An Invitation To Tea, curated and produced by Rajni Shah in collaboration with Saj Fareed and Tracey Low, was a one day Arts Council England, South East conference which placed at its heart what most people consider as ‘down time’ – the food and drink. Led by six artists and using tea as a metaphor and starting point for looking at cultural diversity, An Invitation To Tea endeavoured to be an original, engaging and individualistic forum for discussion and debate.
Perspectives: Shifting Ground brought together artists and audiences from the dance and live art scenes for a packed programme of live performance, film, installation, documentation and debate throughout Chisenhale Dance Space. Each performance or presentation was designed to question definitions and explore the fluid boundary between artforms.
Field is a live art project which looks at space and spaces. It is a controvertible space: one that refuses to prioritise interpretation before experience. To ask “What is it? Is it this or that”, is pointless. The answer could always be yes or no, so it is always nothing. Field does not exclude the possibility of other times and other places. It is a story with no plot, no resolution. There is no clarified gameplan or artefact, and has no distinct ideas to validate it. - Matt Davis
Rajni co-curated 'A Proper Afternoon' with Matt Davis as part of Field at Chisenhale Dance Space in 2005, working with artists Britt Hatzius, Davina Silver, Ollie Bown, and Silvia Mercuriali. The event was a spontaneous collaboration involving various levels of music and performance installation using natural light change as a backdrop.
Rajni Shah produced Rules and Regs at the Farnham Maltings in the Autumn of 2005. Artists spent a month working in and around Farnham, responding to a set of rules to create a series of new performances. Final performances took place within and around the Farnham Maltings and Farnham town.
Rajni was commissioned by the Farnham Maltings to develop a proposal for a touring theatre production inspired by Tove Jansson’s Sommar Boken (Summerbook).
A workshop examining the use, abuse and misuse of the ethnic body in art and in society led by Rajni as part of the Chisenhale Dance Space Artists' Programme in April 2004, with artists Sam Lim, Persis Jade Maravala, and Colin Poole.
How are we framed (and how do we frame each other) as brownies? How am I already framed in certain situations as a black man / Asian woman etc? Is art representative of the fact that blacks, whites and brownies all use each other’s games, music, language, walk? Do I have a responsibility to be a role model to younger brownies? Should I take advantage of initiatives like decibel that label me as an artist of colour? Is this talk of race equality just an avoidance of talk about class?
In 2004, Rajni was invited by Hoxton Hall to curate an evening of performance elaborating on some of the ideas in her own piece, The Awkward Position.