Artist Sagarika Sundaram, born in Calcutta, now lives and works in India and Dubai. She creates sculptures, reliefs and installations from felt using raw natural fibers and dyes. Source is her debut solo exhibition at the Palo Gallery in New York.
Sundaram received a Master of Arts degree in textiles from Parsons New School, New York. She has exhibitions at the British Textile Biennale and the Chicago Architecture Biennale. Her works were presented at The Armory Show in New York and at the Frieze exhibition in London in 2023.
The personal exhibition contains monumental wall panels and three-dimensional felted objects. The main theme of Sagarica is the study of ancient textile art and the possibilities of hand-painted raw natural fiber. According to the organizers, "the bright and unusual works of Sundaram combine the sense of color of the painter, the perception of the sculptor's space and the sense of the dancer's movement."
The gallery also presents several multi-layered textile compositions and a series of complex three-dimensional suspended installations that combine organic and constructed forms. In her large-scale, demanding and many hours of work, the artist uses wool and dyes from the Himalayas and the Hudson Valley, deeply rooted in the local landscapes.
This clash of worlds - between local and global, ancient and modern, human and natural - speaks of Sundararama's own heritage, which grew up between India and Dubai, and the harmonious union of labor, materials and forms that underlie textile traditions.
