Sindhu Thirumalaisamy's films, installations, and compositions engage everyday spaces and civic infrastructures—such as hospitals, parks, streets, kitchens, temples, mosques, lakes and roadsides—as sites of collective resistance and care.
Thirumalaisamy is the recipient of awards and fellowships including the NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship in Film/Video, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston’s Core Fellowship. She is an alumna of Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and of the Whitney Independent Study Program. Her 2019 film, The Lake and The Lake, premiered at the Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM), won the jury award for Best Documentary at the 2020 Ann Arbor Film Festival, and was nominated for awards at BlackStar Film Festival and Open City Documentary Festival. Thirumalaisamy is an assistant professor of Art at Rice University.
At MacDowell, Thirumalaisamy began editing two new moving image works: a speculative film based on the material histories and submerging futures of concrete; and a video-poem structured around a game of pallankuli (mancala).
Sindhu Thirumalaisamy
Studios
Mixter
Sindhu Thirumalaisamy worked in the Mixter studio.
Built in 1927–1930, the Florence Kilpatrick Mixter Studio was funded by its namesake and designed by the architect F. Winsor, Jr., who also designed MacDowell's original Savidge Library in 1925. Mixter Studio, solidly built of yellow and grey-hued granite, once had sweeping views of Pack Monadnock to the east. The lush forest has now grown…