Ceramics are perhaps the oldest signs of civilisation. We’ve found pottery shards at Harappan sites, and in almost every corner of the world. And yet, artists today are still playing with the form, moulding earth and clay, adding minerals, using paint glazes and firing up the kiln, hoping for a miracle.
The appeal of clay as a medium lies in two things. The first is its connection with all five elements, especially earth, because we come from it and return to it. Whatever is made of clay is impermanent, mimicking the cycle of life itself. Second is the unpredictability of the outcome. Being able to shape and mould clay in one’s hands may give the illusion of control, but as any potter will tell you, one never knows what the final result will be.
Rahul Kumar, artist, writer and curator, plays with this unpredictability to great effect. Kumar began his training at the iconic Delhi Blue Pottery studio. But it’s tricky to make art a formal profession, so he took up a corporate job, keeping his creative side thriving with a Master’s degree in Art with Concentration in Ceramics from the University of Dallas, Texas.
The course helped him level up from making functional tableware and vessels to creating oddly shaped unique forms that pushed both his imagination, and the possibilities of the medium.
{{/usCountry}}The course helped him level up from making functional tableware and vessels to creating oddly shaped unique forms that pushed both his imagination, and the possibilities of the medium.
{{/usCountry}}Drop into his ongoing solo show, Marking Time: What Passes, Remains and Returns, at Exhibit 320 in Delhi, I was most struck by a work titled Calendar Bound by Fire. Here, grey slabs of cast iron become the bed from which misshapen structures protrude. For this work, he fused together molten metal and pieces of fired clay. One would expect clay to break down upon contact with molten metal at such a high temperature. But Kumar has enough skill and mastery over his materials that the clay remains intact. A sturdy material such as metal goes through fire to become soft, while a soft material such as clay goes through fire and hardens. Kumar brings this dichotomy out beautifully. The piece, with its 12 protrusions also explores the passage of time, as with a calendar.
Kumar often plays with text, wire and other materials. In a series of works titled Traces of Presence, he deliberately leaves gashes made with his fingers and palms. It’s a reminder to the viewer that Kumar’s musings on the cyclicality of life, make clay the ideal medium for him.
Artists who’ve worked with ceramics have played up varied characteristics of the form. UK artists have swapped the potter’s wheel for older coiling techniques, which hide dark, satirical stories in his elegant vases. Ai Wei Wei has stamped the Coca-Cola logo on to actual Neolithic and Han Dynasty vessels to set ancient cultural artifacts against consumer capitalism. In India, Vimoo Sanghvi, who trained in ceramics in England, set up a home studio in Churchgate, Bombay, in the early 1960s, pioneering a practice that lasted well into the 1990s.
The hope, of course, is that thousands of years from now, archaeologists might discover the ceramics of our time too. As with today, the questions about them will be as interesting as the answers.
Parul Sharma is a visual artist based in Delhi. Her work focuses on the line as a tool for thinking through space, movement, and human experience.
From HT Brunch, October 31, 2026
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