Felt Freed: Sagarika Sundaram’s Release
Wool, soap, water, and time: in Sagarika Sundaram’s hands, these ordinary materials become the basis for transformation. At Alison Jacques this autumn, her exhibition Release marks the artist’s first solo presentation in the UK, bringing together new felt sculptures, reliefs, and a monumental suspended installation alongside a striking departure into glass mosaic.
Sagarika Sundaram at work. Photo credit: Anita Goes
Sundaram begins by laying raw wool fibres in loose sheets across the floor, layering them as though sketching. The process is physical, almost theatrical as she rolls, presses, and saturates the fibres until they coalesce into a dense, pliable textile. Only when she slices or flips the felt does its interior reveal itself, layers opening like membranes to expose forms that feel at once intimate and otherworldly. For Sundaram, this moment is akin to alchemy: colour, fibre, and gesture fuse into something that seems to breathe.
Sagarika Sundaram, Rosette, 2025. Courtesy Alison Jacques © Sagarika Sundaram
The material itself carries history. Felt is among the oldest known textiles, originating in the Fertile Crescent, and has long been associated with nomadic life, ritual, and protection. By treating it entirely by hand, Sundaram seeks to reactivate these ancient resonances, while at the same time exploring the fibre’s ability to hold contemporary questions about body, landscape, and belonging. Her concentric folds, spirals, and hybrid forms evoke cycles of growth and decay, the rhythm of breath, or the opening of a flower.
Alongside these new felt works, Release also debuts a series of glass mosaics - cool, hard surfaces that echo the batik-inspired patterns of her textiles and create a contrasting tension between softness and rigidity, offering another perspective on transformation and permanence. At the heart of the show, a vast installation cut from a single sheet of felt stretches through the gallery’s light-filled back room, its circular movement energising the space.
Sagarika Sundaram, Iris, 2023. Courtesy Alison Jacques © Sagarika Sundaram
Sundaram’s visual language has been shaped by her upbringing between India and Dubai, by early encounters with textile traditions, and by formal studies in Ahmedabad and New York. Her influences are wide-ranging — the pleats of a Nigerian Gele, the drape of an Indian Veshti, the movement of dancer Chandralekha, the fibre sculptures of Mrinalini Mukherjee. Yet her work resists citation, instead forging a practice where textiles are not a secondary craft but a primary, living form.
In Release, Sundaram reminds us that fibre is never fixed. It stretches, folds, and opens — always moving, always becoming. At a time when so much of life is lived through screens, her dedication to hand-dyed, labour-intensive felt feels like a small but important act of resistance: a return to land, to matter, and to the body itself.
-
Further information:
Sagarika Sundaram: Release is on show from 14 October – 15 November 2025 at the Alison Jacques Gallery, London.
-
-
Image Credits:
Lead: Sagarika Sundaram, Atlas , 2023. Courtesy Alison Jacques © Sagarika Sundaram
All other images as credited in photo captions.