Sagarika Sundaram

Oracle

7 ft x 8 ft / 213 cm x 244 cm

Hand-felted wool dyed with indigo, madder root and non-toxic acid dye Oracle is a supranational voice that prophecies a boundaryless utopian world represented by a wild topographical landscape tightly trapped yet exploding and flowing forth. It presents the viewer with nature's triumph over man's attempt to control and manipulate human migration. Felted using a textile process long associated with nomadic peoples, Oracle uses sheep wool from India, Uruguay, USA and New Zealand. It is an alien yet familiar world of intricate rivers, valleys, vibrating force-fields and erupting, mutant-like flowers. A camouflaged network of invisible tunnels run across the entire piece, amplifying ideas of access and movement. As a child of second-generation migrants, Sundaram spent hours aerially studying land formations on long flights between permanently temporary transnational homes. Those studies led her to explore two ideas related to the migrant experience: connection and disconnection. Sundaram’s personal associations with connection and disconnection manifested themselves visually through the creation of Oracle; drawing from her experiences to create an original library of felted structures of a topographic, geological nature.

Sagarika Sundaram was trained in graphic design at the National Institute of Design in India and the Maryland Institute College of Art in the US. She has worked as a strategist at Wolff Olins and held design positions at IDEO, frog design and Pentagram. She is from India by way of Dubai.

sagarika@newschool.edu