Ragni Agarwal

Ragni Agarwal’s work has hints and traces of fashion and a plethora of colour. Informed by a pop art aesthetic, the underlying theme in her work is inclusion. The inclusion of diverse forms of beauty. As you glance through her work, you’ll see women in different skin tones portrayed oozing oodles of confidence, standing tall and seeming ready to take over the world (or the runway).Her desire to celebrate beauty in it’s distinct colours and ethnicities forms the crux of her work.

Art and Fashion have always been very dear to her, since she was a kid. Her penchant for art led her to enroll in a Graphic Design Masters and while Graphic Design lets her explore the creative domain to an extent, it doesn’t provide for the freedom to uninhibitedly express herself and her concerns. This is where art comes in. She took to illustration as an alternative medium to express herself as it doesn’t come with the set of client needs and restrictions that Graphic Design does.

While her artwork is reminiscent of her own concerns and echoes her distinct art style, it also reminds one of contemporary fashion illustrations, which one can attribute to her love for fashion, which she also defines as art. ‘I have always felt that fashion is a great way to express yourself and the way that designers drape and design dresses, in a way, it’s a form of art in itself’ she tells me. Her inclination towards fashion became etched into stone owing to one of her college projects, where she was asked to take any one any thing and represent it in a multitude of ways. She inevitably chose Fashion and hasn’t looked back since.

Today, her work brings together art and fashion under her own visual language. Most of her work is digital with the exception of a few that start as hand drawn sketches. Currently, she juggles her role of being a Graphic Designer for a Tech company along with creating art. Art also serves as an outlet for her to explore and experiment with colour, as her day to day life is somewhat devoid of it. She tells me that she doesn’t usually take to colour when it comes to her wardrobe choices and instead, sticks to a muted colour palette. Though when it boils down to art, she seldoms refrains from using colour while a bright, vibrant colour palette reigns over her work.