Born in Mumbai, India, Rahal is a storyteller who weaves counter-mythologies that question narrations of the present. This myth world takes the shape of sculptures, performances, films, paintings, installations, video games, and AI simulation programs. Drawing upon folklore prophecies, archeological conspiracies, hidden histories, and occult manuscripts, he renders scenarios where the fictive and the real begin to converse, at the borderlines of myth and memory.
“Although my engagement with emerging technologies and media have been self-driven, the work of both current and former faculty and alumni of the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts, and the critical dialogue they have nurtured, have served as an invaluable foundation in my education,” Rahal said. “I am eager to join and contribute to this ongoing conversation with the broader community at UCLA.”
Rahal’s artistic practice has been featured in institutional exhibitions internationally, including the upcoming Munch Triennial, The Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute, Manifesta 14, the Gwangju Biennale, the Liverpool Biennial, the Kochi Biennale, the Vancouver Biennale, Transmediale, MACRO Museum Rome, Kadist SF, ACCA Melbourne, CCA Glasgow, and the CSMVS Museum in Mumbai.
He is the recipient of Cove Park’s Henry Moore Fellowship, Akademie Schloss Solitude Fellowship, Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation Installation Art Grant, Digital Earth Fellowship, the first Human-Machine Fellowship from Junge Akademie ADK, Eyebeam Democracy Machine Fellowship 2024, and the 2025 “Enter the Hyper-Scientific” artist-in-residence program organized by EPFL Pavilions in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Rahal is a self-taught video game programmer. His multiplayer video game Distributed Mind Test has been featured at the 2024 Biennial of Moving Images at the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva, the Fondazione Spazio Vitale in Verona, and at FACT Liverpool.
For More Information: UCLA Arts Announces New Faculty Appointments