Continue reading...
Enjoy unlimited access to all of Inside Illustration with an AOI membership
Become a Member Already a member? Log in6 Questions for Hari & Deepti
Hari and Deepti are a husband-wife artist duo who build immersive worlds out of light and paper.
Channeling the mysterious and fantastical qualities of shadow puppetry, Hari and Deepti have built an impressive career which has seen them exhibit their intricate installations around the world, and apply their skills into diverse contexts including window displays and published books.
Now based in Mumbai, they share their insights of 15 years treading the lines between art, illustration and storytelling.
How did you discover or get started with paper cutting?
It has been different for both of us, Deepti was obsessed with paper as a kid and has always been working with paper in some form or the other.
For Hari this was a getaway from digital illustrations, a way to work with his hands. Paper is omnipresent in everyone?s lives in some form. Mostly our interactions with paper as an art medium are in 2D form through drawing, painting, sketching etc; but we were interested in looking at the medium from a different perspective. It?s just so versatile and contrary to belief ? long lasting. You can mould it, sculpt it, fold it, tear it, cut it, paint it, shred it, pulp it. We felt paper was the right medium where we could collaborate.
Coincidentally in 2010, we had also signed up for an art charity event and we decided to make a shadow box paper sculpture for it. It was an hand painted piece called the Orange Lotus. We submitted it, and it did really well in the auction. That gave us confidence and we kept experimenting more with paper, eventually ending up with the idea of paper and light. It?s been 15 years working with paper and we are still learning new things with every project we work on.
What resources have been useful or have inspired you to better at your craft?
Our initial inspiration was aspects of storytelling in art forms of shadow puppetry, like Tholpaavakoothu and Wayan Kulit. Lotte Reininger was also an inspiration, whose work we got introduced to through a friend later in our career. Nature is the best resource of all, inspiring us in ways nothing else does. Scenes with trees, valleys, jungles, rivers and people interacting or coexisting with nature form the perennial theme in our works.
Other artists that inspire us are Matisse, Miró, Calder, Ruth Asawa, Louis Nevelson, Jean Dubuffet, Yves Klein, to name some. We also love illustrative works by Maur