Matsya

Year: 2021
Project Type: Professional, Bram Woodcrafting Studio
Dimensions in mm: 1480 (L) x 500 (D) x 1320 (H)
Material: White Oak Wood


Matsya, the fish avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu, was a piece executed for Hyderabad based designer, Sparsha Reddy. It is a part of her collection of 10 pieces “X - The Dashavatara Series”. Each piece in this collection is a spiritual beacon, illuminating the journey of ten divine avatars of Vishnu through contemporary art.

The initial intent was a sculpture made in metal. My task was to reimagine, develop, design and engineer the sculpture using wood. This involved understanding the structural capabilities of sections of wood less than an inch thick and experimenting with ways to bend and shape them so that they would retain their final form. Wood as a material is alive, so accounting for expansions and contraction informed the final choice of thickness of each section.