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If she could be anything, homegrown artist Megha Gupta would be a city; particularly the pink city of Jaipur. Her relationship with spaces and her ability to experience them has led to her moving towards a more expanded art practice; one that incorporates everything she learns as a maker of spaces and her work as a ceramic artist. Influenced by the perception of built heritage, Megha is a true believer in the process of making. But how she makes them is equally as fascinating to what makes.
In her work, Megha brings her architectural and design sensibilities to the objects she makes. Most of her projects are in form and colour, an ode to Jaipur and comes from the architectural maquettes of wall studies and colour studies of cities that she has collected over the years.
The Royal Bathhouse comes from the hammams, a kind of Turkish steam bath or spa where kings would come to relax, unwind from their duties and forge alliances with other royals. Megha came across a hammam in the Jaipur palace and wondered what it’d be like bathing like a royal. With the desire to hold that piece of architecture, she created mini ceramic versions of it, each hand-painted and unique. Her ‘no wall’ wall for Jaipur Art Week drew upon the intersection of art and history in Jaipur. Studying the walls quintessential to Jaipur inspired her project which separated two spaces without enclosing them. Another work, a quilt was born from her love of pink and a desire to sew that she inherited from her maternal grandmother. The pink quilt is an ode to the pink city paired with red stripes that comes from the artist’s illustrations of the Sanganer Structures, a suburban hub known for its craft workshops.
Growing up, Megha wanted to build a space and everything inside of it with her hands which was also the reason she was drawn to architecture. However, working with her own hands was not something that architecture as a practice really allowed her to do except making earth bricks for constructing houses in a village in South India. That’s when she switched to pottery and honed her skill, getting a masters in ceramics. She tells Suboart magazine, “From making mud houses to hold humans to utensils to hold food, clay has been given form. Working and making objects in clay gives me the opportunity to ‘hold’ the feeling of joy I experience from this world.”
Megha’s art is a wonderful amalgamation of design art and architecture. Her practice encompasses a diverse range of visual artifacts that inform the culture of a particular place and people. Her ceramics are her love letter to things and experiences that move her, reflecting the underlying beauty and joy that drives all art.
Follow Megha here.
