Sagarika Sundraram

2022 Aim Fellow

Biography

Compressing hand-dyed fiber into dense forms, I create felted tapestries that investigate the materiality of wool and its relationship to human biology and psyche. I treat textile like a body – rupturing the flat surface, revealing what lies beneath layers – the carnal, painful, ugly, beautiful – interrogating what it means to be both of and alien to this world. I cook the wool with natural pigments from roots, rhizomes and leaves. The work reveals its process of labor with gestural strokes and sliced open surfaces. I use abstraction to reinterpret textile as mutant, botanical, and psychedelic forms. By estranging what is familiar, I create work that possesses its own unique life. The process becomes a site for exchange with expert artisans initiating conversations and projects. My material and way of making traces a lineage of makers spanning 15,000 years. Through my work I’m looking for our shared fingerprint.

Artist Statement

Compressing hand-dyed fiber into dense forms, I create felted tapestries that investigate the materiality of wool and its relationship to human biology and psyche. I treat textile like a body – rupturing the flat surface, revealing what lies beneath layers – the carnal, painful, ugly, beautiful – interrogating what it means to be both of and alien to this world. I cook the wool with natural pigments from roots, rhizomes and leaves. The work reveals its process of labor with gestural strokes and sliced open surfaces. I use abstraction to reinterpret textile as mutant, botanical, and psychedelic forms. By estranging what is familiar, I create work that possesses its own unique life. The process becomes a site for exchange with expert artisans initiating conversations and projects. My material and way of making traces a lineage of makers spanning 15,000 years. Through my work I’m looking for our shared fingerprint.
Form/Symbol, Frestonian Gallery, London UK, 2022
Primavera, 2022, 76 x 87 x 1 in Wool, bamboo viscose, botanical dye
Swayambhu, 74 x 59 x 3 in, Wool, wire
Oracle, 2019, 72 x 84 x 4 in Wool, botanical dye
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