The Open Studio / Harshini kishan
Harshini kishan
cutting chai
A kettle that never stops pouring, stitched from brocade and tassels
A green wall, rough as a pavement after rain.
The kettle wears a gold border and pink tassels like earrings.
Its spout bends and the tea comes down in one thick pink rope.
The glass waits, half full, with orange tassels for feet.
Around it, small rounds of old cloth sit like saucers on a table.
Nobody is here yet. The tea is still hot.
The work
In Cutting Chai, Harshini Kishan turns a small daily habit into a raised picture. A kettle dressed in gold brocade, braid and pink tassels stands out from a rough green board. A pink stream pours from its spout into a small glass of tea. Circles of printed and embroidered cloth sit around it like coasters. Kishan begins without a fixed plan. She lets texture and form show her the way. Before art, her path took her through science and work as an Air India flight attendant.
- Theme
- The daily ritual of tea
- Material
- Mixed media
- Year
- 2026
- Edition
- 3
- Framed
- No
- From
- Mumbai
- Code
- RC-2553
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…
