Dr. Rakini Devi’s  work can be described as intercultural hybrid performance art, integrating her knowledge of Indian Classical Dance and her visual arts practice. Devi’s performance personas are visual enactments and evocations of the body as living, ritual artifact. The subject of her practice as feminist activism and her 2018 doctorate Urban Kali centres on the “erasure” of women from global misogynist atrocities. Devi’s use of hybrid religious iconography draws from Hindu, Christian, and Buddhist influences. Her iconisation of the female body as symbol is illustrated in her performance installations including The Female Pope, The Widow, Urban Kali, Kali Madonna and Inhabiting Erasures, with performances in Australia, US, UK, India, Indonesia, Japan, Canada, Sweden, Finland, Spain and Mexico. She continues her research-based practice in dance, live art, visual art and academic writing.

Born and raised in Kolkata, Rakini Devi has spent most of her artistic journey engaging with feminist issues, be it dowry deaths in India or rampant femicide in Central and South America. Her newest Sydney exhibition ‘Inhabiting Erasures’ is inspired by Hindu goddesses, and displays never-before-seen journal paintings, light projections, meaningful performances and deeply informed statistics relating to the oppression of women. Her profound awareness of global atrocities against women across all classes of society, coupled with a passion for religious female iconography, has transformed her into an art activist well-equipped to comment on the issue through a divine lens.