Born in 1967 at Mysore, Karnataka, Shanthamani Muddaiah received her Bachelor’s Degree in Painting from the Chamarajendra Academy of Visual Arts (CAVA), Mysore and her Master’s from MS University, Baroda. She also did a course in Papermaking at Glasgow, Scotland and worked for brief periods as an art teacher and on conservation of wall paintings in India, before taking to her fulltime art practice. Exploring materiality within transcendental matter, her sculptures, often made of charcoal, resemble stone monuments, appearing stable and strong from a distance, but their fragility becoming apparent on closer inspection. The markings of wood are still borne by the black blocks, as traces of memory of the fire it consumed or that consumed it. The carbonized forms begin to reveal their frailty and the possibility of their disintegrating back into dust. Shanthamani, who has made rustic charcoal into a metaphor of what has been described as ‘lingering material manifestations’, has also worked on video, photography and other media. Recipient of National Junior Fellowship from Ministry of Tourism and Culture, and the Charles Wallace Scholarship for study in Glasgow, her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions at Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai, Sri Lanka, Paris, Miami, Dubai, Norway and Tel Aviv amongst others. Her works are part of many private collections in India and abroad including the Venkatappa Art Gallery and the Government Museum, Bangalore. Shanthamani lives and works in Bangalore.