Vihanga Sontam is an Indian born Designer/artist who received her undergraduate degree in Fashion from Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. She has gained knowledgeable experience in the fashion world both in India and New Zealand. She was chosen as one of the finalists in the Emerging designer awards, which were held in Dunedin, New Zealand. She wanted to break out of the structural system of fashion and find a new form of expression through sculpture.
‘I’ NVALID
My work manifests boundaries. These are boundaries that result from social structures that are ultimately oppressive because they limit possibilities for the people who are trapped in them. One pretends to be what one is expected to be and, those expected things are deeply embedded in the genetics of a culture. Culture both emerges from those systems and also creates them. As a result, individual selves become invalid and are crippled in order to conform to them. My sculpture therefore expresses this process of destruction and takes the form of walls or boundaries that are both limiting but exploding those limits at the same time. It takes its form by using construction and building materials to create a strange language of both uncertainty and balance.
