Ravi Avasti’s practice explores reflections, alignments, synchronisations and rhythms in the world around him.
Raised in the UK by his Welsh mother and Indian father and now living in Kyneton, Ravi Avasti’s ethnicity was formally described by the British Government as ‘Asian Other (if other please specify)’. In this context, the term ‘Asian’ was used to describe an Indian subcontinental origin and often swapped out for any number of racist slurs. Upon arrival in Australia, Avasti found that he was no longer ‘Asian’, this moniker here reserved for people of East and South East Asian origin.
Through ‘A Word’, Avasti seeks to provoke dialogue around the use of a single term to identify disparate ethnic and cultural groups, suggesting that language used in this way merely describes otherness through difference: difference that is used as the basis for prejudice, discrimination and mockery. In contrast, Thee That Thou celebrates these differences with a single image composed of 108 distinct panels marked with ultraviolet light which will fade over time, their differences eventually becoming indiscernible.
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