Art Of The Matter

Gallerist Rajiv Kannan Menon is elevating childhood memories into a crusade for inclusivity, finds Hasina Jeelani

- Hasina Jeelani

If you were to bump into Rajiv Kannan Menon on a sunny sidewalk in Los Angeles, you never quite know which version of him you'll get. He could be the curator pondering over the aesthetic and intellectual rigours of art in a postcolonial world. Or he could be mapping out feuds and 'bad onscreen dates' for a reality show. It is a tightrope that he sprints across with grace as he juggles between his dual role as a TV producer and the founder and director of Rajiv Menon Contemporary.

Menon's claim to multi-hyphenate glory is further underscored by the PhD from New York University in global media and visual culture. It was during his graduate research that he would realise what the West had to learn from the postcolonial world. "Western audiences often view art and media from regions like South Asia as derivative or inferior, but I found that there was a sense of urgency to this work. As our world grows more tumultuous and unstable, non-Western perspectives provide major insight into our collective future," he shares. Today, his art gallery centralises South Asian art not just because it has been historically marginalised in the contemporary art world but because the themes and conversations emerging from the region grow more globally resonant every day.

Artist & The Muse

Menon's bid for mobilising art as a catalyst for lasting change finds expression in his inaugural art exhibit that he has saucily titled, 'Item Number'. A childhood spent consuming the theatrics of Bollywood means that the sense of colour and excess in Hindi movies has laid its stamp on his visual sensibilities – 'Chaiyya Chaiyya' from Dil Se (1998) remains his perennial favourite.