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.




Support The Bronx Museum by becoming a member
Support us