In times of technology overflow, there is a heightened need to engage with tactile and immersive experiences that trigger various senses beyond visual. According to Peter Nagy, co-founder of Nature Morte Gallery, the artist community has responded to this by creating works using formats like performance and sound, and materials like clay and textiles. The gallery recently launched a solo exhibition of works by New York-based Indian artist Sagarika Sundaram, titled Polyphony, which takes a cue from her interest in music and abstraction.
Speaking about the choice of material that includes a range of textiles, primarily felt, Sundaram says that all media is “fair game” when it comes to making art. “Working on a table, I make the work backward, layering wool from front to back. I arrange the wool intuitively. I mix colours with paddle brushes and then place tufts on a table in a haphazard manner,” she explains.
The process further involves dying the wool before it is embedded in the works. She adds, “As I build, I embed eruptive pockets into the work, these are places where the cloth stays disconnected when I apply hot water to the wool. Later, I slash the pockets open.” These openings are subject to interpretation by the viewer.
In her large-scale felt sculptures, the materiality, laborious, and precise process employed to make them is evident. However, the 39-year-old says that she is not prescribing a meaning to the forms for her viewers. Interpretations feel contrived and therefore she likes to leave them free and open to association. “The meaning of the work is formed through the total of what is projected on it.
What I can say is that the most exciting moment for me when I make the work is when I cut it open. There is something transgressive about cutting handmade cloth open that one has laboured intensely to create,” she explains. In a way, it is an act of destruction, but that is the only way to reveal what is hidden.
This is a combination of conscious and cerebral exercise, albeit layered with a sense of freedom. She explains, “My work is most successful when I can see freedom in it. When I make comparisons and analogies, it is because I try to approximate something very intangible to me, to a thing that people can relate to. I borrow a lot from music. Music has a vocabulary in place to explain concepts that tie into the way I work.” There are also references to fruit and flowers. Sundaram is drawn to the geometry of growing forms that have a foundational structure that determines their form.
Her education in design has allowed Sundaram to develop ways of thinking while training her eyes and hands. She sees creative development as a process that is not in terms of an object, but a process driven by iteration and experimentation. She confesses that there was much that she had to ‘unlearn’ while transitioning to art.
Talking about the aspect of controlling the intended outcome for everything one creates, she has a unique perspective on dealing with the unexpected and the unknown in her process. She says, “What’s the fun in knowing everything from the start? I understand my material well. That is the foundation of the work. But it is a great thrill to let go. It is like the feeling of walking backward. Suddenly your senses are heightened. The only way forward is to embrace the risk.” And the risk-takers make the impossible a reality.