We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nitheen Ramalingam. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with nitheen below.

Hi Nitheen, thanks for joining us today. Often the greatest growth and the biggest wins come right after a defeat. ther times the failure serves as a lesson that’s helpful later in your journey. We’d appreciate if you could open up about a time you’ve failed.

I wouldn’t consider this phase to be a serious failure per se. However it was certainly one of the lowest points that I’ve been in. After this phase, I found great success. This was when I was pursuing my MFA at UC Davis. In spite of working hard on my experimental pieces, I failed my pre-thesis review and was given four weeks to pass the re-review to become eligible to present my thesis show. I passed the re-review but was given a challenging feedback. Upon receiving the feedback, I worked so hard in a way that I hadn’t before or since. As a result, my Thesis show was very successful and I also received the Allen & Keister purchase prize for my presentation where one of my paintings was collected by the Jan and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. I believe if I hadn’t failed the review, I wouldn’t have been whole heartedly convinced to return to drawing and painting as opposed to sculpture the sculptural experimentation that I was undertaking. Also I wouldn’t have been as focused and worked as hard as I did – this I believe ultimately led to the successful thesis exhibition.

Nitheen, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am Nitheen Ramalingam, a visual artist and an educator from Chennai, India. I have been drawing and painting with great interest since my childhood. My father Mr. Muthukrishnan Ramalingam is also a visual artist, and I believe seeing him paint must have been very encouraging for me at that age. However, by the time I was getting into college I did not consider Art as a legitimate career option. I was deciding between several options including law and then ended up studying visual communications that included courses in graphic design, photography, drawing etc. It was during the drawing and painting classes that my professor recognized my interest and talent in Art and encouraged me to pursue fine art. It was after this advice that I started to seriously practice my skills and enrich my sensibilities and gradually started exhibiting my work. My drawings and paintings, though aesthetically quite pleasing, have always carried in them an underlying alienated feeling – through the way the materials were handled and the way the forms were rendered. In the recent body of work, I gave this sensibility a more concrete socio-political context through addressing the issue of socio-economic class in my native state of Tamil Nadu in India.
I believe that along with addressing the aesthetic questions, my art practice deals with the pertinent issues of caste and class without falling prey to the reductive categorization that artists are sometimes subjected to.

I am most proud of the three years I spent in the United States from where I returned to India recently. I faced several challenges and attained personal and professional growth to levels which I didn’t think was possible for me before. The highlight was showing my thesis project at the Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art for which I was awarded the Keister & Allen Purchase Prize. I would want potential patrons and aficionados to know that while I embrace idiosyncrasy and spontaneity in my mark-making, my art practice has and will always follow rigorous research and experimentation before you see the final displayed pieces.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The gift of being able to produce non-alienated labor!

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Yes, my goal is to be able to honestly and critically reflect on my worldview through drawing and painting. And also to constantly re-invent myself and not get stuck in one particular visual language or concept.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://nitheenramalingam.myportfolio.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nitheenstudio/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nitheen-ramalingam-9288a081/

Image Credits

Jordan Benton
Muzi Li Rowe