Hug Me!

Hug Me! is a continuously evolving interactive performance work. The performance involves the artist interacting with domestic objects as well as the audience. The iron ore objects used by the artist have been collected through her on going association with a lohar (black smith) family in New Delhi. The objects hold historical and personal significance.

Hug Me! was performed in January 2017 at the artist’ solo exhibition Angels in the Room, hosted and curated by the India Heritage Center, a heritage museum in Singapore as a satellite show during the Singapore Biennale. 

When Sukeshi moved to Boston from Singapore in 2017-18 as a visiting artist and scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center, Brandeis University, she explored her experiences and sense of place by engaging with the community through a variation of the Hug Me! performed in March 2017 at a symposium, A Women’s Sense of Place,  at WSRC. 

The artist was invited by the non-profit organization, Tasveer to give a talk and a performance of Hug Me! at the annual Aaina Festival of the Arts  at Seattle University (USA) in March 2018. 

Chrysalis

In November 2017, Sukeshi gave an artist talk at WSRC, Brandeis University on her process and works in progress, Art in the everyday: the daily reimagined. The talk was followed by a performance of her new piece titled Chrysalis. 

During her stay in Cambridge (USA), the artist learnt the art of needle felting. Her artistic practice recontextualized traditional materials (e.g. wool) by subverting them as tools of artistic expression. Using the continuous and repetitive jabbing motion of the needle on raw wool she created abstract and wearable objects. This ritualistic process was the catalyst to the conceptualization of her performance piece Chrysalis. The performance aimed at transforming  the life-cycle of a utilitarian object beyond the form and function of its materiality and onto the social and cultural aspect of the sculptural objects.