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ABOUT
ABOUT
My life in London has roots that snake across continents and cultures. I am a mother-maker whose art in sculpture, collage, installation and poetry is a record of life as I see, feel, hear and hold. Through my making using ways of old and ordinary, I hope to remake a different telling of this story of life with no fixed beginning, middle or end. I work with clay, earth, ceramic, paper, wood, ink, paint and found print. In a world of the fast and furious, mine is a slow practice of listening, observing, depth, care, freedom and above all acceptance.
I meld form, pattern, and colour meshing materials drawing on my eastern ancestral knowledge of clay, cloth and colour. With a childhood deeply rooted in Kolkata’s Durga Thakur tradition, my association with clay is not with the ubiquitous pot
but that of the monumental idol of the Durga Protima. To me practice is devotion, sculpture, tradition, alive, story-carrying, godly-mortal, recording and replaying,
shape changing, bringer of communion, maker of community, and gloriously celebrates ours humanity.
Rooted in storytelling, I examine the human experience and contemporary life through intricate patterns and fluid forms. I merge age-old techniques with contemporary sensibilities influenced by Bengal’s artisanal traditions, creating richly
detailed surfaces.
A muddled life of moving lands many times, I am a reader and recorder of people. My visual chronicles of memory and belonging arise through experimenting with scale and materiality, I seek to transforms personal moments into universal reflections, weaving past and present, east with west to create a visual record of the evolving human condition.
Kumar Tuli, Kolkata © Devi Chakrabarti, India, 2018
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I AND ME, WISHING FOR WE
Glazed Stoneware Ceramic on Cherrywood
2025
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“I and Me, wishing for We” is a reinterpretation of a 16C Westerwald German decanting pitcher held in the V&A European Gallery carrying elaborate images of drunken revelry.
“I and Me, wishing for We” is a contemporary retelling of modern day ritual and commensality. It is based on observations on the underground of people being isolated through their technology sound bubbles lost to each other; in a sense being “Atomised”. The ritualisation of our relationship with technology is edging us further away from commensality although paradoxically we all crave a respite from loneliness.
Drink in Britain is associated with commensality. Subverting a 16Cdecanting pitcher to carry a narrative of ritualised technology induced isolation is a twist that on first glance might hark back to traditions of centuries past. It appealed to my sensibility of using a traditional craft object as record of an unfolding global phenomenon that is transforming how humans choose to commune.
The making for “I and Me, wishing for We” saw the use of digital technology (laser, rapid form) as auxiliary to the main analogue traditional craft processes of hand coiling, sprigging sgraffito, inlay, incise, throwing. The piece sits on a handcrafted disc of Cherry wood.