NewCrits provides one-on-one studio visits, portfolio reviews, and mentorship with some of the world's most visionary artists.

This week on NewCrits, we sit down with artist and educator Sagarika Sundaram, whose textile-based sculptures and installations blur the line between human and nature. We explore her early training in Batik, the detour into graphic design that led her back to fiber art, and how felt-making became central to her practice. Sagarika reflects on artistic sabotage as a creative tool, the tension between sustainability and artistic freedom, and her evolving relationship with video work. Plus, a deep dive into Rasa theory, the power of disgust in art, and the role of intuition in her expansive practice.

Sagarika Sundaram creates sculpture, relief works, and installation using raw natural fiber and dyes. Drawing on natural imagery, the work meditates on the impossibility of separating the human from the natural, suggesting the intertwined nature of reality. Sundaram’s work has exhibited at the Bronx Museum of the Art, NY; Al Held Foundation with River Valley Arts Collective, Boiceville NY; the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University, Houston, TX; British Textile Biennial, Liverpool, UK; the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Manitoga / The Russel Wright Design Center, Garrison, NY. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times (Roberta Smith, Martha Schwendener) ARTnews (Alex Greenberger) and has been featured by Artnet and Juxtapoz Magazine and PBS. Sundaram graduated with an MFA in Textiles from Parsons / The New School, NY. She studied at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, and at MICA in Baltimore. She is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute. Sundaram lives and works in New York City.

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