Saraswati Mahavidhyalaya

We are delighted to share that Samvăda: A Symposium on Art, Form & Sound is now fully booked.
Thank you for your overwhelming support and enthusiasm. We look forward to welcoming everyone for an evening of reflection, dialogue and shared artistic insight.

Introducing Dr. Sarasa Krishnan

Artist. Educator. Author. Researcher. Curator.

Dr. Sarasa Krishnan has spent more than four decades exploring the deep connections between art, philosophy, culture, and consciousness. Trained in Kathak, Bharatanatyam, Odissi, and visual arts, her work moves across tradition, research, teaching, writing, and creative practice.
As Vice President and Head of Education at Saraswati Mahavidyalaya, and curator of the Samvāda Symposium Series, Dr. Krishnan brings together artists, scholars, and thinkers to open meaningful conversations about creativity, awareness, and the human experience.
Her work asks us to look beyond art as performance or expression alone, and to consider it as a pathway to connection, reflection, and transformation.
More than a presentation, Samvāda is a space to gather, reflect, and consider how art shapes the way we think, feel, connect, and live.

As the inaugural event of SMV’s Education Series, we warmly invite you to join us for this meaningful evening of conversation and insight.

📍 SMV Beaufort Street
🗓 Sunday, 28 June
🕔 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM

RSVP link: https://events.humanitix.com/sa-vada-dialogues-on-form-sound-and-consciousness

Introducing Subhashini Maniam | Re-thinking Ragamala Miniatures

How can colour become sound? How can music become image? How can emotion take visual form?

Western Australia–based artist and educator Subhashini Maniam explores these questions through her research, Re-thinking Ragamala Miniatures: Exploring Colour, Music and Emotion in Contemporary Art Making.

Drawing from her training in Carnatic music and her background in Fine Arts and Contemporary Practice, Subhashini re-examines the classical Ragamala miniature tradition through a contemporary lens. Her work moves between tradition and experimentation, using colour, abstraction, symbolism, sound, and installation to create a renewed visual language for Ragamala today.

Join us as Subhashini shares how art can bridge music, memory, emotion, and cultural experience.

📍 SMV Beaufort Street
🗓 Sunday, 28 June
🕔 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM

RSVP link: https://events.humanitix.com/sa-vada-dialogues-on-form-sound-and-consciousness

Introducing Dr. Anu Sutharshan | Sacred Patterns in Motion

How does the dancer’s body become a living expression of geometry, music, rhythm, and emotion?

In Sacred Patterns in Motion: Exploring Geometry and Raga in Bharatanatyam, Dr. Anu Sutharshan explores Bharatanatyam as a profound synthesis of form, raga, tala, and human expression. Drawing from the wisdom of the Natya Shastra, her presentation reflects on how lines, angles, triangles, circles, rhythm, and rasa come together through the dancer’s body.

Her research also brings a deeply meaningful contemporary lens, exploring Bharatanatyam as a therapeutic and developmental tool, particularly for individuals with Down syndrome.

Join us as Dr. Anu invites us to experience Bharatanatyam as more than performance — as a sacred pattern in motion, where geometry shapes the body, raga shapes emotion, and rhythm shapes time.

📍 SMV Beaufort Street
🗓 Sunday, 28 June
🕔 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM
RSVP link: https://events.humanitix.com/sa-vada-dialogues-on-form-sound-and-consciousness

Introducing Christian de Vietri | Secret of the Shilpis

What is the sacred source from which dance, music, poetry, sculpture, and architecture arise?

What is the sacred source from which dance, music, poetry, sculpture, and architecture arise?

Internationally recognised artist Christian de Vietri brings together sculpture, sacred art, and spirituality through a practice deeply informed by the traditional knowledge systems of India. He is the creator of Spanda, the monumental sculpture at Elizabeth Quay in Perth, and has also created major public installations in New York, China, and other parts of the world. Drawing upon the wisdom of Kashmir Trika Śaivism and the principles of Śilpa Śāstra, he explores how ancient understandings of form, consciousness, and creativity continue to illuminate contemporary life.

In Secret of the Shilpis, Christian reflects on the teachings of the great rishi Mayan and the science of artistic creation, revealing the five arts not simply as creative disciplines, but as profound pathways for human transformation and awakening.

Join us for an inspiring conversation on sacred art, manifestation, consciousness, and the timeless wisdom that continues to shape the creative spirit.

📍 SMV Beaufort Street
🗓 Sunday, 28 June
🕔 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM

RSVP link: https://events.humanitix.com/sa-vada-dialogues-on-form-sound-and-consciousness

What connects a geometric pattern, a musical phrase, a sculpted form, a movement of the body, and a moment of deep awareness? At first glance, they may seem separate. Yet each arises through pattern, rhythm, relationship, and form. Samvāda invites us into a conversation across disciplines, exploring how music, movement, sculpture, geometry, mandala, and consciousness may be different ways of encountering the same underlying patterns of existence. Bringing together Dr. Anu Sutharshan, Mr. Christian de Vietri, and Ms. Subhashini Balasubramaniam, this special symposium offers a shared exploration of art, form, sound, and the deeper human experience. More than a presentation, Samvāda is a space to gather, reflect, and consider how art shapes the way we think, feel, connect, and live. As the inaugural event of SMV’s Education Series, we warmly invite you to join us for this meaningful evening of conversation and insight. 📍 SMV Beaufort Street 🗓 Sunday, 28 June 🕔 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM RSVP via the link in bio. #education #saraswatimahavidhyalaya #sculpture #music #dance

Dear Friends,

Join us on Sunday, 28 June at 5:00 PM for Samvāda.

On a luminous full moon we gather at Saraswati Mahavidhyalaya, Beaufort Street studios.

This special symposium brings together Dr. Anu Sutharshan, Mr. Christian de Vietri, and Ms. Subhashini Maniam in a shared exploration of geometry, mandala, music, sculpture, and the deeper relationship between art and the human experience. The symposium is convened by Dr. Sarasa Krishnan.

More than a presentation, Samvāda is a space where we gather to reflect on how art shapes the way we think, feel, connect, and live.

As the inaugural event of SMV’s Education Series, we warmly invite you to be part of this meaningful evening of conversation and insight.

📍 SMV Beaufort Street
🗓 Sunday, 28 June
🕔 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM

RSVP Here: https://events.humanitix.com/sa-vada-dialogues-on-form-sound-and-consciousness

We look forward to seeing you!

Today is the birthday of our Founder of Saraswati Mahavidhyalaya and The Temple of Fine Arts: Swami Shantanand Saraswati 🙏🏼

He Lives Through Us

He did not stand before us
as one name, one form, one role.
He arrived as everything.

A hand that steadied
like a mother’s quiet knowing,
a gaze that protected
like a father’s unspoken strength,
a laugh that walked beside us
like a brother, a sister,
woven into the small, tender hours of becoming.

And yet, he was more.

He was the rhythm before the step,
the silence before the note,
the breath before the word.

From 1971
he gathered dreams like scattered petals
and made of them
a thousand blooming stages.

We did not know
we were becoming history
as we moved.

Ramayana rose under his vision,
not as story, but as living fire.
Malay tales found their pulse in our feet,
Chinese melodies and stories curved through our hands,
Western symphonies met ancient mudras,
and somewhere, in the meeting of all worlds,
he smiled.

He told us, gently,
as rivers do not argue with the sea,
so too do all faiths
find their home in the same vastness.

And we believed him
because he lived it.

He composed not only music,
but people.
He choreographed not only dances,
but destinies.

Even now
when we teach,
it is his voice that arrives first.
When we move,
it is his body that remembers.
When we sing,
it is his breath that carries the note.

He did not leave.
How can one leave
when one has dissolved
into so many hearts?

If he were here today
he would be ninety-two.
But time does not measure him.

He lives
in every lifted arm,
in every trembling ankle bell,
in every child who steps into light
not knowing
they are stepping into him.

Guru,
you did not build an institution.
You became a current.

And we,
still flowing,
are your river
finding the sea.