Gestures of Infinity
James Fuentes
July 24–August 22, 2025
New York
Stitch by stitch and grain by grain, Purvai Rai has created an incredible body of work for her debut solo exhibition at James Fuentes. Gestures of Infinity implores viewers to ponder the practices in their own lives, ones that are cultivated, and informed by culture. Manhattan is an island of kinetic energy, no time to slow down. But Rai does not conform to the city standard; instead, she transforms the gallery into a zone that exudes careful attentiveness.
The Yale-educated, New Delhi–born artist has been vocal about her support for the farmer’s protests on the Delhi border in 2020. This conflict brought her back to her ancestral village of Nawanpind Sardaran, where learning about the land led to an art practice rooted in Punjab. The place became a living museum to inform and inspire her work, and one of the works in the exhibition, Grain by Grain 1 (2024) was made in collaboration with a person from her village. Now based in New York, Rai’s work continues to include elements of her spiritual background in Sikhism, Bhakti, and Sufi traditions. Such cultural and spiritual influences tie together each unique piece in this show, from textile to oil painting.
A large portion of the gallery is taken up by a wool embroidery piece laid out on the floor, surrounded by basmati rice. The rice is poured and dispersed tenderly by hand in a thick line around the textile. Grain by Grain 1 employs multiple shades of blue wool embroidered on burlap to create geometric patterns in three panels stitched together. Rai’s practice is grounded in spirituality, utilizing repeated motion as a carrier of memory, care, and resistance. The deep blues of Rai’s works are all-consuming: the sheer intensity of indigos pull you in, and the whites bring you back. Patterns lead into one another through each panel of textile, growing from small designs to intricate larger ones. It’s as if the scales of a fish morphed into an urban map.
The show includes paintings, textiles, and works on paper, all linked by a spiritual connection. Five acrylic works on paper, each titled Grain by Grain (all 2023), hang on the back wall, identical in size, using an indigo-colored blue on white. It looks like acrylic paint has been sprayed over dispersed grains of rice on white paper, connecting the trace of the grains to the actual rice that surrounds the work on the floor.