At her Lexington art studio, Lakshmi Sriraman wears a bright yellow tunic-style top over white flowing pants. She demonstrates a traditional Indian dance known as Bharatanatyam.
Her arms reach toward the ceiling as she twirls, telling a story with deliberate hand movements.
“This is called Alapadman, and I’m having my hands flared out with my fingers flared out as though it is a fully bloomed flower,” explained Sriraman.
“So, behind everything, I believe there is a story. And art is such a powerful medium where people give up their time and come to your performance or your space or whatever it is, saying, " Hey, I am giving this time to you. Tell me what you want to tell me, show me what you want to show me. So, when I go out, I am more than when I came here. That is at least my vision for my work," said Sriraman.
Originally from India, Sriraman has lived in Lexington, her home, for more than two decades.
The award-winning Sriraman is recognized as a Kentucky Crafted Artist, which indicates artistic excellence. And in 2025, at the Governor’s Awards in the Arts, she was the recipient of the Folk Heritage Award. Sriraman performs and choreographs for various groups and is also recognized as a visual artist. As an art advocate, she’s committed to spreading the message that art brings people together.
“Lexington is home to so many diverse artists from across the world. And with them they bring the traditions and the culture and the art forms from those countries, and I think it’s important for us to have conversations with one another, share space with one another, understanding and exploring and appreciating and sharing in and learning these traditions and cultures and art forms,” said Sriraman.
On this day, she shares a video of a recent performance she choreographed with the University of Kentucky Dancers. She recalls the theme of the South Indian Dance.
“The story starts with young women who go to the river to get water. And they see dark clouds rolling in and they rush back home, and then these raindrops start falling. And they play with it and they gather the waters, splash on each other. So, it proceeds both in intensity and the storytelling behind it,” explained Sriraman.
As a visual artist, Sriraman creates large-scale and medium-scale abstract work. She points to one of her paintings. There are two figures, one made up of red dots. The smaller figure is sprinkled with gold dots. She recalls how her work starts with one dot.
“You place a dot, and you created one anchor. Now everything that’s created is going to be around that dot. Because you’ve created a single dot, you have oriented a space that has no meaning into some anchoring with that single dot. That’s all it takes, one dot,” said Sriraman.
Sriraman said her current series is titled Us and Us in response to Us and Them.
”This series imagines two or more people, or just one person in an abstract way filled with dots to also show that none of us is solid. We are all made up of a lot of things: experiences, memories, beliefs, communities, other people’s influence on us, our influence on others. And that’s what these dots are. We’re all like a tiny moment, an expression of all that we have been,” said Sriraman.
The artist said her work is shown in international collections. Part of her Us and Us series is featured in a collection that opened at ADC Fine Art Gallery last week in Cincinnati.
