On Sagarika Sundaram

Sagarika Sundaram and I both had modest period-marking ceremonies, in India and Sri Lanka respectively, when we first started menstruating. Such rite-of-passage ceremonies are passed on from generation to generation in South Asian communities across the globe. Their regional differences—demonstrated in her Chennai-based ceremony and mine in Colombo—dominated my first conversation with Sundaram, whose art practice draws on such re-evaluations of her South Indian background, among other subjects.

She and I are both familiar with the act of washing saris and letting them dry on a wooden pole or nylon rope hung from one corner of a room to another. These precious six-to-seven yards of cloth provide comfort through the seasons and are a unique mode of self-expression. Sometimes hung like paintings on the wall and other times suspended from the ceiling like sculptures, Sundaram’s large-scale, textile works—with their bright colors, voluminous fabrics, relationship to ritual, and intimations of the female body—seem to me to draw on some of the same ritual functions of the sari in South Asian communities.

Sundaram’s Released Form (2024) opens and closes with a glimpse into the inside of an unfolded sari. The viewer is invited to take a stroll through the work and experience its scale, details, and structure. The red shines in lighter and deeper shades, which Sundaram has concocted in a distinct scientific process of dyeing multiple spools of wool, bringing together mathematics and chemistry. The scale of the work—which is forty feet long—makes you want to be enveloped by its layers. “There is no one way forward,” explains Sundaram of the viewer’s journey through the work, “but rather a series of pathways that one can elect, mix, and match. With each work, I develop new pathways.”1 While envelopment in a sari might feel like a quotidian activity, it becomes a culturally specific act in many parts of South Asia—special days at the office, weddings, funerals, pilgrimages all entail ritualistic moments where the sari becomes integral to the emotional resonance of each experience, whether it is grief, joy, love, longing, or acceptance of divine love. For example, red saris are preferred for brides in some parts of South Asia, and a significant amount of time is dedicated for the mother and daughter to engage in the act of draping as a moment of bonding before bidding farewell to one another.

Sagarika Sundaram, Flame of the Forest (detail), 2023. Wool, 297.2 x 243.8 x 15.2 cm. © Sagarika Sundaram. Image courtesy of Alison Jacques Gallery, London.

While speaking about cultural perspectives on womanhood, purity, and ritual with her, I kept thinking of Sundaram’s practice, and her body of work, as an embodiment of ritual—a concept rooted in religion, culture, and community. Catherine M. Bell has proposed that the ritual stands out from quotidian actions by being culturally specific actions with strategic understandings of what each step of the process could mean.2 A human body is necessary for the process of ritualization to occur: Sundaram’s is one such body in a journey of ritualization through her artistic practice’s form, content, and process.

Her hand-dyed felted wool pieces Flame of the Forest (2022) and Kosha (2023) exemplify Sundaram herself as the ritualized body, exploring human anatomy and sexuality in their most elementary senses. Deep shades of red, green, and white are accompanied by folds and cuts reminiscent of female genitalia. She picks up on the examples of Georgia O’Keeffe, Ana Mendieta, Tracey Emin, and Mrinalini Mukherjee, to name a few artists whose work embraces sexuality and sexual pleasure. The hidden and experimental eroticism of these artists’ works has sometimes been overlooked in favor of a focus on modalities and technique—in terms of painting, geometry, and nature for O’Keeffe and Mendieta, and sculptural and performative use of fiber and found objects for Mukherjee. Sundaram’s Flame of the Forest, in particular, makes me rethink the female body as something to be experienced unrestrictedly, not owned nor controlled by patriarchal social norms.

At a talk at the Nature Morte Gallery in Dhan Mill, New Delhi, the artist said that her objective is to keep the playfulness that fuels her spontaneity. The variables in her process include the thickness of the layers which become her surface and the colors and application by hand of dye. She also meticulously plans the structural and sculptural elements by which a work “breaks open,” using paper and fabric models, while leaving room for those not merely decorative coincidences that occur when she starts playing with the placement of the wool and other materials.

Details of Source (2023), made with hand-dyed wool, bamboo silk, and wool, are reminiscent of the veins of a leaf; its use of natural material adds to the notion of “source” as nature, a place in which we may seek refuge. My first experience of the work, as the centerpiece of her show “Polyphony” at Nature Morte, engendered an overwhelming desire to wrap myself in it like a blanket. The work’s visual language prompted the primal emotion of longing for connection, love, and partnership as a mechanism of survival. This affective experience is created by the planned and unplanned elements coming together.

Sagarika Sundaram, Source (detail), 2023. Hand-dyed wool, bamboo silk, wire, 436 cm x 365 cm x 365 cm. © Sagarika Sundaram. Image courtesy of Pramodha Weerasekera.

The leaflike appearance of Source recalls the most ritualistic aspect of Sundaram’s practice: her concoctions of natural elements such as dye, wool, and water, which combine through her process to become the piece she intends. Her process is laborious, from sourcing the wool, choosing the colors, to finally placing her spools on surfaces in combination with other materials. It is quotidian activity made ritual: special and transformative due to its culturally specific materiality. Sundaram’s works stand out as both art and documents of her process. They are also unruly and rebellious, making audiences wonder what elements of a ritual—especially those embedded in patriarchal cultures—one is willing to question, and thus to change.