David Hartman Profiles Rajni Perera’s Practice in New Short Film
Rajni Perera“When I tell stories, it’s with purpose; there is a lesson. Stories help us digest issues we feel we can’t solve—stories help move us past that feeling into hope.”
In this new short film directed by David Hartman, we spend time with the Toronto-based artist Rajni Perera in her studio, tracing the ideas and influences that shape her practice. Blending science fiction, immigration narratives, and the adaptive intelligence of living organisms, Perera imagines mutated bodies and futures shaped by environmental collapse and global instability. Drawing on the resourcefulness and innovation of immigrant life, her work insists on creativity as a form of endurance.
The film forms part of the McMichael’s ongoing series spotlighting contemporary Canadian artists, documenting creative practices as they unfold. Hartman’s attentive and collaborative approach results in an intimate portrait of an artist whose work meets dread with humour, critique with care, and uncertainty with radical hope. We are grateful to the Koerner Foundation for their support of this film series, which allows us to bring leading Canadian artists to wider audiences at home and abroad.
Rajni Perera’s McMichael-produced exhibition Futures has travelled across Canada over the past several years and is currently on view at the Kamloops Art Gallery through May 9, 2026.
About the Artist
Rajni Perera
Rajni Perera was born in Sri Lanka in 1985 and lives and works in Toronto. She explores issues of hybridity, futurity, ancestorship, migrant and marginalized identities/cultures, monsters, and dream worlds. These themes come together to fuel explorations within a multimedia practice that includes drawing and painting, clay, wood, lanterns, new media sculpture, textile, and most recently synthetic taxidermy. Perera seeks to open and reveal the dynamism of the icons, beings, and objects she creates by means of a subversive aesthetic that counteracts antiquated, oppressive discourse and acts as a restorative force. Perera’s work is in the collections of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
About the Filmmaker
David Hartman
David Hartman is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose recent work is focused on the creative process of some of Canada’s most exciting visual artists. The films take the viewer into the studios and creative worlds of the artists and offer insight into what drives their work forward. The short films feature a national scope of artists ranging from living legends to emerging talents. The films have been distributed on PBS and as in-flight entertainment on Air Canada. David works in Toronto, Canada.
Rajni Perera: Futures
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