Roshni Senapati is a Meanjin/Brisbane-based ceramic artist whose practice explores ancestral history and cultural connection. Working primarily with porcelain, she makes sculptural vessels that incorporate silk drawn from family saris to express personal narratives through the ceramic form, as well as the layered histories enmeshed within the silk fibres.
Roshni was the winner of the Little Things Art Prize in 2022 and has been a finalist in numerous ceramic awards, most recently the NQ Ceramic Awards in 2024. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in both private and public collections. She is featured in the 2023 publication Earth and Fire.
"Referencing cloth draw-string bags, I create pleated and folded vessels from thinly rolled porcelain slabs, threaded with silk pulled from my mother’s sari. The vessels serve as a metaphor for my great-grandparents’ passage from Iran to India in search of religious and economic refuge and for my own journey ninety years later, from India across continents to Australia.
The red thread, the colour of blood and lineage, connects generations across time and distance. Within its fibres reside narratives of where I come from and whom I belong to. The threaded vessels are a symbol of inheritance and identity. They stand as a self-portrait, a testament to the past and present and a connection to the future."