Kirtika Kain

Born in Delhi and raised in Sydney, Kirtika Kain is a contemporary artist whose practice engages with caste, labour, and identity through printmaking, painting, and installation. Drawing on her Dalit heritage and research into materials associated with manual work (such as linoleum, tar, textiles, and pigments), Kain examines how social histories become embedded in surfaces. Her works combine rigorous process with conceptual inquiry, transforming humble materials into powerful statements about visibility, dignity, and resistance.

Detail: Kirtika Kain, gold silkscreen, 2025, gold leaf, wax, charcoal and cotton on silk screen, 183.0 × 78.0 cm; Courtesy the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; photo: David Suyasa.

Kain’s tactile works are composed of dense layers, often combining materials such as ink and gold leaf with unconventional materials tar, cow dung and hair. These materials relate to her Indian heritage, this choice being an extension of her childhood memories. Present too is the heaviness and hierarchy of text. Partly obscured by lustrous layers, its buried presence hints of a struggle to be heard.

Kain was deliberately shielded by her immigrant parents from identifying with the Dalit caste ascribed to her family – the lowest members of Hindu society. Living outside this system in Australia, her family was able to pursue educational and professional opportunities with a freedom that would have been impossible had they remained in India. Indeed, in his later years, inspired by the Indian jurist, politician and social reformer, B.R. Ambedkar (1891–1956) and fifteenth-century poet–saint Shri Guru Ravidass, Kain’s father became an activist for Dalit causes. Kain has absorbed this cause, its mission becoming the animating principle of her practice.

Kain created Chronicles II, 2025, while on a six-month residency in London. Drawn to the reactive properties of copper, Kain used large rectangular pieces as though they were sheets of paper. She scored the copper with cotton wicks, these referencing the lamps used in religious rituals. Suspended in space, the copper sheets hang like paper. This reversal of intaglio printmaking conventions is just one of the ways in which Kain breaks with established printmaking. Despite these reversals, Kain finds rich ground in the technical traditions of printmaking and its potential to express metaphor. Through association – be it density and weightlessness, opacity and transparency, perfection and imperfection, sacred and profane – she undertakes a kind of mapping. Kain’s art brings powerful contradictory impulses together: exploring the shame of hiding your identity, a desire to challenge the thinking that leads to oppression, pride in belonging to an ancient culture, and activism.

Text by Maria Zagala, Yield Strength Catalogue

Kirtika Kain, copper large, 2025, etched copper, cotton, tar and wax, 120.0 × 90.0 cm; Courtesy the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; photo: David Suyasa.

  • Caste and Social History: Works reflect on structures of exclusion and their lived impacts.
  • Material Labour: Use of utilitarian materials highlights the politics of work and class.
  • Text, Pattern, and Mark-making: Repetition, stencils, and layered printing build meaning.
  • Visibility and Voice: Art as a platform for self-representation and community narratives.
  • How do Kain’s material choices relate to labour and social history?
  • In what way does repetition or pattern contribute to meaning in Kain’s work? Research other artists who use repetition in their work such as Rachel Whiteread and Cornelia Parker.
  • Kain’s recent work includes the following materials: tar, copper, gold leaf, turmeric, wax and hessian. Select one of these materials and write as many words that you associate with that material. Compare your responses to other people in the class. Dig deeper and research your chosen material, what is it used for usually? What are its characteristics, function or scientific properties? Why do you think Kain chose that material to work with?
  • Compare Kain’s work to that of Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui. What similarities can you identify in their work both in material and conceptually?
  • What is a material or object you associate with your childhood? Create a work of art that either incorporates this material or object into the work to tell a story about your memory.
  • Experiment with relief printing using linoleum or textured surfaces. Which material holds your marks most visibly?
  • Design a stencil or relief print based on a word or symbol that speaks to visibility and voice. You may like to experiment with repetition and layering.
  • A sense of freedom is present in Kain’s work. Is there a song that makes you feel a sense of calm and freedom? Create a drawing while listening to this piece of music.
  • Kain’s work explores the way histories are either preserved or ignored. Consider the history of the place where you live – you may even consider the history of Australia more broadly. What is remembered or commemorated and what things are disregarded? Investigate one aspect of Australian history that you may not have been aware of and create a work that amplifies this story.