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SARIKA GOULATIA
 

SARIKA GOULATIA

Artistic Category artist
Career Level Mid-career
Experienced With Commissions, Teaching engagements, Public art, Collaboration, Leading workshops, Lectures, Speaking engagements
Artist Statement

Artist Statement: Discuss the philosophy/approach that supports your creative work (e.g. influences, processes, tools/medium choice, artistic goals, etc.) and your career path to this point. Highlight significant insights developed and/or artistic goals achieved to this point that shape your current work.

 

I am a multidisciplinary artist. I create large-scale, site-responsive sculptures and immersive installations. Narratives from personal experiences, fragility of life, and ongoing political as well as social conflicts drive me conceptually. The issues are in the background; they motivate the work. Through the process, I distill the ideas to a point of near minimal abstraction.

 

Process, persistence, and repetition drive both the intangible and physical aspects of my work. It is driven by my interest in exploring and rediscovering cultural and political boundaries as a space for opening up new frameworks for dialogue and visual narrative. As an immigrant, my work stems from the intersection of national identities; I exist between and across various cultures. Over the past year I have started looking outwards through the cultural lens of a diaspora artist. I am using artistic license to bring issues of sexual assault, female infanticide, gun possession, and cultural appropriations to hit a nerve. I continue to grow and engage with various perspectives to find meaning and drive cultural change.

 

My work is constantly evolving. Some of the works are quiet and minimal yet disturbing and threatening. I have expressed metaphorically my father’s indomitable human spirit while he battled Lou Gehrig’s. I have visualized my experience of a life-threatening drug reaction through the choice of materials and the manic, repetitive, meditative process to create the work. I depicted my mental progression while on steroids through a sensory overload incorporating assemblage paintings, distorted reflections, mirrors, pins, powdered pigments, and unrecognizable fragments of furniture. I have created topsy-turvy worlds; hanging discarded everyday objects, often repurposing pieces from previous works to create precarious installations and sculptures that appear on the verge of collapse such as powder-coated shopping-carts, birdcages and broken windowpanes, sometimes a flickering lamp animates the work while an accidental touch creates movement and sound. Through the configuration, spatial orientation, and unexpected modification of everyday objects I activate the senses, emotions, and ideas to tell my story. My personal journey exhibited through the work connects universally to experiences endured by the audience.

 

Over the years I have worked in a variety of mediums and formats, including small detailed drawings, paintings, installations and sculptures. I process my ideas, experimenting with different materials and techniques, often learning a new skill. Invariably the solution I arrive at requires repetitive actions. I edit constantly, casting aside what doesn’t work, retaining the concepts for another work, another installation. Using multiples, I try to create a system building in small increments till the maximum becomes minimal and the minimal feels maximum in a quiet contemplative space. 

 

 

 

Biography

Sarika Goulatia is a visual artist best known for her large-scale sensory sculptures and installations. Goulatia’s work is diverse in theme, material, process and approach; it is united conceptually and tactically in its reflection of an unambiguous idea. 

 

Goulatia transforms ordinary objects into compelling works of art that reflect her own determination and fortitude through explorations of various mediums, techniques, and genres. Her works range from sculpted ceramics to cast bronzes and aluminum, from extensively drilled/nailed wood to assemblages using found objects. Each piece is infused with vitality, enthusiasm and an investigational approach. 

 

She is driven by an irresistible impulse to make labor-intensive work. Despite the incredible labor involved in her process, the completed work indicates that all questions and contradictions, especially those within the maximum and the minimal, disappears into a quiet place that invites contemplation.  Noted for a dense accumulation of multiple materials, her sometimes ephemeral, often poignant, environments create immersive experiences. Goulatia does not shy away from the challenging, the difficult, or even the disturbing in her installation-based practice, but she masks her intent through her onerous, labor-intensive techniques. 

 

In addition, as a diaspora artist her work stems from the intersection of her dual national identity; the synergy of this distinctiveness allows her to break through cultural barriers. Her extensive practice—predominantly in sculpture and installation—touches on the frailty of human experience, often drawing on personal challenges and socio-cultural issues.

 

Goulatia is a Pittsburgh based artist. She was born and raised in India and received a Masters in Textile Design and Development from The National Institute of Fashion Technology, Delhi and later a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon University. 

 

Goulatia has had solo exhibitions at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and was named the Emerging Artist of 2016. She has exhibited work in group and solo shows through the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust for the International Society of Sculptors Conference (2016) and as part of the India in Focus Festival (2015). Important group exhibitions include shows at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art (2016), The Mine Factory (2013 and 2015), the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh’s Annual at the Carnegie Museum of Art (2016), and Double Consciousness at the Mattress Factory Museum (2007).

 

 

Goulatia received the Sally Gehl, Samuel Rosenberg, and Elizabeth Jones Award in Humanities and Art at Carnegie Mellon University and has been awarded residency/exhibition opportunities at Neu Kirche and the Alloy at Carrie Furnace.

 

Contact


PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania 15217
4129996491
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Genres

  • Drawing
  • Found object
  • Installation
  • Mixed-media
  • Painting
  • Printmaking
  • Public Art
  • Sculpture
  • Set design
  • Social Practice / Civic Engagement

Keywords

  • Abstract
  • Appropriation
  • Assemblage
  • Ceramic
  • Conceptual
  • Feminist
  • Fiber
  • Gestural
  • Metal
  • Minimalist
  • Modern
  • Oil Paint
  • Paper
  • Pen
  • Plaster
  • Recycling /green
  • Site specific
  • Wood

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