Share
Los Angeles might be better known for Hollywood, but Rajiv Menon Contemporary is carving out a space of its own.
When Rajiv launched the gallery as a pop-up in Silver Lake eighteen months ago, it was an experiment. Now, it’s grown into a considered programme with a steady following and a clear point of view.
Though he holds a PhD in global media and visual culture from NYU and trained at Sotheby’s, Rajiv’s path into the art world wasn’t linear. He began in television. But what carried through, from screen to gallery, was a strong grasp of how culture moves, and how easily it can be misread or oversimplified.
We spoke with him about audiences, exoticisation, and why South Asian art doesn’t need a permission slip to take up space.
Rajiv Menon at Rajiv Menon Contemporary, Photo Credits: Max Christiansen/BFA
Q1. You started with an academic interest in visual culture, when did that turn into a personal impulse to open a gallery? And how has living between India and the U.S. shaped your relationship with art?
“I wanted to find ways to expose people to culture from South Asia and the diaspora,” says Rajiv Menon, who entered the art world through the lens of visual culture, his PhD at NYU tracing film, television, fashion, and contemporary art across South Asia and the diaspora.
Arriving in New York in 2010, just after the South Asian market crash, he witnessed a scene rebuilding itself. “I was spending a lot of time just visiting galleries and slowly becoming obsessed with art.” Even while working in television, he was nurturing this growing passion.
In 2023, he launched Rajiv Menon Contemporary as a pop-up in LA, testing what he sensed was an eager but underserved audience. “There was this untapped audience in LA that really wanted to see work from the subcontinent and the diaspora but wasn’t getting the opportunity.”
Menon’s comfort with movement between India and the U.S. has always been instinctive, not dislocating. “It was just how my family did it,” he says, recalling a childhood split between Texas and India. With artists on both sides of his family and time spent working in Bombay’s entertainment industry, art was never far from view.
As an Indian American, Menon acknowledges the risk of exoticising the very culture he platforms. He often revisits Salman Rushdie’s ‘Imaginary Homelands’, particularly its critique of diasporic nostalgia. “India of the past is not the India of today,” he says. His mission is clear: to resist flattening South Asian culture into memory, and instead show it as dynamic, diverse, and forward-looking.
Rajiv with Tarini Sethi and Viraj Khanna at Untitled Art Fair Miami 2024, Photo Credits: Silvia Ros
Q2: What is the vision behind Rajiv Menon Contemporary, not just in terms of the artists you show, but the role you see the gallery playing in the cultural landscape? And why did you choose to base that vision in Los Angeles, as opposed to cities like New York or Houston?
Deciding the gallery’s location wasn’t merely about convenience, it was a genuine strategic choice, and yes, it comes with its own set of comforts. LA was home, but it also happened to be at the centre of a wider shift. As South Asian writers, actors, directors, and executives began reshaping the diaspora’s presence in American pop culture, Menon noticed the visual arts were being left out of that shift. “The centrality of Hollywood and the cultural impact that the diaspora has here is very significant globally, and I wanted the visual arts to be front and center in that space.”
The gallery is a response to that gap. Painting, textiles, and other mediums needed to be part of the broader cultural dialogue. “It was essential to bring painting, textile, and other mediums into dialogue with that. And not only to create conversation with other forms of creativity, but to also provide points of inspiration.” That instinct, that LA would have an audience ready for this, turned out to be true.
At Rajiv Menon Contemporary there’s no narrow specialisation. Partly because there’s “such a large ground to cover on the West Coast, but also because there is a thread running through it. “The cultural context of Los Angeles is defined by Hollywood, and I think having that culture of comparative visuality is really important for the gallery, and that’s emerging as kind of one of our important sub-thesis.”
And through it all, come out the foundational questions: “what is your specific cultural vantage point, what is your perspective, and what space are you occupying in the culture is a really important exercise for any young gallerist, and I really encourage that thought process and that exercise before fully launching a new gallery.”
Q3: How important is it to label the art at your gallery as South Asian and how do you balance that without it being othered?
It is a tension Menon confronts often, wanting to centre South Asian artists without letting the label become a limit. “I want to be able to contextualize the work,” he says, “and I’m not leaning on the fact that I’m of South Asian descent. I instead want to focus on the fact that I have a really rigorous academic background in the conversation about South Asian culture.”
The challenge is not about representation, but about resisting easy categorisation. “I struggle with this question of pigeonholing a lot,” Menon says. “I don’t want to be seen as the South Asian version of an American gallery. I think that implies a sense of derivation.”
Instead, his approach is to reframe the conversation itself. “I want to push back on the logic itself that South Asian is a pigeonholing term,” he says. The goal is not to dilute the specificity of South Asian art, but to place it at the centre, to make it, over time, a neutral part of the global narrative rather than a qualifier on the margins.
“I want people to walk into the gallery and imagine in Los Angeles what it means to view the culture from our terms and from our perspective,”. His assumption is simple: that audiences come with intelligence and good faith, and that if anyone sees the gallery’s focus as reductive, it says more about their limits than about the work itself. “Hopefully,” Menon adds, “the very idea that being South Asian is somehow limiting to your access to the mainstream can over time erode.”
Rajiv Menon Contemporary, ‘Item Number’ Show, 2023, Photo Credits: Reza Allahbakshi
Q4: How do you navigate the lingering perceptions of exoticisation in South Asian art? While the narrative is shifting, do you still encounter those stereotypes in your work today?
The question of exoticisation was not something Menon approached passively. It was one of the first ideas he wanted to confront head-on when he launched Rajiv Menon Contemporary. “That first exhibition, Item Number, was all about that process of exoticisation and how artists respond to those types of burdens and stereotyping,” he says.
The tendency to treat South Asian art as decorative rather than critical was something he had noticed among wider American audiences. “More often than not, both within the diaspora and within a larger American audience, South Asian art wasn’t treated as fine art, it was treated as cultural décor,” Menon says. “I was surprised how often members of the diaspora were actually espousing that same mentality.”
Naming the problem was essential to dismantling it. “I’m a big believer that if you want to fight that type of discourse, you have to name it, you have to identify it, and you have to provide a response to it,” he says. Through exhibitions like ‘Item Number’, Menon hopes audiences are now better equipped to spot exoticisation when it appears and to push back against it.
“I am constantly thinking about exoticism,” he says. “I’m very conscious of the way that the diaspora itself is sometimes the most guilty of exoticising South Asian culture.” Keeping that conversation open and active remains central to how he approaches the gallery’s role.
Q5: As someone building a gallery abroad, how do you view the Indian art ecosystem today with its growing international presence, newer initiatives, and structural hurdles? Do you see any Indian galleries stepping into the mega-gallery space, and how is the role of the gallerist changing in this global context?
Menon sees the Indian art ecosystem as “growing, shifting, and increasingly outward-looking,” with galleries like Experimenter, Jhaveri Contemporary, and Chatterjee & Lal shaping global conversations. “Every gallery has a strong point of view,” he says, pointing to a sense of momentum despite ongoing structural challenges like export restrictions.
He believes some Indian galleries are already operating at the scale of global giants. “Nature Morte, for example, is already a mega gallery… it fits into that blue chip conversation.” The issue, he says, is recognition, not capacity. “Indian art is not just bubbling up. It is very much essential to the art ecosystem.”
Running a gallery today, he says, “means wearing a million hats – curator, facilitator, strategist.” Before starting out, “Before starting a gallery, I’d never sold a thing in my life.” He sees a particular potential in connecting with the South Asian diaspora in the U.S., many of whom are entering the art world for the first time. “The second they see the strength of South Asian work, they want to be a part of this.”
Rajiv with Anamika Khanna and Iva Dixit and Viraj Khanna, Photo Credits: Daria Valiguras
Q6: At Art Fervour, we’re connected to a large community of young South Asian artists trying to find their footing in a fast-changing art world, where visibility, support, and representation are still evolving. What guidance would you offer to them? And what would you say to young gallerists who are just starting out?
Menon’s first advice to young artists is simple: do not confuse visibility with success. “I’m very, very ambivalent about the role of Instagram,” he says. While it can help artists reach new audiences, it also distorts what artistic success looks like. “It’s very easy to fall into that pursuit of followers and likes, which is ultimately bad for the art,” he says. “The stuff that does well algorithmically often is just the stuff that’s easy to distribute, and it doesn’t necessarily reflect the strength of the art practice.”
For artists trying to build sustainable careers, he recommends focusing less on metrics and more on depth. “Meet the right people, not the most people,” Menon says. “Think critically about how your work is being presented in the public.” The temptation to chase fame is strong – especially in cities like Los Angeles, where influencer culture sets the tone – but real artistic longevity, he argues, comes from honing the work itself.
For young gallerists, the advice is different but no less direct. Menon urges them to start by identifying what makes their perspective distinct. “Figuring out what your unique cultural perspective is, is the most important thing,” he says. In an increasingly crowded landscape, clarity of vision matters as much as operational skill.
Rajiv with Artist Noormah Jamal, Photo Credits: Simran Malik
Q7: What’s next for Rajiv Menon Contemporary? Is there anything you’re working on that you’re excited to share?
This year marks a shift for Rajiv Menon Contemporary, from group exhibitions to solo presentations, and from local visibility to a broader international reach. “We launched the gallery with a focus on group presentations, but we’re shifting more towards solos this year,” Menon says, with upcoming West Coast and U.S. debuts showcasing artists from across the diaspora and the subcontinent.
The gallery will also step into the fair circuit, beginning with Untitled Houston in September. “It’s the launch of the fair there, and it’s my hometown return,” Menon says. “It’s a really exciting opportunity to bring this work to the place I grew up.”
August will mark another milestone, with the gallery’s first exhibition in India at the Jaipur Centre for the Arts. “That’ll be our first time showing in India, which is going to be really exciting,” he says.
Looking ahead, the ambition is clear, “I hope we can start to put our fingerprints on cities across the world and really be part of this vibrant global movement around South Asian art,” Menon says.
At the core, the vision is expansive but personal. “I want people who come into the gallery to feel like they’re part of something bigger. They’re part of a cultural movement that’s, you know, rooted in the gallery but much, much larger, and I want that sort of ambition and that hope to see South Asian art all over the world to come to fruition over the next few years.”
