Ravikumar Kashi (b. 1968, Bengaluru, India) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and educator whose work spans painting, printmaking, sculpture, installation, photography, and artist’s books. His practice is grounded in themes of transformation, desire, decay, and aggression, and frequently investigates the shifting mechanics of meaning-making in contemporary visual culture. 

Kashi received his B.F.A. in Painting from the College of Fine Arts, Bengaluru in 1988, and his M.F.A. in Printmaking from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University, Baroda in 1990. He later completed a Master’s in English Literature from the University of Mysuru in 1995. In 2001, he received the Charles Wallace India Trust Grant, which enabled him to study handmade papermaking under artist J. Parry at the Glasgow School of Art. This was followed by a three-week residency on traditional Hanji papermaking in Jang Ji Bang, South Korea in 2009, supported by the InKo Centre, Chennai. Since then, paper has become a central material in his work.

Kashi has exhibited widely across India and internationally in venues such as Gallery Threshold (New Delhi), Vadehra Art Gallery (New Delhi), Gallery Sumukha (Bengaluru), Pundole Art Gallery, Cymroza and Jehangir Art Gallery (Mumbai), Aicon Gallery (Palo Alto), Air Gallery (London), Glasgow School of Art, and group exhibitions in Shanghai and Belforte del Chienti, Italy. His recent exhibitions include Shadows of Light – Solo Exhibition, at Gallery Threshold, and Art Mumbai 2025. His major works include “Gandhi I Found” (2010), which situates a clay Gandhi figure amidst objects like clocks and mirrors; “Banana and the Sword” (2012); and “This is the Way the World Ends”. His later works such as “Silent Echo” (2016), “Figure of Speech” (2017), and “Ghar Me Ghuske Maarenge” (2019), reflect on the normalisation of aggression in popular culture, often using the visual language of political flex posters, a subject he further explores in his bilingual publication “Flexing Muscles” (2019). 

Kashi’s work is held in collections including the Lalit Kala Akademi, the National Gallery of Modern Art (New Delhi), the British Museum’s Department of Oriental Antiquities (Baroda), and the Museo Internazionale Dinamico di Arte Contemporanea (Italy). He has participated in numerous workshops, biennales, curated group shows, and art fairs in India and abroad. His accolades include the Annual Exhibition Award from the College of Fine Arts (1987–88), Karnataka Lalit Kala Academy Awards (1990, 1999), Kejriwal Young Artist Award (2000), National Award from the Lalit Kala Akademi (New Delhi), and the Karnataka Sahitya Akademi Award (2015) for his Kannada-language art books “Anukta” and “Kannele”. In addition to publishing critical essays and columns in The Times of India, The Deccan Herald, and Kannada-language magazines, he serves as co-editor of the arts and culture magazine Sanchaya.

Kashi lives and works in Bengaluru, where he also teaches as visiting faculty at the RV College of Architecture.