ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sajan Mani is an Interdisciplinary artist and curator hailing from a family of rubber tappers in a remote village in the northern part of Keralam, South India. His work voices the issues of marginalized and oppressed peoples of India, via the “Black Dalit body” of the artist. Mani’s performance practice insists upon embodied presence, confronting pain, shame, fear, and power. His personal tryst with his body as a meeting point of history and present opens onto “body” as socio-political metaphor.
Several of Mani’s performances employ the element of water to address ecological issues particularly related to the backwaters of Kerala, as well as to the common theme of migration. His recent works consider the correspondence between animals and humans, and the politics of space from the perspective of an indigenous cosmology. Unlearning Lessons from my Father (2018), made with the support of the Asia Art Archive, excavates the artist’s biography in relation to colonial history, botany, and material relations.
Sajan was the first Indian to be awarded the Berlin Art Prize in 2021. He has participated in international biennales, festivals, exhibitions and residencies, including The INHABIT, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, DE (2022), Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University, CA (2021-22) Lokame Tharavadu Kochi Biennale Foundation, IN (2021), Times Art Center Berlin, DE (2021) Nome Gallery, Berlin (2021) CODA Oslo International Dance Festival, No (2019); Ord & Bild, SE (2019); India Art Fair (2019); “Specters of Communism”, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2017); Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh (2016); Kampala Art Biennale, Uganda (2016); Kolkata International Performance Arts Festival (2014–16); and Vancouver Biennale, CA (2014). In 2022 he was awarded the Prince Claus Mentorship Award and Breakthrough Artist of The Year from Hello India Art Awards. Between 2019 – 2022 he received an artistic research grant from the Berlin Senate, Fine Arts Scholarship from Braunschweig Projects, and the Akademie Schloss Solitude Fellowship, Germany.
Sajan Mani is represented by NOME gallery in Berlin and Shrine Empire in New Delhi
Artist Statement
“Looking at the body and subverting the boundaries of soul, mind and body, inside and outside, art and medium, the real and the imaginary need the backup of historical lessons and contextual positioning. Transparency that derived from surveillance has become the norm of everyday life in the contemporary world. Many of the practices in art and culture are thriving hard to accommodate the newly imposed ‘transparency’. Probably, body is the worst affected victim of the situation of surveillance.
The gluttonous market that made inroads into the imagined autonomy of art and artist with an eye of auctioneering, failed the radical political past of conceptual art, and even the newly built cyber space and its imaginary freedom made a sterile crisis in ‘artistic’ assertions.
My attempt is to manifest a critical space in the infinite eco system of human imagination and its significant existence within the chaotic multiverse. I am doubtful about the efficacy of art as a solution, meditation and continuum of tradition.
Effective governance and systematic control over the body reassert the ownership of the body and its vulnerability more than ever. A marginalized body has to strive a lot to move through the oppressive physicality and corrupted power discourse around it. Multiple subalternity that distorted body and its subjectivity violates the rules of the power game and often ekes out a repository of history as counter memory.
The issue of space is one of the most contentious issues in the public life in India. Disarrayed by caste: a very powerful insistence of past, newly built cosmopolitanism and peripherally gained mobility, the urban space India need critical engagement in art. Recently I started engaging the emerging public space art practices in India along with many artists by doing collaborative performances. My tryst with my own body as a meeting point of history and present instigated me to concentrate on body as a socio-political metaphor. By deploying body in different public spaces in India, my work projected the persistent issues of caste, gender and power equations.“
RECENT PROJECTS
2024 ‘Mediation on Ignorance’ (participatory performance part of Political Yoga) , ART DUBAI COMMISSION 2024 | SANACIÓN, curated by Emiliano Valdes 2024
2024 EXPEDITION MANI – REVERBERATIONS, As part of the exhibition series Speaking to Ancestors Curated by Pauline Doutreluingne and Keumhwa Kim, NOME Gallery, Berlin, 2024 (Solo)
2023 Dear museum, we are standing in front of your doorsteps to listen to our ancestors (solo) , Galerie Melike Bilir, Hamburg, Germany
2023 New Performance Turku Biennale, Turku, Finland
2022 Dismantling Aesthetics of Inhibition: Representing Difference, Gallery OED, Kochi, India curated by Y. S. Alone
2022 Wake Up Calls For My Ancestors, Berlin, Germany
2022 Performance Festival: The Non-fungible Body?, OK Center for Contemporary Art Linz, Austria (Linz and Metaverse space of Musuem)
2022 EARTH 200 CE, Verge Gallery, University of Sydney, Australia
2021 CONSTITUTIONS, Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University, Canada
2021 Travelling without a Ticket, Galerie im Körnerpark, Berlin, Germany
2021 ലോകമേ തറവാട് | Lokame Tharavadu (The World is One Family), Kochi Biennale Foundation, Alapapuzha, Kerala, India
2021 ANGST, KEINE ANGST / 畏⽆所畏 / FEAR, NO FEAR, Times Art Center Berlin, Germany
2021 Moving Into Sunlight: Decolonial Gestures, Embodied Archives, xart splitta, Berlin
2020 ‘Alphabet of Touch: Overstretched Bodies and Muted Howls for Songs’, Solo exhibition, Nome Gallery, Berlin, Germany
2020 ‘Tyger von Otherspur’, Group exhibition, Hebbel Am Uffer, Berlin, Germany
2020 ‘Tyger out, Tyger in’, SOMA Art Space, Berlin, Germany
2020 ‘Hour’, Bergen International Performance Festival, Bergen, Norway
2020 ‘Involving Immersion’, Kunsthalle Košice, Slovakia
2019–20 ‘Political Yoga’, Artistic research project, State of Berlin, Germany
2019 ‘Art will never die, but cow?’, India Art Fair, New Delhi, India
2018 ‘Out of Turn’, performance and video, Asia Art Archive for Serendipity Festival, Goa, India
EXHIBITIONS
2018 Srinagar Biennale-Basel, Online and Basel, Switzerland
2017 ‘Specters of Communism: A Festival of the Revolutionary Century’, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany
2017 ‘Re-Imagine India’, Delfina Foundation, New Art Exchange with Arts Council England, London, United Kingdom
2017 ‘The Vanity Fair & the Commonwealth of Mathilde Blühdorn’’, Clark House Initiative and Exile Gallery, Mumbai, India
2017 Musrara Mix Festival, Performance installation, Jerusalem, Israel
2017 ‘Alternative für Weißensee’, Performance, Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz, Berlin, Germany
2017 ‘E-rase M E-go’, Performance installation, DOCK11, Berlin, Germany
2016 ‘Liquidity Ar’, Performance, Kampala Art Biennale, Kampala, Uganda
2016 Curatorial assistant at Kolkata International Performance Arts Festival, Kolkata, India
2016 'Sensorium’, Edition Love, Sunaparanta-Goa Center for the Arts, Goa, India
2016 Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka, Bangladesh
2015 Art Night Thursday, Chatterjee & Lal Gallery, Mumbai, India
2015 'OPEN2, OPEN4, OPEN 6’, The Heritage Hotel: Art Spaces, Goa, India
2015 Kolkata International Performance Art Festival, Kolkata, India
2014 Vancouver Biennale 2014-15, Vancouver, Canada
2014 'From India and Brazil to Vancouver’, Group exhibition, Make Design Studio, Vancouver, Canada
2014 Live Art Lab, Performance Art Festival, Bangalore, India
2014 Illicit Bodies Art Festival, Bangalore, India
2014 Kolkata International Performance Art Festival, Kolkata, India
AWARDS, GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS
2022 Breakthrough Artist of the Year, HELLO India Art Awards, IN
2022 Mentorship Award (Cultural & Artistic Responses to Environmental Change), The Prince Claus Fund & Goethe-Institut, NL
2022 Arbeitsstipendium, STIFTUNG KUNSTFONDS, Bonn, DE
2022 IMPACT funding, Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Berlin, DE
2021 Berlin Art Prize, Academy of Arts, Berlin, DE
2021 Akademie Schloss Solitude Fellowship, Stuttgart, DE
2019–20 ‘Political Yoga’, The Berlin Project Fund for Cultural Education, State of Berlin, DE
20/21 STIFTUNG KUNSTFONDS SONDERFÖRDER PROGRAMM, Scholarship for Visual Artists, STIFTUNG KUNSTFONDS, Bonn, DE
2019 Nominated for LAP Visual Arts Fellowship Montalvo Arts Center, California, USA
2017 Mart Stam Stipendium Scholarship, Berlin, DE
Shortlisted for DAAD-Preis Award and The Weißensee Academy of Art, Berlin, DE
RESIDENCIES
2024 CONFLICTORIUM, Ahmedabad, India
2022 The INHABIT Artist in Residence Program, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt, DE
2020 Braunschweig Projects Fine Art Grant, The Braunschweig University of Art,
Braunschweig, DE
2019 Cultural journal Ord&Bild, special India-Europe edition Residency,
Strömstad, SE
2015 'Here There & Everywhere’, Residency, New Art Exchange Nottingham and Delfina Foundation, London, UK
COLLABORATIONS
2018 'Blueprint: A film by Moira Zoitl & Sajan Mani’, Performance and video installation, Salzburg, Austria and Berlin, DE
2016 ‘IT IS LIKELY THE HOUSE WILL BE DISMANTLED PIECE BY PIECE WITH A LARGE CRANE AND A SCAFFOLD TO SUPPORT THE REMAINING STRUCTURE’, Workshop and residency, HH Art Spaces Goa and Japan Foundation, IN
2012 'Dog’, Performance in collaboration with Syed Taufik Riaz, Bangalore, IN
2012 'The Tea Pavilion – Dictionary in Public’, Assistant, Artist project by Dorothee Albrecht, Kochi Muziris Biennale, IN
TEACHING & PUBLICATIONS
2019-2020 Lecturer, The Weißensee Academy of Art, Berlin, Germany
2017-2019 Tutor, Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz, Berlin, Germany
2015 Kala Magazine, New Art Exchange Nottingham Blog
2014 Short Guide, Kochi-Muziris Biennale
2014 Master Takes, Tehelka Magazine
2012 Exhibition Catalogue, Kochi-Muziris Biennale
OTHER COLLABORATIONS
2018-present Member of Professional Association of Berlin Artists
2017-present Member of Association Performance Art Berlin and Month of Performance Art Berlin
2013 Co-organizer and co-curator of Kolkata International Performance Art Festival
EDUCATION
2019 M.A. Spatial Strategies, Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin, Germany
2011 B.F.A. Applied Art, Karnataka State Open University, Mysore, India
2004 B.A. English Literature and Journalism, Kannur University, Kerala, India
TALKS & PRESENTATIONS
2024 Archive as Material- Artist Talk—Abednego Trianto and Sajan Mani curated by Sean Cham, DECK, Photography Art Centre Ltd, Singapore (online)
2023 Panel Discussion: Department of Art History as Cultural History (KuK), Technische Universität Berlin,Berlin, Germany (With Habiba Insaf and Dr Elija Horn)
2023 Artist Talk: Dear Museum, We are standing in front of your doorsteps to listen to our ancestors, Museum am Rothenbaum. Kulturen und Künste der Welt (MARKK), Hamburg, Germany
2023 Goethe-Institut, Helsinki, Finland2023 Goethe-Institut, Helsinki, Finland
2023 Coming Together: Artist and curator talks,NPT Biennale, Turku Arts Academy, Turku, Finland
2023 Angewandte Festival, University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria
2023 Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi, India
2023 RLV College of Music and Fine Arts, Kerala, India
2023 Govt. College of Fine Arts Thrissur, Kerala, India
2022 University of Sydney, Australia
2022 Concordia University, Canada
2019 CODA Oslo International Dance Festival, Norway
SELECTED PRESS
2023
“Caste-pital’, Issue #135, April 2023, e-flux journal, USA
𝗔 𝗚𝗲𝗱𝗮𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 Shaunak Mahbubani and artist Sajan Mani together create a fictitious post-national pavilion based on permeability, underscoring how important institutional reforms are in order to facilitate diversity at every level, The German Pavilion: Revisited,ifa - Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Germany
Sajan Mani On The Politics Of Body And Its Implication In Public Spaces, Design Pataki, India
“Meet artist Sajan Mani, who explores the politics of food, caste through the self”, Vandana Kalra, The Indian Express, India
2022
“Malayali artist unearths archive of Kerala Dalit life from Germany, curates project on it”, G Ragesh, ONManorama, India
“Mani is known for maintaining political and socially relevant discourses through his practice, and works with indigenous, locally rooted aesthetics”, Rahul Kumar, STIR World, India
കീഴാള ചരിത്രത്തിന്റെ അപ്രകാശിത കാഴ്ചകൾ, മധു നാരായണൻ, Keraleeyam, India
Der indische Künstler Sajan Mani forscht mit Wissenschaftlern über die Wirkung seiner Kunst, SWRT, Germany
2021
THE ART OF PROTEST, Editors: gestalten, Alain Bieber & Francesca Gavin, Germany
“The Bodies That Scramble India’s “Constitutions”, Momus, Canada
“Sajan Mani’s Wake Up Call for Ancestors (2021) opens the show with a set of hanging rubber sheets bearing an archival image of three Thanda Pulayan, women of an erstwhile enslaved caste. Their bodies are distorted through the fleshy texture of the sheets and hemmed-in by a painted transcription of an early 20th-century Dalit activist’s poem. Mani’s personal story as a member of a family of rubber trappers in South India is crossed with the colonial history registered in the wooden poses of an ethnographic photo. The poem by Poykayil Appachan carries the energy and conviction of Dalit resistance to both colonial and caste-based exploitation in the rubber trade. Mani’s other two pieces feel less haunted. While the cheekily-titled video Art Will Never Die But Cow? (2019) shows the artist donning a foam cow head in an exaggerated walking performance, a neighboring hand-written text work gives only the trace of an action.”
’South Indian artist Sajan Mani’s exhibition at Berlin’s Nome Gallery focuses on the powerlessness of India’s lowest caste, the so-called “untouchable” Dalits.’ - Deutsche Welle (DW), Germany
Body of evidence: The art of Sajan Mani- The Hindu, India
“Indian artist Sajan Mani’s solo performance space at Nome gallery in Berlin was dominated by three primary colours — red, black and white. The arrangement was simple — there was the bleached white wall; the artist in black coat dragging himself on the gallery floor to ‘draw’ lines of Malayalam poetry on the wall; and a huge unmoving red pyramid-like structure reaching out to the ceiling at the centre. But the meaning unfolded in knotted layers, each layer containing hundreds of micro stories, all flowing out sideways, upwards and outside the gallery space.”
“A brilliant performative exhibition and publication by @sajan_mani on spirituality, casteism, racism and appropriation, on touch and untouchability, on writing as in bodily writing, which I have called corpoliteracy, on writing in and as space, which is to say performativity as writing, and on the impossibility of imposing Western notions of abstraction on that which is not meant to be abstract… abstract beyond abstraction. And on the transformation of spiritual elements (like rubber that Tully and others called the devil’s milk) to capitalist resources and the reason to ravage from India to Congo and beyond. On indentured labour.”-
Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (https://www.instagram.com/p/CGWoJMmly3m/)
Art & Voices Matter: Sajan Mani puts a spotlight on casteism through his work, STIR World, India
2020
Cover of Ord&Bild Swedish art and cultural magazine's thematic issue on India and Europe.
Jagdip Jagpal’s Berlin travelogue highlights a socially distanced cultural break, Architectural digest,2020- Architecture Digest
Dalit bodies, by Manu’s law, didn’t have the right to hear a text: Artist Sajan Mani, indian Express, India
Sajan Mani’s Dalit protest art, The artist interprets protest songs by Dalit poet Poykayil Appachan as drawings at his first solo in Europe, Avantika Bhuyan, MintLoung, India
2018
Cover of India Art Fair Magazine and Artist of the Month on their blog and other social media platforms
This silence is violence, Interview, Gautami Reddy, India Art Fair Stories
5 Performance Artists You Must Know, India Art Fair
Five Indian artists whose works could define the year,Sneha Bhura, THE WEEK, India
Listed by Vogue India in the Artists to Watch in 2019 list, India (Print Edition)
Sajan Mani,The Dalit who Dared, Platform Magazine, India platform-mag.com
Artists to watch out for, The Verve Magazine, July 2018, India
How Indian artists are fighting against the Modi-fication of history, The Conversation
Indian Artivism-Mythologies of the state by Cleo Robert, Art Asia Pacific Magazine, Hong Kong