Surabhi Saraf: Remedies

Composer and new media and performance artist Surabhi Saraf draws on her background in Indian classical music and experimental sound to create a series of multi-channel video installations, the first two of which will have their world premiere at Hosfelt Gallery.

Remedies is inspired by the artist’s family’s pharmaceutical factory in Indore, India, where seventy people, using quasi-archaic machinery, produce tablets, capsules and syrups. The first two works in Saraf’s series reflect on the production of the tablets and the capsules in separate installations, each involving a central video projection and video box sculptures. The video projection features performers enacting a choreographed sequence that echoes the repetitive motions of the equipment and the factory workers. The video boxes present close-up, abstracted footage of the manufacturing process. Combining these elements with re-mixed soundtracks of the outmoded factory equipment, Saraf creates rhythmic, multi-layered structures of evolving visual and sonic patterns. The repetition of actions and sounds generates mesmerizing environments that are both serene and surreal, drawing parallels between medicine and meditation as healing experiences.

Born in Indore, India in 1983, Surabhi Saraf earned a BFA in painting from MSU Baroda (India) and an MFA in Art and Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her works have been screened and performed in galleries and video art festivals in India, Spain, The Netherlands, South Korea, Israel, Greece, Australia, Italy, Turkey and the U.S. Recent live performances in San Francisco include Oscillations//Live at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (2012), Grains at the Asian Art Museum (2013), and public performances of FOLD {Live} (2011). Saraf is a recipient of the 2015 Eureka Fellowship Award.