Devika
Sundar
bio
Devika’s artistic and curatorial practice shifts across different mediums, threading elements of collage, painting, and printmaking with photography, assemblage and installation. Exploring art as a restorative, meditative medium and outlet, she expresses collective themes of invisibility, illness, memory and impermanence within personal and shared human experience.
Devika is an Inlaks Fine Art Awardee 2020 and a Prince Clause Fund Seed Award Recipient 2021. Devika is the artist and curatorial lead of "Bodies at Sea", an Archival exhibition with The National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore. Currently she is working on her series "Unbound and Untethered", an IFA Arts Research Project (2021-2022) granted by the India Foundation for the Arts.
Devika has exhibited her work in a solo exhibition at Blueprint12, Delhi ( 2022) and Gallery Sumukha, Bangalore (2018) and in group shows at India Art Fair (2020), Delhi Contemporary Art Week (2021) with Blueprint 12 Gallery, Prameya Art Foundation / Shrine Empire ( 2022), Bikaner house with Anant Art Gallery (2021), Pushing Print (2020) with Indian Printmaker House, The Bandli Project (2019) at The Consulate of France Bangalore, among others. She was the winner of the BMW X India Art Fair “ Future is Born of Art Commission”, unveiled at India Art Fair 2023.
Devika has been part of residencies including the Inlaks Fine Art Awardees Virtual Residency (2020), Smarter Digital Realities with Sandbox Collective and Goethe Institut Bangalore (2021), and Project MAAF (Manifesto For Accessible Art), a collaborative, bipartite project supported by Serendipity Foundation, British Council and Wales Arts International/Arts Council of Wales (2021). She was selected among 9 other Seed Awardees to participate at the Prince Claus Fund Mobile Lab ( 2022) at Documenta15, in Kassel, Germany.
Devika presented her exhibition “Essentially Normal Studies” around invisible illnesses, as a keynote speaker at the MYOPAIN 2018 medical conference, and in 2020 as an interdisciplinary guest lecture at Ashoka University. She was invited as a panelist at India Art Fair 2023 to speak about the need for care, rest and disability accessible experiences within art spaces. Devika has also written pieces around art, disability and accessibility for Marg Magazine (2021), Art India Magazine (2021), and Skin Stories, Point of View (2018). Her work has also been published in The Third Eye, The Indian Journal of Medical Ethics and Dark n' Light Magazine.
Parallel to her practice, Devika runs Hanno Terrace studio, a collective open studio founded to facilitate art as a therapeutic medium of release and outlet for children and adults from diverse backgrounds.
Devika studied Anthropology, Art History and Visual Arts in Sarah Lawrence College, New York and graduated with a Commendation in Contemporary Art Practice from the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore.
Press, Publications and Links:
2023
Winner Of India Art Fair 2023 ‘The Future Is Born Of Art’ Explores The Human Body’s Fragility And Power, Forbes
2022
'Bodies at Sea': an archival exhibition by Devika Sundar and Studio Slip in Bengaluru, STIR Magazine
Bodies At Sea: Artist Devika Sundar seeks reflections of bodily regeneration in ocean’s vast possibilities, News Nine
Bodies At Sea: A peek into the mysteries of unseen wonders, The Hindu
2021
In transit, Fine art awardee 2020, Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation Blog
Adrift and at Sea, Shifting Seasons , Art India Magazine
Art, Ableism and Access, Designing a Brave New Era, Marg Magazine
2018
Essay, Skin Stories, Point of View, a digital social rights publication around disability, sexuality and gender
Artwork, Indian Journal of Medical Ethics
Selected Articles:
2020
Inlaks Fine art awardees, Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation Blog
2019
Artist Interview, Asian Curator
2018
Essentially Normal Studies, Article, Bangalore Mirror