About Me.

Sarika T. Doppalapudi is the FAO Schwarz Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she works on museum accessibility for youth. She received her BA from New York University Gallatin School of Individualize Study in May 2023. Her work focuses on collective memory in public spaces, and examines the ways in which disenfranchised communities remember and archive events. In the past, Sarika has completed research projects examining community responses to school closures, as well as various interdisciplinary projects focusing on museum studies and alternative archive processes. These projects include a year long oral history project examining the closure of Stewart Elementary School, and the subsequent use of the building as a luxury apartment building, through the lens of Dr. Christina Sharpe's theorization of wake work and Dr. Eve Ewing's theorization of institutional mourning.

Sarika was born and raised in Chicago, and has worked with various non-profits and grassroots organizations in Chicago, including working as a co-founder and organizer for Fempowerment Chicago, and research assistant for The I Project. Additionally, she has worked with the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, as an artist in the 21Minus exhibition, and through hosting an interactive walk-through of the Prisoner of Love exhibition. Furthermore, she has hosted a workshop at Chicago's Weinberg Newton gallery entitled "Revolutionary Love". Sarika's work explores archival spaces and their uses as spaces of liberation

In her free time, Sarika is an avid baker and textile artist. She is interested in using non-traditional materials to create her textiles, and is currently working on a crochet project using plastic waste that she collected over the summer of 2021.