Shubigi Rao is an artist, writer, and filmmaker working with histories and lies, literature and violence, ecologies and natural history, libraries and knowledge hierarchies. Her films, art, and books critically, wittily, and poetically scrutinise current and historical flashpoints and crises of displacement of people, languages, cultures, and knowledge bodies. Her immersive and tongue-in-cheek work ranges from creating archaeological archives of garbage, writing How To manuals for building a nation and a culture from scratch, discovering and diagnosing peculiar forms of urban malaise where digital dandruff and pixel dust accumulate like lint and cloud the contemporary brain, building immortal jellyfish, to pseudo-museums regenerating mechanisms of knowledge accumulation, storage, and destruction.
Her current long project, Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book is about the history of book destruction, resistance, and the future of knowledge. (see here for more info). The first exhibition from the project won the APB Signature Prize 2018 Juror's Choice Award. Both the second and third books from the project won the Singapore Literature Prize (non-fiction) in 2020 and 2024, while the first volume was shortlisted for the prize (2018). The books have been awarded AIGA (New York)’s 50 best books of 2016, and D&AD Pencil for design (2016, 2018), and included in the peer-selected 'Best 50 books of Singaporean Literature'. She was in the 10th Asia-Pacific Triennial, 4th Kochi-Muziris Biennale, 10th Taipei Biennial, 3rd Pune Biennale, 2nd Singapore Biennale, Auckland Writers Festival, and Singapore Writers Festival.
Recent solos include exhibitions at Ngutu Kaka Gallery, New Zealand (2024), Rockbund Art Museum, China (2023-2024), and Rossi & Rossi Gallery, Hong Kong (2023).
Upcoming shows include the 16th Sharjah Biennale (2025), and a solo survey at Bildmuseet Sweden (14 March 2025 - 11 Jan 2026)
Rao represented Singapore at the National Pavilion in the Venice Biennale (Arte) in 2022. She was also the Artistic Director for the 2022 Kochi-Muziris Biennale.
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Shubigi's publications include 'Pulp III: An Intimate Inventory of the Banished Book' (2022), 'Pulp II: A Visual Bibliography of the Banished Book (2018), 'Written in the Margins', (2017), 'Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book', (2016), Bastardising Biography (2005), 3 pseudo-encyclopaedia under the joint title No Cover No Colour (2006), and Useful Fictions, (2013). Her publication History’s Malcontents: The Life and Times of S. Raoul (2013), chronicled 10 years of artwork and writing under the pseudonym S. Raoul.
Her current long project, Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book is about the history of book destruction, resistance, and the future of knowledge. (see here for more info). The first exhibition from the project won the APB Signature Prize 2018 Juror's Choice Award. Both the second and third books from the project won the Singapore Literature Prize (non-fiction) in 2020 and 2024, while the first volume was shortlisted for the prize (2018). The books have been awarded AIGA (New York)’s 50 best books of 2016, and D&AD Pencil for design (2016, 2018), and included in the peer-selected 'Best 50 books of Singaporean Literature'. She was in the 10th Asia-Pacific Triennial, 4th Kochi-Muziris Biennale, 10th Taipei Biennial, 3rd Pune Biennale, 2nd Singapore Biennale, Auckland Writers Festival, and Singapore Writers Festival.
Recent solos include exhibitions at Ngutu Kaka Gallery, New Zealand (2024), Rockbund Art Museum, China (2023-2024), and Rossi & Rossi Gallery, Hong Kong (2023).
Upcoming shows include the 16th Sharjah Biennale (2025), and a solo survey at Bildmuseet Sweden (14 March 2025 - 11 Jan 2026)
Rao represented Singapore at the National Pavilion in the Venice Biennale (Arte) in 2022. She was also the Artistic Director for the 2022 Kochi-Muziris Biennale.
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Shubigi's publications include 'Pulp III: An Intimate Inventory of the Banished Book' (2022), 'Pulp II: A Visual Bibliography of the Banished Book (2018), 'Written in the Margins', (2017), 'Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book', (2016), Bastardising Biography (2005), 3 pseudo-encyclopaedia under the joint title No Cover No Colour (2006), and Useful Fictions, (2013). Her publication History’s Malcontents: The Life and Times of S. Raoul (2013), chronicled 10 years of artwork and writing under the pseudonym S. Raoul.