RECENT PROJECTS
2024 ‘Mediation on Ignorance’ (participatory performance part of Political Yoga) , ART DUBAI COMMISSION 2024 | SANACIÓN, curated by Emiliano Valdes
2024 Ancestral Dancing Veins: Sajan Vazhakaparambil Kolavan Kalyanikutty Mani AKA Sajan Mani, India Art Fair, New Delhi, India
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 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
2023 I Grant You My Freedom, Shrine Empire, India
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
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
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
Sajan Mani is an intersectional artist 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 people 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.
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.
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