Shanthi Chandrasekar is a multimedia and multidisciplinary artist from Maryland who has an academic background in physics and psychology, and has been trained in the traditional Indian art forms of Kolam and Tanjore-style painting. While many of her works are influenced by her Indian heritage, her true inspiration comes from the mystery and majesty of the world around her; her muse lives where the scientific overlaps with the spiritual.
Shanthi has won numerous awards for her works, including Independent Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council and Individual Artist Grants from the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County as well as from the Maryland Traditions Folklife Apprenticeships twice to teach Kolam and her work was documented as a short film. Her artwork is in the DC Art Bank, Montgomery Public Art, Suburban Hospital, Inova Cancer Institutes and other collections.
Shanthi has exhibited, presented her work, and participated in events at several galleries and institutions, including Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, National Institutes of Health, Gandhi Memorial Center, Montefiore Medical Center (The Bronx, NY), Katzen Arts Center at the American University, American Center for Physics, DakshinaChitra Heritage Museum in India as well as at art fairs with LAMINAproject Gallery in New York City. Her neuroscience-inspired artwork has been selected as the Staff and Scientific American’s Editor’s Pick in the Art of Neuroscience competitions held by the Netherlands Institute of Neuroscience. Shanthi is currently exhibiting her artwork in a collaborative show with Physicist/Science Writer, Michael Albrow, at the National Academy of Sciences in 2026 at their two Washington DC venues. She has shared Kolams to various audiences through presentations, workshops and exhibitions at various events and venues including the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, American Folklore Society, National Folklife Festival, Maryland Folklife and Traditions Festivals, the National Math Day and the Joint Mathematics Meeting in Washington DC, and is scheduled to exhibit at Michigan Medicine’s Taubman Gallery in September 2026.
As a Kennedy Center Culture Caucus member from 2022-24, Shanthi presented and curated events at The REACH that included discussions on the intersection of art and science, and traditional art forms from around the world that used dots and lines as motifs, exhibited her paintings and installations, and performed a live demonstration of Kolam drawing with her daughter Aishwariya Chandrasekar. She was invited as the Artisan in Residence by the National Museum of Asian Arts and the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage for their partnership program in November 2023 to share Kolams by conducting a workshop, participating in a discussion and a live demonstration. Shanthi designed the Kolam concept for the 2021 Kolam Project, a temporary public art project that involved community participation from around the United States to install a 1,950-tile Kolam in Washington, DC.
Shanthi’s work has been reviewed and published by international news media including the Washington Post, NAS’ Issues magazine, Symmetry Magazine, Scientific American, Wall Street Journal, Physics World and national newspapers in India, and books like Conjuring the Void- The Art of Black Holes published by MIT Press (2025) and The Art Science Symbiosis published by Springer in Chile (2024). She enjoys juxtaposing science, math and philosophy with abstract and traditional arts, and experimenting with media to create artwork in pursuit of a better understanding of the mysteries of the universe and our place in it.
