Artist Name: Tharini Sankarasubramanian
Residency Dates: February – April 2024
Born: 1991
Hometown: Chennai, India
Lives & Works: Chennai & Delhi, India
URL: https://tharini-sankarasubramanian.com/
Education: 2016 – 2019 | MFA in Graphic Design and Visual Experience, Savannah College of Art and Design
Bio:
Tharini Sankarasubramanian, born in 1991 in Chennai, Tamilnadu, is an Indian artist working primarily in drawing, painting, and fiber art. Her works often draw from personal experience and esoteric cultures in India, reflecting influences of geometric abstraction and spiritualist themes. Sankarasubramanian holds an MFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design and is currently completing a residency at Residency Unlimited in Brooklyn, NY. She resides and works in New York City.
Statement:
Drawing from my own experiences, but also from mythology, folklore, religion, philosophy, and esoteric cultures, my work is primarily about inner experience, like those of dreams, intimacy, visions, and ecstatic experiences that come in many forms, which are beyond language, impactful, transcendent, and transport us to spaces that are beyond the physical, material and the political.
I am inspired by the power which moves the world. I’ve called it many names in the past and they continue to change, but this power is nameless, formless, magical, mysterious and mystical, all-containing, all-pervading and omnipresent. I am currently exploring Shakta Tantra philosophy which is an uncompromising declaration of the divinity of woman and elevates the goddess as the primordial power out of which all things emerge. She is seen as the great mother who creates, destroys, and animates everything in between.
I maintain an interdisciplinary practice working across drawing, painting, and fiber art. I work with colours, symbolism, materials and numbers to express myself. Much of my work is abstract as I find it to be the most eloquent language through which I can convey the intangible and subtle aspects of my experiences.
I find resonance in the words of Tantra scholar and author, Ajit Mookerjee: “Art is not a profession but a path towards truth and self-realization, both for the maker and spectator.” My aspiration and ambition as an artist is to remain truthful to who I am, and to create from this wellspring of purity. I am dedicated to the task of integrating my visions.
The interview, “Summoning Unity: A Conversation with Tharini Sankarasubramanian”, was published by Apotheosis Art in 2023.
