Sajan Mani
Sajan Mani born 1981, Keralam, South India. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany
Sajan Vazhakaparambil Kolavan kalyanikutty Mani is an Interdisciplinary artist and curator hailing from a family of rubber tappers in a remote village in the northern part of Keralam, South India. His work voices the issues of marginalized and oppressed people of India, via the “Black Dalit body” of the artist. Mani’s performance practice insists upon embodied presence, confronting pain, shame, fear, and power. His personal tryst with his body as a meeting point of history and present opens onto “body” as socio-political
metaphor.
Several of Mani’s performances employ the element of water to address ecological issues particularly related to the backwaters of Kerala, as well as to the common theme of migration. His recent works consider the correspondence between animals and humans, and the politics of space from the perspective of an indigenous cosmology.
Sajan was the first Indian to be awarded the Berlin Art Prize in 2021. He has participated in international biennales, festivals, exhibitions and residencies, including NPT Biennale: New Performance Turku Biennale, FIN (2023);The INHABIT, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, DE (2022), The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University, CA (2021-22) Lokame Tharavadu, Kochi Biennale Foundation, IN (2021), Times Art Center Berlin, DE (2021) Nome Gallery, Berlin (2021) CODA Oslo International Dance
Festival, No (2019); Ord & Bild, SE (2019); India Art Fair (2019); “Specters of Communism”, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2017); Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh (2016); Kampala Art Biennale, Uganda (2016); Kolkata International Performance Arts Festival (2014–16); and Vancouver Biennale, CA (2014). In 2022 he was awarded the Prince Claus Mentorship Award and Breakthrough Artist of The Year from Hello India Art Awards and in 2024 the
prestigious Villa Romana Prize.Between 2019 – 2022 he received an artistic research grant from the Berlin Senate, Fine Arts Scholarship fromBraunschweig Projects, and the Akademie Schloss Solitude Fellowship, Germany.