Kaveri Raina, “Dodo’s Assortment” (2019), acrylic and oil pastel on burlap, 70 x 40 in. (image courtesy the artist)
At a moment when so many of us are missing physical touch and closeness, the relentless tactility of Raina’s work resonates all the more deeply.
CLEVELAND, Oh. — When I recently walked into Abattoir Gallery for the first time, I was greeted with rainbows. Delicately drawn on tissue-thin Abaca paper, arcing over sparse landscapes, their buoyancy felt incongruous, mocking even. After all, I had just checked in with a masked attendant, who gestured to a table of amenities, including masks, sanitizer, and pre-packaged snacks. It occurred to me that I was also standing in a former meat-processing plant, having listened on the drive over to a podcast about outbreaks of COVID-19 at industrial meat plants elsewhere in the Midwest.