Meena Murugesan

I am an interdisciplinary artist currently living on Tongva-Kizh land, colonially known as Los Angeles. Born and raised on the unceded lands of the Kanienʼkehá꞉ka nation, I lived in Montreal from 1978-2011 and then moved to Los Angeles to pursue graduate school, found a vibrant artist community, and stayed. I create experimental non-linear narratives at the intersection of video art installation, textile art, live performance, and social issues. Grappling with the practices of collage, projection mapping, contemplative documentary, collective creation, improvisation, somatic bodywork, brahminized bharatanatyam, and the textile arts, I center an anti-racist, anti-caste, feminist, queer, melanin-rich creative liberatory practice.

Inspired by scholars such as Fred Moten, Ambedkar and Alexis Pauline Gumbs, I research interlocking systems of apartheid across caste, race, gender, religion, ethnicity and species, to ask why humans have created hierarchical systems that quantitatively measure one being as “more than or less than” another being. This line of investigation has made its way into my current project, a speculative multichannel video / textile / performance  art installation entitled Dravidian Futurities about Dravidian-African connections, casteism, colorism, trance/possession art rituals, and re-earthing a sunken landmass called Kumari Kandam or Lemuria.

I am a current founding member of two collectives: SADA (South Asian Diasporic Artists, Mellon awardee 2021-2026) and SiriusShapeShifters (with d. Sabela grimes). My video art has been presented at Broad Museum LA, Getty Museum LA, ICA Philadelphia, KidSpace Museum, MCA Chicago, MOCA LA, REDCAT, Transformative Arts, Underground Museum, Black Star Film Festival, Abrons Arts Center, Gibney, NYLA, 651 Arts, EMPAC, Jacob's Pillow, ODC,, SOPHIENSALE, Danspace, Tangente, MAI, etc.

I have created multi-channel video installations for live performance with artists such as Jaamil Olawale-Kosoko, taisha paggett, d. Sabela grimes, Marjani Forte-Saunders (Bessie Award for Best Visual Design, "Memoirs of a...Unicorn," 2019), Embodiment Project, Sita Frederick, Christopher Emile/No)one.Art House, Lionel Popkin, David Rousseve, CONTRATIEMPO, and D'Lo (nominated for Best Projections for an Intimate Theater, 2021), among others. Since being in LA, I have danced with choreographers taisha paggett, Shyamala Moorty, Sheetal Gandhi, Laurel Tendindo, Emily Beattie, Alison D'Amato, Carol McDowell, among others.

I have fifteen years of experience facilitating ethical filmmaking and/or movement processes with racialized youth, and criminalized communities as a collaborative act that hopes to unpack stereotypes, stigma, and systems of oppressions. I worked as a teaching artist in Montréal, Toronto, Los Angeles, Niamey, and Rio de Janeiro. Since 2002, I have been awarded funding from CHIME Choreographers in Mentorship Program, UCLA, SODEC (Société de développment des entreprises culturelles), CALQ (Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec), CAC (Canada Arts Council), MAI (Montréal, arts, interculturels). 

My research interests include: interlocking systems of apartheid across caste, race, gender, ethnicity, religion, species; intercaste coalition building between Dalit, Shudra and Adivasi communities; the casteist histories of bharata natyam; post-colonial diasporic subjectivities; settler-colonial histories; Blackness and anti-Blackness in South Asian communities; shifting the politics of representation of people of color, improvisation as practice, collective creative processes, art-making as community-building.