Janani Balasubramanian 2020 Artist in Residence
Janani Balasubramanian is an artist and creative researcher. Balasubramanian frequently works in deep collaboration with astrophysicists to shift how we understand inner and outer space and uses artmaking as an occasion to pursue ambitious research inquiries. Their practice centers experimentation with form and technology, wide accessibility, and play, and includes works of new media (augmented/virtual reality), film, immersive theatre, and literary fiction.
Balasubramanian's work has been presented at more than 160 stages across North America and Europe, including The Public Theater, MOMA, Abrons Arts Center, Andy Warhol Museum, Red Bull Arts, Ace Hotel, Brooklyn Museum, Asian American Writer's Workshop, High Line, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Residency support for this work has included the National Endowment for the Arts, Public Theater Devised Theater Working Group, Abrons Arts Center, and Mount Tremper Arts. Balasubramanian's work has been featured in The New Yorker, Guernica, The New Inquiry, Harvard International Review, Paper Magazine, Bullett Magazine, and more. Balasubramanian was a 2019 Innovator-in-Residence at Colorado College, 2019 Brooklyn College/Tow Foundation artist resident, and 2018 artist-in-residence at the University of Colorado.
Balasubramanian is currently a 2018-2020 Van Lier fellow at the Public Theater and a 2019-2020 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow; artist-in-residence in the brown dwarf astrophysics group at the American Museum of Natural History; a 2020 Pioneer Works Narrative Arts Fellow; and co-founder of the Abundant Space Collaborative with astronomer Dr. Natalie Gosnell.
Research Questions / Lines of Inquiry during Hemi Residency
- How might artists and technologists co-create new media storytelling tools?
- How might we create accessible new media work?
- How might we create a feminist outer space?