Conversations: Transformation: craft, identity, and materiality in art
In partnership with UBS
Art Basel Miami Beach 2024, December 7
Sagarika Sundaram, Artist, New York
Sarah Zapata, Artist, New York
Moderator: Larry Ossei-Mensah, Curator and co-founder ARTNOIR, New York
Transformation: craft, identity, and materiality in art is a conversation moderated by curator and ARTNOIR co-founder Larry Ossei-Mensah, featuring artists Sagarika Sundaram and Sarah Zapata. Both explore how fiber can reshape contemporary art by transforming it into powerful and immersive artworks at the intersection of textile and architecture. Zapata’s installation, Upon the Divide of Vermilion, presented in the UBS Art Studio in collaboration with ARTNOIR, encompasses viewers in an experience that feels both personal and architectural. Concurrently, Sundaram’s Released Form, on view in the UBS Lounge, uses hand-dyed felted wool and silk to reshape viewers’ perception of space.
This conversation offers a unique insight into how these artists are expanding the language of contemporary art by engaging with materiality, cultural narratives, space, and personal histories. Join us for a thought-provoking dialogue about art that challenges conventional boundaries of artmaking and invites new perspectives on the role of craft and material in shaping modern expression.
Sagarika Sundaram creates sculpture, relief works, and installations using raw natural fiber and dyes. Drawing on natural imagery, her work meditates on the impossibility of separating the human from the natural, suggesting the intertwined nature of reality. Sundaram’s work has been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of the Arts; the Al Held Foundation, Boiceville; the Moody Center for the Arts, Houston; the British Textile Biennial, Liverpool; the Chicago Architecture Biennial; and Salon 94, New York City. In 2025, she will have solo exhibitions at Nature Morte, New Delhi and Alison Jacques, London. Sundaram lives and works in New York City.
Sarah Zapata employs weaving, tufting, and traditional craft techniques to create loud, architecturally responsive installations that traverse themes of gender, colonialism, and fantasy. Zapata’s site-specific works reflect her intersecting identities as a Queer woman of Peruvian heritage raised in evangelical Texas and now based in New York. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museo de Arte de Lima, and the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, among others. She currently teaches on the Painting graduate program at the Yale School of Art. Zapata lives and works in Brooklyn.
Larry Ossei-Mensah is a Ghanaian-American curator and cultural critic redefining art and society through his innovative and inclusive approach. His global footprint includes exhibitions in Manila, London, Athens, São Paulo, and Rome, showcasing his dedication to contemporary art and culture. Ossei-Mensah has collaborated with trailblazing artists including Steve McQueen, Melissa Joseph, Catherine Opie, Chase Hall, and Judy Chicago. As the former Susanne Feld Hilberry Senior Curator at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and the Curator-at-Large at Brooklyn Academy of Music, Ossei-Mensah has made it his mission to drive significant change in the art world. Co-founder of the nonprofit ARTNOIR, he champions racial equity by amplifying the voices of creatives, curators, and communities of color. His curatorial projects include exhibitions at Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; Artpace San Antonio; the 7th Athens Biennale, Ben Brown Fine Arts in Hong Kong and London, Denver Art Museum, and the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco.
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