The Open Studio / Harshini kishan
Harshini kishan
Bells of Heritage
Every square a different cloth, every bell waiting for wind
Red and saffron squares sit shoulder to shoulder, like saris folded on a shop shelf.
Elephants walk across one patch. A yellow face with lowered eyes rests in another.
Small white shells open into flowers between the seams.
A gold edge keeps everything in its place.
Below, eleven brass bells wait for a door to open and a little wind to come in.
The work
Harshini Kishan builds Bells of Heritage from squares of printed cloth. Each square carries a different pattern. There are dots, zigzags, leaves, elephants and painted faces. A gold border holds the grid together. A row of brass bells hangs from the lower edge. Kishan works without a fixed plan. She lets each piece find its own direction as it grows. Small flaws are part of the work. Her path to art began in science and passed through a time as an Air India flight attendant. She now works full time in Mumbai.
- Theme
- Cultural memory in cloth
- Material
- Textile
- Year
- 2025
- Edition
- 2
- Framed
- Yes
- From
- Mumbai
- Code
- RC-2552
In the artist’s words
Harshini Kishan is a visual artist whose practice spans painting, textiles, and mixed media. Rooted in the interplay of spirituality, tradition, and contemporary expression, her work transforms fabrics, threads, and unconventional surfaces into vessels of cultural memory. By layering materiality into compositions that blur the boundaries between painting, installation, and textile art, she situates her practice at the intersection of physical presence and symbolic meaning. Her process is intuitive and open-ended. Each piece evolves organically, beginning without a fixed plan and gradually revealing its own direction through mark-making, texture, and form. Imperfections are embraced as integral to the narrative, lending her work a raw immediacy. Everyday encounters—objects, fleeting moments, subtle…
