The human body, both in its material and abstract form, takes central place in Devika Sundar’s multidisciplinary practice. Combining research in medical imaging with conscious experience and imagination, she makes diagrammatic renditions of the body in its entirety and also its fragments. These emergent forms are intuitively related to the microcosm and macrocosm; they emulate the organic building blocks of nature, whether constituents of flesh and blood, or intrinsic elements of outer space and the deep sea. Her work moves beyond the thresholds of the visible, to what is felt or sensed.

...In a recent series titled ‘Bodies at Sea’, she explores a metaphorical connection between the ocean as a body - and all it holds - and the human body that is roughly sixty percent water. There is so much that is unknown in both contexts, although studies have established certain frameworks of understanding. Mapping her internal landscape, and using it as a lens to interpret other realities, Sundar reveals how her body is most at ease when immersed within water, held perhaps in buoyant aqueous embrace. In her words, “Just as the deep sea holds and retains hidden remnants of all that it has repressed and swallowed, our bodies carry and muffle our stories, scars, baggage and memories within its submerged chambers, channels and streams. I imagine the body as a sum of amorphous, blurred, watery, fragmented forms. Forms in rhythmic states of flux and transition; continuously rippling, rupturing, restoring and reviving ourselves.”.

She paints forms that are dynamic, alive; whether isolated within empty space, or a part of meticulous configurations, they seem to flow and ebb, intrinsic to the nature of water-colours and inks they are created with. Tendrils sway in fictional tides, surrounded by speckles, dots and lines, textures and tinted washes, in a distinctly earthy colour palette, echoing the organic and cyclical nature of growth. Layering is also deeply embedded within her process, whether it is mark-making in pen and graphite, or developing varied surfaces through added pigments, chemical effects and even collage. In her most recent collaboration (‘Lush’, with Nikhil Narendra and Emilia Trevisani), she has also experimented with the layering of other media, creating an overlap between animated drawings and recorded sounds emanating within water bodies and other forms. .

Fragility and strength, illness and healing, pain and pleasance; these themes have been recurrent in Sundar’s work, as someone managing a chronic medical condition. Her art has always been influenced by human experience, and she uses the space to navigate as well as articulate her thoughts and curiosities, balancing essences of both beauty and discomfort. She has been particularly drawn toward the stories of women, and the representation of unseen and unspoken experiences the body. Her recent training in art therapy has facilitated further research in the complex intersections of voluntary and unconscious thought, and bodily healing, bringing new fluid directions to her visual vocabulary.

Devika Sundar has been a recipient of an Arts Research Grant from the India Foundation for the Arts (2022), the Inlaks Fine Art Award (2020) and a Prince Claus Fund Seed Award Recipient (2021), alongside other recognitions. She recently completed an MA in Art Therapy at the LASALLE College of Arts Singapore. She has studied Anthropology, Art History and Visual Arts in Sarah Lawrence College, New York and holds an undergraduate degree in Contemporary Art Practice from the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore, where she is currently based.

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