Meena Murugesan (MFA, UCLA) is a Bessie Award winning video and dance artist living on Tongva land. Meena creates experimental non-linear narratives at the intersection of live performance, video art and social issues. Meena grapples with the movement practices of dominant caste bharata natyam, improvisation and somatic bodywork, as well as the visual practices of contemplative documentary, collage and projection mapping. Meena centers an antiracist, anti-caste, feminist, queer and melanin rich creative liberatory practice. Meena is currently directing a multimedia movement series entitled Dravidian Futurities about Afro-Dravidian connections, casteism, colorism, and rural Tamil rituals of possession/trance. Meena is a member of collectives SiriusShapeShifters (with d. Sabela grimes) and SAEDA (South Asian Experimental Dance Artists).
Born and raised on unceded Kanion’Ke:Haka land (Montreal, Quebec) Meena has been living on occupied Tonva-Kizh land 2011. Meena has designed multi-channel video installations for live performance with directors and choreographers 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 and D'Lo (nominated for Best Projections for an Intimate Theater, 2021), among others. Since being in LA, Meena has danced with choreographers taisha paggett, Shyamala Moorty, Sheetal Gandhi, Laurel Tendindo, Emily Beattie, Alison D'Amato, Carol McDowell, among others. Meena's dance, video art, or collaborative video projection design work has been presented at Getty Museum, Getty Villa, Underground Museum, Broad Museum, MOCA LA, The Ford Amphitheater, Pieter, LACE, UCLA, ODC, YBCA, Dance Mission, Abrons Arts Center, Gibney, NYLA, 651 Arts, EMPAC, Jacob's Pillow, SOPHIENSALE, Pearlstein Gallery, Black Star Film Festival, ICA Philadelphia, Opera Omaha, Tangente, MAI, Le Gesu, Monument National, etc.
Meena has 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. Meena has worked as a teaching artist in Montréal, Toronto, Los Angeles, Niamey, and Rio de Janeiro. Since 2002, Meena has been awarded funding for their film or dance work from agencies such as 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).
Influential movement teachers include Vasantha Krishnan, Josefina Baez, Zab Maboungou, Marie-Claude Rodrigue, Michael Greyeyes, Dazl, and Rennie Harris. Meena’s research interests include: the casteist histories of bharata natyam, post-colonial diasporic subjectivities, settler-colonial histories, Blackness and anti-Blackness in South Asian communities, subverting spectator-performer relationships, shifting the politics of representation of people of color, improvisational scores, collective creative processes, dance for social justice, and art-making as community-building.