After setting out on a path that Suji Kanneganti said wasn’t her own, the artist is now trying out as many life experiences as possible.

“I double-majored in biology and psychology at Rutgers University, my parents wanted me to be a doctor,” she said. “When I graduated, I really realized the magnitude of how much my life was not what I wanted it to be and I decided to change.”

Instead of medical school, Kanneganti traveled around the world after graduation and decided to more seriously pursue her artwork. She says spending time abroad helped her get away from the noise of her regular life and usual environment.

That break pushed her towards art, and when she returned home she started taking classes at PAFA, in sculpture and painting.

“I like PAFA’s idea of giving students the core foundation and then breaking away from that,” she said. “I think that’s really important to making good art, you need that skeleton.”

As part of her class load at PAFA, Kanneganti took “Sculpture Projects” with sculpture department chair Rob Roesch. She said the class employs a sink or swim tactic and helps students see themselves as artists, not art students.

“It’s totally open, the students do whatever they want because Rob wants the students to not be students, but to be artists,” she said. “It forces you, since there are no rules, to say to yourself, ‘am I going to make art or am I going to screw around.’ It’s a good indicator for finding out where you’re at.”

The experience affirmed that Kanneganti wanted to make art, and she gained a sense of confidence.

“I think a lot of students think someone will maybe find them and they’ll be the next Jeff Koons, but it’s very different from that,” she said. “It’s hard, but if you really want it you can get it.”

In addition to making work, she’s also exploring other avenues of the art world. She recently completed the Mellon Summer Academy. The program provides specialized training for students across the United States from groups historically underrepresented in the curatorial field and supports the goal of promoting inclusive, pluralistic museums.

Kanneganti spent a week working at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, learning what it means to be a curator. The Summer Academy program is completed in advance of a two-year curatorial fellowship. As a participant in the Andrew W. Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship Program, Kanneganti will receive hands-on experience inside a museum setting, working with curators and staff on exhibitions, collections, and programs. 

“The whole fellowship is based around the idea that the curatorial sector is not diverse and I’ve definitely never seen someone like me in the museum,” she said. “I feel like I have a lot to bring to the table because I do have my experiences from my degree which is the science field and then I’m also blatantly not Caucasian so I have these two pathways that I could bring to the table for the program.”

She will be completing her fellowship at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Exposure to the curatorial world has not only shown Kanneganti a potential career path but it’s also helping her art practice.

“This could give me so much exposure to other artwork, both contemporary and not contemporary,” she said. “Having exposure really gets my ideas going and they’re jumping boards for me.”