SARIKA GOULATIA

Raised in India, Sarika Goulatia is an interdisciplinary conceptual artist who works in painting and sculpture, transforming them into large-scale visceral and sensory installations. Goulatia received her Masters degree in Textiles Design and Development (printing, surface embellishments, and weaving) from the National Institute of Fashion Technology, India in 1998. She immigrated to the United States in 2002 and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon University in 2004.

As an immigrant and Indian Diasporic artist, Goulatia’s work is informed by the traditions of her Indian heritage and Eurocentric contemporary art. This duality enables her work to address key themes of systemic oppression and break through cultural barriers. Her work ranges from sculpted ceramics to cast bronzes and aluminum, assemblages using found objects, fabricated acrylic panels, and digital prints to nail and pin drawings on wood and paper, at times, juxtaposed with poetry. Goluatia’a artistic practice delves into the fragility of the human experience, often drawing on personal challenges steeped in socio-political and cultural issues affecting society. Her mission is to create works that elevate and spotlight the stories of others.

She has attended multiple artist residencies in rural India, England, Hong Kong, and the United States and was awarded exhibition opportunities at Neu Kirche, the Alloy at Carrie Furnace, and The Facebook Open Arts Residency. Her site-specific public works include Shade-Sail, a community-based project done through Neu Kirche, and The Children’s Museum in Deutschtown, a neighborhood on Pittsburgh's North Side. Her sculptures at the Alloy are inspired by the stories of  Carrie Furnace steelworkers. Installed at the Tryp Hotel in Pittsburgh, is her work “a million marks of home, revisited'' work. Goulatia’s Facebook residency involved installing a large-scale installation at their Pittsburgh office that alludes to references to Pittsburgh’s industrial past, the city’s present experience with displacement and gentrification, and its future digital industry. Funded by the Pennsylvania Department of Education, is her ongoing community-based project prosecutrix, which focuses on telling the stories of victims of sexual assault without stigmatizing them.

Goulatia has had several solo exhibitions at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. She has exhibited work in group and solo shows through the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust for the International Society of Sculptors Conference (2016) and was part of the India in Focus Festival (2015). Additional group exhibitions include shows at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art (2016/2019), The Mine Factory (2013 and 2015), the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh’s Annual at the Carnegie Museum of Art (2016), and Double Consciousness at the Mattress Factory Museum (2007). Goulatia was also part of the ground-breaking inaugural exhibition at the National Indo-American Museum, Chicago. The exhibition challenged preconceived notions of expectations from artists of Indian origin.

In 2017, Goulatia received the prestigious Carol R. Brown Award Creative Achievement Award. The Carol R. Brown Creative Achievement Awards are co-sponsored by The Heinz Endowments and The Pittsburgh Foundation and Opportunity Fund. The program is guided by a shared belief in artistic excellence, creative development, and the need for continuous career advancement. She also received the Sally Gehl, Samuel Rosenberg, and Elizabeth Jones Award in Humanities and Art at Carnegie Mellon University (2006).

Goulatia has been a member of the Pittsburgh Art commission since 2017, a Board member of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and BrewHouse association, a member of Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Society of Artists, Group A, Society of Sculptors, and a proud member of the #notwhite collective.