Sukanya Mani

The views and opinions expressed by speakers and presenters in connection with Art Restart are their own, and not an endorsement by the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts and the UNC School of the Arts. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Sukanya Mani’s works seem light as air, intricate and mesmerizing paper sculptures that can move and twirl with the slightest breeze. What may not be immediately apparent, however, is that Sukanya has made each irreversible cut in her material with the intention of representing — albeit abstractly — a weighty story or theme she’s explored in depth. The way gravity affects light; the relationship between physiological, psychological and cosmological time; the power of women's clothing and adornment to circumscribe a woman's sexuality: These are just a few of the themes Sukanya has researched before picking up her scissors and utility knives to start her next site-specific project.

In recent years, the self-taught artist has made quite an impression on her hometown of St. Louis, MO and the region around it. She has been commissioned to create public works for several Missouri cities — including Poplar Bluff, Lee’s Summit and Brentwood. Last year a piece of hers was displayed in St. Louis’ international airport, and she was commissioned to create a piece for Florissant Performing Arts Center.

After a lengthy research-and-interview process, she’s currently completing “The Beside Between Beyond Project,” an installation that explores domestic abuse, particularly as it impacts immigrant and refugee populations.

In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Sukanya explains how her immigrant story led to her picking up the utility knife and what might make it easier for other newcomers to the country to express their artistic selves.

 Choose a question below to begin exploring the interview:

• How did you arrive at your particular artistic practice?
• Do you remember your first discovery of art as such?
• What ideas were particularly relevant to you as you were making your art?
• For many creators, destruction is part of their work. Could you explain what that violence of cutting means to you in both your life and your art?
• How do you start conceptualizing your design?
• What do you mean by intentionality?
• Can talk about how you cultivated fearlessness in your artistic pursuit?
• Could you talk about “The Beside Between Beyond Project” and how that came into being?
• What challenges does your work create in terms of finding the right collectors and buyers?
• Is it limiting or freeing to have a commission as opposed to self-generating your art?
• Do you have thoughts about what could have been different systemically to make your process of discovery and artmaking easier?
• What experimentation is coming up for you next?

Pier Carlo: How did you arrive at your particular artistic practice?

Sukanya: It is a journey. I was born in India, and I grew up there. My dad was in the Indian military, and we moved every couple of years. The schools that I went to were in the northeastern and northwestern border states of India, bordering China, Tibet, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Our schools didn’t have any arts education — none at all, like absolutely none — and so it was a self-discovery at that age. I didn’t have the privilege of learning art as a child, but I know that I did a lot of drawing and doodling and storytelling in different ways when I was younger.

Pier Carlo: Do you remember your first discovery of art as such?

Sukanya: Yes! It was comic books. I just loved reading. India’s rich in mythology, stories of ancient gods and goddesses, and I used to read these comic books which echoed the stories my mom told me when she put me to sleep. I would just start copying some of those and drawing visual representations of the stories I heard and then the people I saw, just trying different ways of creatively presenting what I was hearing.

Then I came to the United States after graduating in chemistry — my college education was in biochemistry, organic chemistry — and when I came to the United States, I was on a dependent visa. When you’re on a dependent visa, you cannot work; you have to wait for a couple of years for that process to go through. I’m so glad that at that time I decided not to think of this as time wasted but as a chance to discover what it is that I wanted to do and how I would go about doing it.

Pier Carlo: Do you think that if you’d had a work visa, you might have gone ahead and pursued your scientific career?

Sukanya: I very much could have. But I always think and I strongly believe I would’ve found a way to be creative no matter what because it has been a very strong drive within me to creatively express myself. I might have been a hobbyist. I don’t know. I would like to think I would be a professional artist.

The resources in the United States at that time, the libraries and the advent of YouTube and the internet, all of that gave me the help to become a self-taught artist. Those things helped with the skill-building: drawing, painting, paper- cutting, all of that. But the biggest change or the biggest shift was in the way that I started thinking about life.

Pier Carlo: Say more about that and how it affected your creativity.

Sukanya: It was life-changing, completely shifted the way that I perceived and presented myself. Like I said, I grew up in India where there is more rote memorization. Education is more streamlined. This is the only way you do things. But when I started to teach myself how to create art along with teaching the skills — how do you use your hand and the paper? — a big part of it was also, how do you think about things? How do you allow information to come into your brain? And how do you story-tell in inventive, creative ways? I credit all of that as the journey that brought me here.

Pier Carlo: What ideas were particularly relevant to you as you were making your art?

Sukanya: The ideas varied. As I progressed through life, different ideas caught my attention, different stories around me permeated into my artwork. And it shifted from time to time. It shifted from telling stories about science, telling stories about philosophy, about women, gender, all of these things that I hold in high esteem. I love to learn about these things. I experience life a certain way. All of these things found a way to come out through my art.

Pier Carlo: And how did you realize that cutting and working with negative space were going to be your passion?

Sukanya: That also circles back to the skill-building and the way I started to think differently. I always thought, growing up in India, that artists paint and draw. That’s what they do. And so I totally poured all of my energy into learning how to paint.

Pier Carlo: Did you go to any classes, or was this really entirely on your own?

Sukanya: I took a few community-college classes and a workshop from an artist, but I would say 90% of it was self-taught. Also, I had really young kids, and it was not easy for me in terms of time and financially to go back to school to do all of these things, so I just did a lot of it by myself.

But painting was really not something that I felt I could do to the best of my ability. I just kept hitting a wall over and over again. Then I thought to myself, “Maybe it’s the colors. I just don’t know how to put colors together, so I will only paint in black and white.” I did that for almost a whole year, and then I realized, “Well, all I’m doing is just doing positive and negative shapes in black and white. Why don’t I just start cutting into the canvas?”

It was a very step-by-step-by-step experimentation. The canvas started to sag. It was fabric, and the thread started to fall apart, so I said, “OK, let’s try it with some other material.” I tried it with printer paper first. I loved the clean edges and the finality of cutting a piece out. There’s no going back! It challenged me, and then it just took me down a path of cutting paper and experimenting with a variety of paper.

Pier Carlo: Your bio contains this wonderful sentence: “Transforming the violent act of cutting into an act of creation is central to my artistic approach.” Now, of course, for many creators, destruction is part of their work, so that’s not necessarily new. But could you explain what that violence of cutting means to you in both your life and your art?

Sukanya: First of all, I’m using a sharp object, like a knife. [Laughing] I have had so many paper cuts and so many knife cuts in my fingers while I was experimenting and learning this process, so it’s literally been a painful experience to get there.

But also it’s a very final act of destruction. I look at paper-cutting as a craft very similar to sculpting stone or marble because once you chisel into something, it’s out. It’s very hard to put it back the way it was. And paper even more so, because even if you crumple parts of paper, there’s really no putting it back to its old pristine self.

Something that I’m bringing to the craft is cutting into it, removing and then disturbing it. What I’m doing is allowing it to take on a completely new shape and form and a new way it reacts to light. It’s a close dance of destruction and creation, the entire process.

I work with a variety of materials. I’ve tried cutting into watercolor paper, handmade paper. I am also experimenting with wire mesh right now. Tyvek and printer paper are what my current installations primarily are made of.

Pier Carlo: When you approach that sheet of paper or that panel of Tyvek, do you draw on it? How do you start conceptualizing your design?

Sukanya: Most of the design-making happens in my sketchbook. I am constantly writing notes to myself and drawing designs. I would say 90% of the work happens in the sketchbook because I’m constantly rearranging things, recomposing the way it looks. And it gives me a base.

But when I actually cut into the paper, very, very rarely do I draw into it. The scale is different from my notebook. It’s usually much bigger. And it also morphs into something very different when it’s at a different scale.

The cutting that happens is very organic. I just build from one cut to the next to the next. It can really change with the music that I’m listening to or the audiobook that I’m listening to. I can make larger cuts, smaller cuts. It’s really a very organic process.

Pier Carlo: So the notebook design is really just a starting point. Does the finished product often look very different from what you had originally sketched?

Sukanya: Exactly. You said it exactly right. The beginning is more for the intention. I always want to start from a place of a strong intentionality. What am I doing? Why am I doing it?

Pier Carlo: What do you mean by intentionality?

Sukanya: To give you a specific example, there’s a series of works that I did, which was called “Solah Shringar: What She Wore.” The idea behind that entire series was clothing and sexuality, specifically how the clothes that women wear directly tie into either sexualizing them or asexualizing them, how the gaze of the viewer is directly tied to the clothing. That was the big picture of what I wanted to work on.

In my sketchbooks, there were constant references to types of clothing, for example, how you cover your hair. The hijab covers the hair, the parts of the face, and in certain parts of India, married women are required to cover their hair.  I started out with that idea of covering the hair. All of the sketches ended up having the hair covered, but when I started cutting into it, I realized that although it was very painful to cut each strand of hair, it just was so important to have the hair shown in the work.

That is a decision, that is a direction that makes artists really go down a specific path, and that’s what ended up happening here. And the hair on the women that I cut out became one of the most important factors in the artwork.

Pier Carlo: Something you couldn’t have known when you first started thinking of this project.

Sukanya: Right. It didn’t. It still tied in with the intention. The intention was how do I depict this? But the actual negative and positive shape, the visual, really changed when I started cutting into it, and it took on a whole new form. I am so glad I did it the way I did because I think the artwork looks much more powerful that way.

Pier Carlo: You strike me as being very fearless in a few ways, one of which is that you are self-taught and came to your passion through experimentation. You never seem to censor yourself or question yourself. And then the other way in which you’re striking me as fearless is — you said it yourself — in cutting paper, there’s no room for error. You can’t go back.

I wonder if you can talk about how you cultivated that fearlessness in your artistic pursuit.

Sukanya: Oh wow. [She laughs] I am surprised to hear you say that because I don’t view myself as fearless, but I think you may be right in many ways because I do jump in and I don’t think of what the end would be. I do something for the sake of doing it. I jump in, and I say, “OK, let’s see what happens.” Especially the first few years while I was experimenting and trying to find out what is the right way to express myself.

Even today, I have this feeling of, I don’t have anything to lose. This is the path that my life has taken me, and I want to continue down this path. I’m very passionate about it. I really don’t have anything to lose. I just tell stories, and then I move on to the next story.

Pier Carlo: Speaking of stories, I want to make sure we talk about “The Beside Between Beyond Project.” Could you talk about how that came into being?

Sukanya: Yes. There’s a very specific moment that that took birth. The pandemic had just started, so it was 2020, sometime in April or May, I would say. It was just the time when all of us, the entire world, realized that this is not a two-week, three-week thing, that shift that happened in all of us like, “Oh my goodness, what is going on? This is a global phenomenon. This is something we are all in together.” I remember feeling very overwhelmed, I’m sure like millions of people around the world, feeling very unsure of what’s going on, very afraid.

One of the things that I do during those times to calm myself is just to say, “Well, I have my family around me, we have a roof over our head, we have food on the table, so we should be grateful for what we have.” That’s what I was telling myself at that time. “Just stay calm. Whatever we have, let’s just be safe inside our homes.”

The very next day, I read a news article about people living in domestic-violence situations. And it just hit me. It hit me straight out of that. That home, that peaceful “We are all together, we have a roof over our heads, we have food on the table” that I had told myself is the very home that was actually prison for people living in those situations. It really shifted my perception. Every situation has so many nuances. People are living in so many different situations.

That prompted me to start doing some research and find out what people are doing in situations of domestic violence, especially in times of pandemic when you are housebound. You are not able to get out and you are not able to ask for help.

It took a long time. It was a two-year journey of collecting data and information and stories and resources and presenting them to the general public in a way that hopefully raises awareness and helps by giving some much-needed resources to people working in these communities and those living within these situations.

Pier Carlo: How did you go about translating your research into the initial sketches in your notebook?

Sukanya: It always starts as a storytelling process for me. I spoke to social workers who work with survivors of domestic violence and victims of domestic violence. I spoke to people who interpret domestic-violence victims from their language into English. And then I also spoke to people working in different organizations, even the admin part of it, people who write grants and things like that. I started right there. I started collecting these stories.

As I was collecting these stories, a particular line or a particular life event, I started honing in on that and drawing it out, trying to visually represent that one moment. For example, I spoke to a survivor of domestic violence who was in a situation of domestic violence for over 10 years. She said to me that she one day just woke up, went and stood in front of the mirror, and she could not recognize herself. In that one instance, she realized that this is not OK, and she just walked out of that relationship.

It was very powerful. The entire life story of this person was very powerful. But that one instant was something that I was sketching over and over again. How do I show a woman looking into a mirror, making that life-changing decision?

I took instances like that, pieces of story like that, which talk about these powerful moments in their life but also keep the privacy of the person. It’s really important to honor the privacy of the victims and survivors because they have gone through so much. We don’t want them to relive these tragic experiences.

So taking instances like that, translating it into a visual drawing, and then taking that visual drawing and making it into an abstracted concept. And then starting the process of paper-cutting. That’s how that journey took that direction.

Pier Carlo: I’m guessing that several of your interview subjects have seen the work. What have you heard from them?

Sukanya: To everybody that I spoke, I made sure that I had permission to show some of the life story, the instances of life stories. They have been so brave.

Pier Carlo: You mean show on a written panel next to the art? How so?

Sukanya: Oh, no. The names, the details, none of that is shown in my artwork. Which is why it’s not only important to take just one instance so that you cannot identify the person but also to make it a more abstracted concept so that people cannot walk in and directly identify an individual with a story.

Pier Carlo: So you were just asking permission to use their story in the making of your art?

Sukanya: It could be an instance; it could be a word that they used; it could be the language that they used. I was very careful to make sure that the story cannot be tied back to the individual.

I have to say they are the true heroes. People who have gone through these experiences and recounted what they’ve gone through, they have done it for the explicit reason to give courage to people out there who are still within these situations and to help raise funds and get more resources. It has been a very moving and powerful experience for me to work with them.

Pier Carlo: Your work is, of course, mostly not two-dimensional. It demands space and air. What challenges does that create in terms of finding the right collectors and buyers?

Sukanya: Yes, it’s a big challenge. When people ask me about my artwork, I just direct them to my website because it’s just easier for them to see it versus me trying to explain how I install my work.

The other challenge is the fact that people are so scared that it’s paper. [She laughs.] I remember that I had submitted for a public-art project at the airport here in St. Louis. The committee came back multiple times, saying, “We are so scared somebody will tear this or somebody will accidentally break it. This is so delicate. It can be destroyed easily.” Having said that, Tyvek is not that easily destructible. That’s one. Some of the pieces are over five years old, and I take them from one place to the other. I fold it and unfold it, and I install it over and over again.

But the second part of it is I feel like if a piece of artwork gets destroyed, it’s not the end of the world. I can always recreate it. I would rather it’s outside, that people see it. If it’s torn or destroyed because of some reason, I would rather that over it sitting in my basement or behind a piece where people cannot experience it and come stand next to it. I don’t have any problem with some of the pieces getting torn, though I would prefer for that not to happen. [She laughs.]

It goes back to the fact that my artwork at least is meant to be seen and experienced and walked in the middle of, and I want the audience to have that experience as much as possible.

Pier Carlo: Given that your work is a type of storytelling, do your commissioners ask for the general story in advance? Is it limiting or freeing to have a commission as opposed to self-generating your art?

Sukanya: It can be challenging because it’s not only what I come up with, what I cut into the paper; installation is also such a big part of it. All of my installations are site-specific.

I have been very lucky in that everybody who has commissioned my work understands the idea of site-specific work and how it looks in one picture may not be the exact way it turns out at the site. We have to take in the direction of the light; we have to take in how the audience is experiencing the work.

Pier Carlo: And even, I imagine, air currents.

Sukanya: Yes, exactly, air currents. Even the breath of the person who is standing and watching the work sometimes gently sways the work.

I have been very lucky in that my concepts are also abstracted. There’s a huge part of it being an abstract piece of work, which my commissioners have understood and my audience has appreciated over and over again, though here are some representational elements.

But the idea of coming into a space, really feeling the soul of the space, if you will, and working with my artwork and the space is —to go back to your question — very freeing because I feel like it’s really not in my control. As much as paper-cutting is 100% in my control — I’m very careful about how I cut and when I cut and how often I cut — the installation process is the exact opposite. I would say I have maybe 30% control over what it will look like because of so many of the other factors that come into play. But it’s also liberating. It feels like it’s a child that I have given birth to but now they’re taking an identity of their own.

Pier Carlo: Given your experience of being self-taught, living in the Midwest and really beating your own path as an artist, do you have thoughts about what could have been different systemically to make your process of discovery and artmaking easier?

Sukanya: Oh, I can just talk to you about that forever! There are so many things that I’ve had to discover on my own. It would’ve been easier if there was something in place that would’ve made the journey a little easier. It could be something as easy as just having support groups, just a place to meet other artists, to meet other resources in your community that support artists and then learn that way. That would’ve made it so much easier. That’s one step.

The other, specifically for people like me who speak a different language, who have not studied in the United States, is learning to write your own artist statement, learning to put together your bio. Not only do you have to write in a language that’s not your own about a process that you’re only beginning to understand, but you have to write it in such a way that jurors who work in big art museums and contemporary museums can judge you. They’re judging you on your art, but you also have to be able to present it in text, in vocabulary.

My artmaking came naturally to me. That journey just happened one step to the next the next, but all of these other things I’m still struggling with, just writing proposals and putting them together. Budgeting.

Pier Carlo: You speak English fluently, but it’s the art-speak as a second language that should be a class.

Sukanya: Yes. And even with my English, it has taken me a very long time to be able to articulate myself. It’s not my first language. It has taken a very long time to get here, and some of these resources could have made the journey easier.

One of the things that I do here in St. Louis and not just in St. Louis … . People who come from immigrant backgrounds, they come in with whatever education they have, and they have to get to work right away because they have to build a life for themselves and buy a home and all of that. So people miss out on all of these artistic and cultural pursuits that everybody, all of us, have within us, the joy of figuring out what it is that you want to say and how you say it. I talk to a lot of new immigrants and new refugees, and I say, “If there’s any inclination of any artists or hobbyists even within you, please come and talk to me, and I can share some of the resources I have.”

Pier Carlo: Really? How long have you been doing that?

Sukanya: [Laughing] I’ve been doing it forever. If I know that there is a grant here, I’ll just send it to my friends, anybody and everybody, not just immigrants and people who have come from different countries, but also to my American friends who have lived here forever.

Pier Carlo: But you’re saying a new immigrant has less room in which to create and explore because they have to survive.

Sukanya: They have to survive. And also they don’t know that these resources are here. They don’t know that you can make a living as an artist. A lot of the people I speak to from different countries don’t think art is a viable way of making a career to support a family. I won’t say you roll in money if you’re an artist, [laughing] especially if you’re starting, but it doesn’t mean that it cannot be done. You can always find ways of supplementing your income. I make it a point to share these resources so that people at least have an option. They may or may not choose to do it, but at least they’re not turned away at the onset.

Pier Carlo: Finally, what experimentation is coming up for you next, whether a new story or a new material? What’s next on your plate?

Sukanya: There’s some new materials. I’m playing with wire mesh a lot. I’m trying to combine wire mesh with paper, and I’m trying to make some installations there.

Also, I just got back from India on a two-week trip to go visit my family. I visited the northeastern part of India where I grew up, and I am still reeling from the beauty.

Pier Carlo: I’ve never been, but I think that’s the mountains, right?

Sukanya: It’s the the Himalayan Mountain range. Where I went, there is a significant Tibetan refugee population that have come and settled there, and I visited monasteries and spoke to people. I’m just in love with the idea of altar-making. How do you stand around a space and make a contemplative place of thinking? And how do you use words and colors and images to support that contemplation for a viewer?

I saw hundreds of prayer flags all over the monasteries and on the streets, both contemporary and religious, ritualistic prayer flags. All of this and the monasteries themselves are places of storytelling, so a lot of that is swirling in my brain right now.

Pier Carlo: Exciting! Have you ever had any of your work exhibited in India?

Sukanya: I have not, and that’s something that I’m really hoping to do. I’m really hoping to make some connections and show some work there, some relevant work, some work that directly ties in with my experience in India or some of the awareness-building I want to do. That’s a dream.

Pier Carlo: Well, it sounds like this new project that’s swirling in your brain might be the one.

Sukanya: [She laughs.] I would love that!