Suneil Sanzgiri
Visiting Assistant Professor
Biography
Suneil Sanzgiri is an artist, researcher, and filmmaker. His work spans experimental video and film, animations, essays, and installations, and contends with questions of identity, heritage, culture and diaspora in relation to structural violence. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a Masters of Science in Art, Culture and Technology in 2017.
His film “At Home But Not At Home” made its World Premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, in January 2020, with a nomination for the Found Footage Award. His follow-up film “Letter From Your Far-Off Country” made its world premiere at the New York Film Festival in the fall of 2020, and was entered into the Ammodo Tiger Shorts Competition at IFFR in 2021. His third film in the trilogy, “Golden Jubilee”, is currently a Staff Pick on Vimeo. Sanzgiri’s work has been screened extensively at festivals and venues around the world including International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Fest, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Doc Lisboa, Viennale, e-Flux, REDCAT, the Menil Collection, the Block Museum, and the Criterion Collection, and has won awards at BlackStar Film Fest, Open City Docs Fest, and more. Residencies and fellowships include SOMA, MacDowell, Pioneer Works, Flaherty NYC, and Sentient Art Film’s inaugural Line of Sight fellowship. His work has been supported by grants from Creative Capital, the Jerome Foundation, NYSCA, Field of Vision, and the Foundation for Contemporary Art. He was named one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in Filmmaker Magazine’s Fall 2021 Issue, and in Art in America’s “New Talent” issue in 2022. His work has been written about and profiled in Artforum, MOUSSE, Bomb Mag, Film Quarterly, SEEN Magazine, and more.
His first institutional solo show “Here the Earth Grows Gold” opens at the Brooklyn Museum in October 2023.
Sanzgiri is currently working on his first feature-length work, focusing on the bonds of solidarity that developed out of resistance to the Portuguese empire between India and Africa.
Education
Masters of Science in Art, Culture, and Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA
School of Architecture and Planning
Bachelor of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Sculpture, Concentration in Film and Video
Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Baltimore, MD