Saumitra Chandratreya is an award-winning fiber-based installation artist currently based in St. Petersburg with a studio located at the ArtsXchange in the Warehouse Arts District. Born and raised in Mumbai, India, he received a BFA in Textile Design in Bangalore (Bengaluru) and attended graduate school at the esteemed School of the Arts Institute of Chicago, earning a Master of Design in Fashion, Body and Garment. His work manages to be delightfully ethereal yet based on concrete data and mainstream media sources.
INTERVIEW:
Robin: You were born in Mumbai – how does this affect your work?
Saumitra: Mumbai is a chaotic yet disciplined city, the discipline comes from its denizens structuring their lives around public transit. There is a definite rule to living in Mumbai. I find that I use this sense of controlled chaos in my process of making work. I use design strategies in thinking about and executing a concept and that I attribute to growing up in Mumbai. There is this funny story from middle school – for an end of the semester art examination in school, one of the prompts was ‘My Mother’ and my mother worked, and she would take the same train every day to her office. So, I painted a scene at the railway station with my mother’s back towards the viewer, as she was facing the train car she was about to get into. I got a ‘C’ on this piece because I think the art teacher was looking for something more regular. That was daily life influencing my thinking about what mattered the most. Mumbai is a maximal city, and my art practice has included elaborate installations, process heavy works and using unusual materials to make art. Mumbai is a city of alternatives because one has to figure out how to survive among the most brutal competition.
Bengaluru is also chaotic but when I lived there, I was really drawn to its chaos. There is a central market in the heart of the city – ‘K. R. Market’ where the goods and commodities arrive to be distributed all over the city – and I fell in love with the energy of this place when I first visited for a class assignment in undergrad. As a maximalist, I am really drawn to its crowdedness, its overpowering smell of organic and non-organic commodities and it’s grand-ness. For my thesis project in undergrad, I chose to make an experiential installation based on my sensory overload of being in the market. I took several organic commodities sold at the market – turmeric, pepper, jasmine flowers, lotus flowers, marigold flowers, bay leaves etc and I created screen printed scrolls along with the essences of these commodities. The processes I used to make this installation; I still use in my practice.
What are your biggest art influences? Inspirations?
Nick Cave, Sheila Gowda, Nan Goldin, David LaChepelle, Sheila Hicks, Yayoi Kusama, Nari Ward, Frank Llyod Wright, Schiaparelli, Thom Browne, Viktor and Rolf, Alexander McQueen, to name a few.
My inspiration comes from the culture, high and low, forbidden and celebrated. I am drawn to striking images that already exist, objects with personal histories talk to me, and I like making beautiful things that have a message embedded in them.
What are your favorite and least favorite parts of being an artist?
I get to create a microcosm of a world when I make art – I am in my most happy place when I am in my studio making something. Making art gives me a way to connect with my most private parts, it’s a form of meditation to me. It’s my sanctuary and it’s my place of worship. Spiritually, I feel one with the universe when I am making art.
The least favorite part of being an artist, is how unregulated the art world is. I find it challenging because there are no rules, it’s esoteric and an artist needs to wear a lot of hats sometimes simultaneously to make it far in their career.
What changes in St Pete are you seeing?
St. Pete is having a renaissance (THE descriptor this season). I have only lived in the area for 5 years and I can already see how much the city has grown. It is going through some growing pains as it expands vertically. St. Pete is not unique in that sense, but we also need to be cautious about the tradeoff. We are losing the charm of the older parts of the city rapidly and the newer architecture (I find) lacks imagination and is often sterile. We lack in the ‘place-making’ aspect of urban planning. All this growth is also bringing a lot of capital in the region and the art community benefits from that capital. We are in a way cause and effect of this renaissance. We are the engine of cultural expansion and often we are also the first people to feel the negative effects of gentrification.
What would you like to see?
We need more art institutions to provide support for the development of arts and artists in the area. We don’t have a good enough support system to sustain the number of artists and the art market right now. Creative Pinellas, St. Pete Arts alliance, Tampa Arts Alliance, the Gobioff foundation are doing great job of creating that support system, but we need more. We don’t really have a lot of fellowships and residencies in the area that provide an opportunity to the artists to dive deep in their practice. The USF CAM incubator at the Factory St. Pete is a necessary addition. The places like Fairgrounds and Crabdevil offer good opportunities too. But we need more. We need an Artists + arts workers union. ‘St. Pete Supports Arts’ is spear heading efforts on that front which I support. We should also critique the artists in the area more so that we can place our work in the context of the global art practices.
How do you find work? How does it find you?
I have been fortunate to be embraced by the art community since I have moved here. So, the work finds me in terms of shows locally via friends and acquaintances. I have had the opportunity to work with St. Cate Fine Arts on other art gigs and I have had the opportunity to teach at the Morean Arts Center, the Pruitt Arts Education Center at the ArtsXchange and I recently facilitated workshops with Calan Rae and Nneka Jones at the MFA. I also have a ‘day-job’ that affords me a lot of freedom to make work in my studio that I am interested in making. I am also a part of a printmakers’ collective – ’24 Hands.’ We are an active collective of Gulf Coast printmakers, and we have several shows coming up.
What are your goals?
I want to have my art all over the world – to have it accessible to people of all walks of life. To make the world a better place through my art and to leave a lasting impact on the art world.
Advice for emerging artists?
Keep it moving – and by that what I mean is to keep working on things in your practice. Develop as many different styles as you can if you have a lot of varied interests. The great thing about an interdisciplinary world is that you don’t have to stick to classical ways of making things. You can twist the rules to make your own unique mark. You can think through making if you have a block. Have at least two things floating around out in the world – that could be proposals for a show, grant applications; fellowship and residency opportunities. You never know who will see your work. •
