Sangeeta Sandrasegar works within a research-based practice, building narratives in which every new work connects to previous projects. Her practice consolidates postcolonial and hybridity theory, exploring her context within Australia and its relationship to migrant communities and homelands. Her work concerns itself within the overlap of cultural structures – sexuality, race and identity, in contemporary society – and interpreting and representing these shifts. These themes are explored through a visual language concerned with shadows. From installations of paper cutouts, material works and/or sculpture, the constructed shadows of the installation become a motif for themes of self-hood, otherness and in-between spaces. By extending the scope of the art object the cast shadows simultaneously engage with the history of the shadow in Art, and hint towards cognitive alternatives and sites of transformation.

In 2004 Sandrasegar completed a Doctorate of Philosophy across the Victorian College of the Arts and the Australian Centre at the University of Melbourne.  The content of the exegesis was to formalize a visual practice centred on the creative space of shadows into a theoretical tool.  She proposed that the shadow subject could be re-examined and liberated from its historical representations and to be employed as both a positive and salient visual device for representing the ideas being examined in post-colonial and hybridity studies.

Sandrasegar has been represented in group and solo exhibitions since 1996, and is the recipient of several fellowships and prizes. In particular, national showcases for emerging artists: Primavera, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, NEW04, Australian Centre of Contemporary Art, Melbourne. As well as the Auckland Triennial and SCAPE: New Zealand Community Art & Industry Biennial in New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art 05, Gallery of Modern Art Queensland. Last year her work was shown in the Incheon Women Artists Biennale in Korea, and Slash: Paper Under the Knife, Museum of Arts and Design, New York.

Sangeeta was in residency at Hotel Penaga from October to December 2012.

Links to Sangeeta’s work
http://sangeetasandrasegar.photoshelter.com/
http://sangeetasandrasegar.blogspot.com