In her participatory installation BAR, artist Rujuta Rao invites the audience to experience artworks from a menu across a bar counter. The menu for the iteration of BAR niro includes the Goan distilled beverage cashew feni, an edible pairing, artworks, artist books, and printed matter made by Rao during her 2024 Center for Book Arts Residency in New York City.

The works included in the menus encapsulate Rao’s learning of cashew feni while drawing parallels between its history and her family’s migration to Goa. They were made alongside studying the production of cashew feni, its role within Goa’s social fabric, its use in ceremonies, rituals, and for medicinal purposes and its history which begins with the cashew plant which was brought by Portuguese colonialists from Brazil to India.

At a time when feni has received Geographical Indication in India, with hopes that it will garner the global demand that tequila has, Rao is concerned about the pitfalls that accompany capitalistic trends. In light of feni's rising popularity, she is curious about what it means to share a personal experience of the beverage on an intimate scale.

This format of exhibition is an extension of Rao’s practice of creating and sharing tactile artworks for individual viewers, her past experience as a bartender and her training as a Japanese sake advisor. More about Rao’s ongoing BAR series can be read in the accompanying text contributed by Laurel V. McLaughlin.

Rujuta Rao was born in Goa, India, and is based in Jersey City, NJ. Rao's multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, installation, performance, book and sound art, alongside conceptual and functional garments. Her practice is research-led and intensely personal, investigating the fragility and limitations of materials relating to place, family history, and hospitality.

Rao received her MFA in interdisciplinary art from Parsons School of Design and BFA in sculpture from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. She is a certified Japanese sake advisor and is presently awaiting her sake sommelier exam.

Artist residencies and fellowships include CCA Islands Travel Fellowship, Japan; ISSP Riga Residency, Latvia; Civita Institute Fellowship, Italy; and The Rejoinders Residency, UK. Rao is a 2024 Workspace Artist in Residence at the Center for Book Arts in New York, where she is developing wearable publications. Rao’s work has been exhibited internationally, with a recent highlight being the State of Fashion Biennale 2024 in Arnhem, NL, where she macerated her family’s garments in ethyl alcohol to create fictional tinctures.

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