User:Mershaan2015/sandbox

Sajitha R Shankar

Sajitha R Shankar (b.1967) is an internationally acclaimed contemporary woman artist from India.Her paintings are part of numerous public and private collections including The National Gallery of Modern Art, Bangalore,, National Gallery of Modern Art , New Delhi, Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts, New Delhi ,Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi and the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, England .Her preferred medium is charcoal and acrylic on paper.Her most recent installation titled Tantric Yoni,[] ,made out of turmeric, vermilion powder, rice powder, burnt husk of paddy was done for the 2013 One Billion Rising campaign in Kochi organised by feminist playwright Eve Ensler.

Early Life
Sajitha R Shankar was born at Kumaranalloor, a village in Kottayam district in Kerala, in 1967. After successfully completing a BFA degree from the Government College of Arts, Thiruvananthapuram, she worked for three years at the Regional Centre Studios of the Lalit Kala Akademi, Chennai, and later from 1989-2004, she lived and worked at Cholamandal Artists’ Village for 16 years. During this period, she traveled to the major art centres in the world, attended workshops, did collaborative work with artists and writers abroad and had several shows in major art galleries across Asia and Europe.Her first solo exhibition was in 1987 at the age of 20.

life
Sajitha was a member of the Kerala State Lalita Kala Academy for a period of nine years from 2002-2011.She also served as a Governing body member of Vyloppilli Samnkruti Bhavan, Trivandrum, Kerala from 2006-2011.In 2007, she founded Gowry Art Institute on the banks of the Vamanapuram river in Kallar, Trivandrum in order to promote the work of women artists and to provide an inclusive space for promoting various cultural activities.

Career
Sajitha R Shankhar has held 22 solo shows of her works in Thiruvananthapuram, Chennai, Bangalore, Bhubaneshwar, Kolkata, Kochi and other cities and towns in India as also in Paris, Vienna, Valladolid (Spain), Bochum, Essen, Metzingen, Oberhausen (Germany), London, Oxford, Hexam and Northumberland (United Kingdom).

This is besides 50 group shows across the world, including in the Netherlands and Germany. She has also taken part in countless workshops and art camps and organised many on her own.

Awards and Honours
Sajitha R Shankhar was awarded a Charles Wallace Fellowship in 1995.She is also the recipient of numerous other awards and grants including a Senior Fellowship from the Department of Culture, Government of India (2009-11); a French scholarship for an Artist’s Residency in Paris (2006-07); Senior Award at the special exhibition to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Indian Independence held in Tamil Nadu (1997); and Grand Prize at the Cleveland International Drawing Biennale, U.K. (1995), besides the Kerala Lalit Kala Akademi Award and the Lion’s Club Award. Sajitha Shankar was one of the 14 leading women artists honoured by the National Legal Service Authority in 2008.She has felicitated by the Ministry of Culture, Kerala for 'Outstanding Contribution in the Field of Arts (Painting)', in 2012.