Sheela Gowda Honored with 2025 Sam Gilliam Award
141April 3, 2025
The Dia Art Foundation and the Sam Gilliam Foundation have named Bangalore-based artistSheela Gowdaas the recipient of the 2025Sam Gilliam Award. The prize wasestablishedin 2023 with funding from the Sam Gilliam Foundation and its president, Annie Gawlak, Gilliam’s widow, in honor of the late artist. Gowda will receive $75,000 and will be featured in a public program at one of Dia’s locations this fall. Presented to an artist “residing anywhere in the world, who has made a significant contribution to any medium of art and for whom receiving the award would be transformative,” the prize will be awarded annually through 2033.
“It is a great honor to be selected as the 2025 Sam Gilliam Award recipient,” said Gowda in a statement. “Gilliam’s lifelong practice of interrogation and experimentation is something that I identify with, and his deep involvement with the art community is inspiring. I believe that as an artist it is not enough to pursue one’s own individual practice, but it is necessary and even critical in these present times to share experiences and ideas and be supportive of local as well as broader issues that are common to us.”
Born in Bhadravati, India, in 1957, Gowda works across media to explore issues linked to labor, gender, and contemporary sociopolitical conditions. She began her career as a painter, but in the 1990s, responding to India’s rapid economic and cultural development, she began making the large-scale installations for which she is now widely known, typically creating these by hand from humble and mundane materials such as cow dung, hair, incense, and tar drums. These materials carry cultural significance relating to the urban and rural cultures of South India, which she draws upon in works commenting on resilience, ritual, and the interconnectedness of human experience.
“We are delighted to announce Sheela Gowda as the second recipient of the Sam Gilliam Award. Gowda’s work has consistently increased in complexity and scale, not just for scale’s sake but proportionate with her work’s power and affect,” said Dia director Jessica Morgan in a statement. “Drawing on the lineages of Minimal and Postminimal art, which form the core of Dia’s permanent collection, Gowda utilizes materials close to her lived experience—a cultural and geographic context that is underrepresented in the United States and in Dia’s own program. We hope that receiving this award will support the further development of Gowda’s practice and increase the international visibility of her work.”