Ms. Sarita Sundar’s practice and research spans heritage studies, visual culture, and design theory. She is the founder of Hanno, a heritage interpretation and design consultancy.
Ms. Sundar has a postgraduate degree in Visual Communications from the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad and an M.A. in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester, UK where she was awarded the 2016 Professor Eilean Hooper-Greenhill Academic Prize. She is a visiting faculty at various design institutes: including NID, Ahmedabad; and Srishti Manipal School of Design and Technology, Bangalore. Her research ranges from studies of vernacular typography to looking at the intangible and material culture of performance practices in the temples of Valuvanad, Kerala (for which she received a grant from the India Foundation for the Arts). Her present research focuses on the cultural and design history of seats in India and will culminate in a publication in 2022.
Ms. Sundar’s Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship takes forward her multi-disciplinary research and seeks to address the lacuna of critical discourse in the discipline of design in India. By mapping the transcultural exchange of aesthetics and ideologies between India and the United States, and situating the interconnected events and dialogues, Ms. Sundar’s project looks at how these historical milestones continue to motivate and influence contemporary design, and associated fields such as curatorial practice in both countries. Furthermore, it examines the pathways followed by modernism and counter-movements like postmodernism, and their interactions with indigenous epistemology in Indian aesthetics and thought. She is also co-teaching a course, ‘Visualizing India’, at the University of Vermont.