For the cover of the first anniversary issue of Robb Report India, photographer and filmmaker Avani Rai was entrusted with reinterpreting craft forms such as tangaliya weaving, shola art, Athangudi tiles, and fragrances made using the deg bhaap technique. The colour palette, says Rai, grew organically: the orange and green of the Athangudi tile-inspired background became the foundation, while the blues, pinks, reds, whites, and golds came through the tangaliya weaving, shola art, and the elements that go into a perfume.
The intention is for the viewer to first experience the collision of colour, texture and form, and then notice the central mouth and eye-like shape and the hand from which everything appears to emerge. “The idea was not to treat them as separate decorative elements, but to make them collide and interact. I wanted the crafts, objects, and forms to feel as though they belonged to the same dreamlike ecosystem: connected, tactile, slightly absurd, and very Indian, while still feeling contemporary,” explains Rai, daughter of renowned photojournalist, the late Raghu Rai.
“The hand represents the artist or maker; the source from which these worlds originate. Almost like a surreal sun, everything radiates out from it—the elements, patterns, and craft forms,” elaborates Rai, adding, “It is a metaphor for the creative hand and the act of making, [the way] an artist can take materials, histories, and traditions, and transform them into something new.”
An established photographer and filmmaker, Rai has been part of several advertising campaigns and shot impactful stories, including the aftermath of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. Her most recent project was shooting the 2027 Pirelli Calendar. Her career path might not seem so surprising given that her earliest memories of filming go back to when she was only six years old, when her father gifted her a red-and-white SLR camera. “My reason for picking up a camera was to understand what he was interested in and what he was like,” says Rai.
After leaving home at the age of 18, Rai would film the time that she and her father spent together each time she returned home from college. In 2017, she made the 55-minute documentary Raghu Rai, an Unframed Portrait from the footage she had shot over the years. On the anniversary project for Robb Report India, Rai says that the experience has been different from her other work. Her biggest challenge was to bring four very different visual languages together without making it look like a catalogue of crafts. “I wanted the references to remain recognisable, but also to be transformed,” she says.
Signed by Rai, the limited-edition artwork is now yours to keep!