Solo exhibition ‘Dark Flame Streams Bright’ at Kashi art gallery, Fort Kochi, India. On view: October 23 - November 30. 2026.

Selected photos (personal archive, opening night documentation by cinematographers Appu Prabhakar and Prem Jyothis)

This exhibition marks Raituma’s solo debut in India, gathering works from several series made between 2021 and 2026. Works created in Portugal and Latvia have previously been shown across Europe, and now arrive in India after a long journey. The largest works on view have been made in 2026, conceived specifically for this exhibition.

‘DARK FLAME STREAMS BRIGHT ponders altered realities, dream-like, remembered landscapes and elements of flora, fluid in form and created in co-authorship with the primary element - fire. Infused by sublime experiences of nature, the visual narrative dwells on embodied, symbolic, semi-abstract elements that grow out of the subconscious and exist on some other plane, like a faraway land. They recall moving, alchemised beings and terrestrial essences, inhabiting the wooden surface as literal traces of fumes, not fully graspable, yet familiar and enlivened. Brought to existence by fire itself, they serve as reminders of the inner flame: of the vulnerability of organic matter in a world growing warmer, more unsettled, moulded by human appetite, and of the resilience found through adaptability, a tender light kept alive as darkness gathers.

Showcased in Fort Kochi, an area shaped by centuries of trade and exchange along the Malabar Coast, this exhibition finds a resonance in its own passage. Artworks born in Portugal and Latvia travel here carrying the residue of other shores, and meet a place that has been a threshold between cultures. In a city where histories arrive by sea and layer each other, these fire-drawn surfaces are another kind of streams: of haze, memory and afterimage.’