, was made shortly after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus a global pandemic on March 11th, 2020. At the time, I did not know how long the pandemic would last nor the mass loss of life that would follow. The masked figure in the painting is dancing in a groundless space of uncertainty, unsure how history will unfold or be remembered. Despite the uncertainty surrounding COVID at the time, I believed that the WHO’s declaration of the pandemic was significant and not without substantial consequence.

My second painting, titled Sepulcher, was painted a year after Infected. The painting is a response to mass death that followed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sepulcher recognizes the strain put on American systems that were never meant to handle and process mass death. Throughout the pandemic, these systems were tested to their limits and revealed to be riddled with mismanagement in certain areas, including the execution of the deceased’s last rites and wishes and the subsequent effects it had on the people left behind. For example, many family members were unable to accompany their loved ones during their final moments and in some cases, were even denied attendance to the funeral itself.

At the surface, the painting appears to be about bodies and mass death. However, upon further inspection, some of those arms and legs are in motion, indicating the bodies are living. Feet can be seen dancing while some hands are pointing and others are holding a beaded rope that weaves through the painting and connects the dead to the living. The beaded rope represents the tension that exists due to the lack of closure that funerals often provide for the surviving. Sepulcher does not question whether or not the wishes of the deceased matter; instead, the painting seeks to reflect upon the effects the lack of funerary rites have on the collective health and spirit of family, friends, communities, cities, and the country as a whole.

What are some references you draw upon in your work? Are there any themes in particular that you like to focus on when creating?

There are allusions to Mughal gardens and Mughal miniature paintings throughout my work. The architecture of Mughal gardens often contain a philosophical component; these gardens are viewed as intramural spaces. Everything inside of the garden’s defined borders are spaces of contemplation, reflection, peace, beauty, and paradise on Earth, while everything outside of the defined boundaries are viewed as a manifestation of dysfunction, disorder, and chaos. A particular point I like to focus on is transitional spaces or spaces of uncertainty. The central question that most interests my art practice is, “What happens at the threshold of the garden’s passageway(s) as concepts pass through the external space to the internal space and vice versa?”. If an abstract concept such as violence is brought into the garden space does it become reformed? Beautified? Redeemed? And what happens when something positive that lives within the garden walls, such as compassion, is taken out past garden walls? Does it become corrupted, ugly, and recidivous? My work lives and breathes in the space of the threshold and the tensions threaded between binaries.

Where are some of your favorite spaces that support contemporary art or design? Now that the art has an online presence, has that changed?

My favorite spaces are art spaces and cohorts that seek to engage within their local communities to create a dialogue to understand and to resolve community problems. Although these spaces are much rarer in the suburbs and nearly nonexistent in rural areas of America, there are many contemporary art spaces that do this within larger American cities. An organization that I like that engages in this type of dialogue between artists, activists, and the local community is Box 13 Artspace located in Houston’s Second Ward. Residents living in this part of the city have been underserved or outright ignored by the city at large for decades. In response to this, the artist cohort present at Box 13 Artspace actively uses art as a way to engage with the local community as well as to invite educators, scholars, and community leaders from the surrounding area to better understand their community and its unique needs.

Now that art has an online space, the exchange of visual ideas is exciting and sometimes overwhelming. From a computer screen I get to see art from across the globe by people who previously might not have had the platform to present their art practice. Online platforms work wonders for art to be easily seen and ideas and concepts to be exchanged. However, there are also drawbacks to art online. Sometimes I will find myself looking at art online and lose the richness of scale, vibrancy of color, or in some cases the elements of touch, and smell.

Who are some of your favorite artists? Or who has been inspirational recently?

There are so many inspiring artists it is difficult to choose only a few. Two artists who come to mind are Yayoi Kusama and Shahzia Sikander. My reasons for liking these two artists are different; however, from my perspective, they share a few attributes that I find inspiring. Both have a work ethic and aesthetic eye that I deeply admire, and both have elements in their art practice that I personally find transcendent.

I first came across Yayoi Kusama’s work as an undergraduate student at the University of Texas at Austin. When I first started playing with patterns on a large scale, I was blown away by Kusama’s work and how she utilizes patterns, colors, scale, and space. When I look at Kusama's work, I feel as though I am being pulled into a different dimension and world. This element of otherworldliness is something that inspires my own work when I seek to create an abstract garden space where my painted characters and landscapes can live.

Shahzia Sikandar is another artist who inspires me. A Pakistani-American artist, she uses South Asian imagery to visualize culture that also includes American culture. As a second-generation Pakistani-American myself, I find elements of Sikandar’s work identifiable. I admire Sikander not only as an artist, but as a scholar too. The way she utilizes traditional miniature painting techniques to bring the art form to the 21st century is something I admire and is not easy to do. I am often inspired by her use of precision, patience, and time, a skill set I try to implement into my own art practice.

Do you have any shows coming up? Anything else you would like to share?

I have a show coming up in March 2022 at Box 13 Artspace in Houston, TX titled One Flower One Life. This exhibition will focus on COVID-19 deaths in the United States, currently in excess of 730,000. The goal of the show is to help viewers visualize what that number physically looks like and how much space it occupies. When the WHO declared the coronavirus a global pandemic on March 11th, 2020, I started to stamp a red flower for each and every American who passed away from COVID-19. It did not take very long for the project to outgrow my studio space and my home. The sheer number of flowers is not only heartbreaking, but helped me visualize that the pandemic is much more desperate, critical, urgent, and dire than I already thought it to be.

Ruhee Maknojia’s work is included in our show “Time Wont Tell,” November 3rd - December 30th, 2021. Visit her website here or on Instagram @ruheemaknojia

Laini Nemett

Cheryl Mukherji

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