Interview with Siddhartha Das

Artistic seed and nourishment, beginning of a creative journey

Siddhartha: I think growing up in a family where my father and mother had travelled widely around the country and the world, there was a natural draw towards a creative and curious attitude to life. Guests would arrive at our doorstep from all corners of the world- writers, poets, filmmakers, musicians, dancers, artists.

In retrospect, I realize it was quite an amazing environment for a child to experience! I was naturally initiated and drawn to this world, although I am unsure if I can draw a direct line between it and my practising as a designer today.

Ironically, there was never any pressure for me to go into the creative realm. In my gap year (between a Bachelors in Delhi and attending NID), I had a chance to work in the crafts sector. This impressionable experience drew me into a parallel universe of craft and design. At that time, I was also drawn to architecture - perhaps as a silent influence through my father. A lot of his friends were architects, and he too was deeply interested in the built space - so by osmosis, I was and still am - ideating in spatial terms.

At the same time, I think I was also just drawn to the idea of being excited about something, anything. Attending a school like Rishi Valley was perhaps again a fortuitous move. There was a kind of pioneering fervour there. We had two trained teachers and forty-eight other teachers who had never taught! It was a motley crew of dancers, economists, musicians, scientists... who were tasked to teach us. I was very keen on history, so my Bachelor's degree is actually in History. Although I didn’t enjoy being in college, I fell in love with the subject because of an exceptional history teacher at school, Roshen Dalal. Through her, my love for heritage was seeded.

I travelled to Japan and Europe while I was still at NID and it made a lasting impression on me. Those were different times. Sometimes it feels like so much of the best of one’s life is a natural flow and yet, I now know that I made some misguided choices. For example, I probably shouldn't have started my studio so early - it was a misstep. Although I did intern at large studios, I should have worked for a bit longer. But I harboured this misplaced enthusiasm to start my own thing, not just from the concept of enterprise - but also because of the independence that (I wrongly assumed) comes with it.

We earned little, but we operated entirely for the love of process. If I felt like working for a museum in Jodhpur, I would go and do that, or in Europe... an approach I maintained actively over fifteen years. I justified this untethered life and work choices, by telling myself that if it wasn't my studio - who would allow me this kind of freedom to experiment? I guess life is always some kind of trade-off.

At that time, I didn't have mentors to steer me. It was a bit haphazard. Given another chance at arranging my professional life - I would probably have a much smaller setup (although my studio is just fifteen-strong).

Connectedness in the 80s and 90s and creating international opportunities

Siddhartha: In my third year at NID, I was at an internship in Mumbai. One afternoon at lunch break I chanced upon a poster for a fellowship at Domus in Milan. It happened to be the last day of applications, so with all the nonchalance of youth - I promptly took a couple of hours off to mail in my application. I didn't dwell much about it either, other than - it would be quite lovely to get an opportunity to be in Italy. As luck would have it, I soon got an email from Domus informing me of a fellowship position! Then, to sweeten the surprise, on my return to NID, when I went to check my mail at the IT Lab on campus, I met two Italians from Milan, who happened to have done their Master’s at Domus. It was bizarre how the dots were connecting at that moment. When I shared with them details of my recent good fortune at Domus, they offered to host me for the weeks I was in Milan.

I enjoyed Europe immensely. At that time, one could travel without the spectre of race and populism. From Milan, I went to Paris, where a friend took me to the home of filmmaker Francois Truffaut’s daughter! That was how intense my first time being in Europe was. I came away feeling life in Europe was fun, exciting and serendipitous. I wanted to revisit it again and again.

After graduating from NID, I started my studio practice and worked with several inspiring people, like the textile expert, Martand Singh, or Mapu, as he was affectionately called. My graduation project had been to design his exhibition on Khadi, the Fabric of Freedom. It was an amazing experience to work with him.His deep knowledge of the textiles of our country, his kindness and his generosity, were an incredible harbinger of my professional career. I miss him.

After my graduation, I was fortunate to secure a few prestigious fellowships like the Charles Wallace and Nehru Trust, that enabled me to work at the V&A in London - opening the doors to new adventures. Subsequently, I worked at the Museum Reitberg in Zurich, mentored by the amazing art historian and the former director of the museum, Dr Eberhard Fischer.

What started as a one-off lecture in Basel, led to a slew of lectures across institutions in Europe, including Central St. Martins and The Southbank Centre, London; WdKA, Rotterdam; and the HSLU in Lucerne. I've given about 45-50 lectures across Europe so far and about a hundred across the world. It all just happened rather organically. Life held a certain kind of flow.

Adapting over two decades and Evolution in practice

Siddhartha: When I started my professional career by establishing my studio, I decided not to work with people known to my family. My parents had struggled hard to achieve what they did, and I thought it only fair that I should live through my struggles to hold my head high. A happy concoction of idealism and zest for life led me to look for meaningful projects in design. My early European experiences made me realize the interconnectedness of everything - technology, mindset, and culture. A heady mix of depth and breadth.

My father comes from a very rural part of Orissa while my mother is from a notable Gandhian-cosmopolitan family of Bombay. That itself is so divergent. I studied at Rishi Valley School, a frugal institution located in a natural and rural setting in southern India. My visits in the holidays to my parents in Delhi - were entirely tangential to life at Rishi Valley.

Polarities are what I come from, and things often seemingly dissimilar - are of great interest to me. I am comfortable in these spaces both internally and externally. This characteristic appears in my work - I am equally at ease with a project in rural India, as I am in urban India, and internationally - and sometimes all in the same week!

I remember, once I was conducting a craft workshop for the Craft Council of India, in rural Karnataka. One afternoon I was on a bicycle crossing a herd of buffalos. Just then, I get a call from a curator at the Museum in Zurich. We were curating and designing an exhibition for the Museum at the time and I had to be in Zurich the following week. I could barely hear him above the din of those buffaloes. It was a funny and memorable moment. And I am eternally grateful for such convergences which I believe keep me grounded, fluid and adaptable.

On the flip side, there's also the stark reality of the daily grind. Running a studio (albeit small) - is a lonely and reclusive business. But it keeps me continuously learning and questioning myself. We work with a lot of young people who come from diverse backgrounds and talent pools. It is exciting to be in their midst. I find that kind of energy promising! We have for example interactive design, animation and film, graphic, product and furniture design all manifesting in the studio at any given moment. We have people who work with architecture, research, and textile as well. We try not to outsource and rather create opportunities to learn and expand our knowledge inside our studio and within our projects.

This approach along with my teaching stints have kept me nimble.Teaching is an exciting way to constantly test your ideas because one is questioned and challenged repeatedly- it forces me to hone my thinking and being.

Technology and tangible rural craft

Siddhartha:I think as a studio, our primary focus of work is doing system design in cultural spaces. We work with museums and heritage sites, imbuing them with both craft and technology. We make very intentional choices about which kind of technology we use. There is so much of using technology-for-the-sake-of-technology today- I am weary of this. For example, when we go to meetings sometimes, especially with museums, we are told to conceptualise holograms and generate work using AI.It's a superficial and trending attitude. And time and again I am reminded of how much larger we are as an inter-connected humanity in the real world, as opposed to responding to digital impulses, I will share a short story.

I was in Boston and had given a talk at Harvard and then gone for a slew of meetings at MIT. At that time, I assumed no one at MIT would be interested in what I was doing. The scheduled one-hour meeting however stretched into a much longer conversation, and I was offered an art residency thereafter! Unfortunately, I had a studio to return to in Delhi, so I declined that generous offer.

I guess what I am saying is that I am able and willing to embrace technology to co-opt it as a tool for effective storytelling. Let me give you a small example of this attitude as well. Currently, we are working on a museum project, the JD Centre of Art. For it, we are creating about 70 one-and-a-half-minute short films on Ways of Seeing*. So, for instance, we have a film on how a loom works. In this film, we look at the loom through several lenses - as a piece of product design and how the warp and weft work. We also look at the geometry in basketry, and the mad genius of the algorithmic patterned weave. In these films, we try to reveal the obvious in the hidden and vice-versa. That is to say that we want to highlight the inherent amazingness in the creation of craft objects that people so often can miss out on. So we use technology to make more transparent, the connections between the natural; the man-made; the permanent and the transient. It is a dance of the past and the future. And it is a collaboration of energies in our studio environment. We work across disciplines, and we cross-pollinate.

*a lucid phrase coined by John Berger.

Revival and preservation of crafts

Siddhartha:Indian crafts have constantly evolved, and a lot of designers have worked in this sector. But until recently crafts have been on the periphery and unspoken of, or barely recognised for their invaluable cultural cache. Brands like FabIndia have harnessed local crafts and have attempted to bring them into our homes but overall, the craft sector is marginalized and seriously undervalued.

I hope now, with the explosion of digital access (i.e.: awareness) - we are at the cusp of a revivalist movement. In this regard, it is exciting to be part of this moment and to see how a new vernacular emerges. We as people in the creative realm have a real opportunity and responsibility to help re-orient the crafts and make this a financially viable and self-sustaining sector.

For over 25 years, I worked with around 3000 craftspeople across the country, and I ran a lot of livelihood projects. Today, community-based crafts are being increasingly taught as skill-based vocations. Crafts are rooted in tradition and are contextual. However, I find the symbology of motifs; and patterns get increasingly lost to the untrained eye and therefore we are compromising the knowledge of our cultural heritage.

If one conducted a thorough research of the craft sector and introduced these inherent community-driven learnings to the next generation, we might stand a chance at not diluting our core inheritance. It is similar to a woman being initiated to the richness and diversity of weaves through the sari she dons. When this kind of cultural transfer happens between grandmother/daughter and grandchild, we create a pool and a lexicon of those crafted fabrics and their embroidery techniques.

Being multidisciplinary a creative choice

Siddhartha: Our projects happen organically. I studied exhibition design not because I wanted to do exhibitions per se. In fact, as students at NID, we had courses in different fields like textile design, product design with architecture, clay, and film. I was drawn to the fact that you could ideate and experiment across media; that ideas and creative thought were relevant and the means to express them were secondary.

You see fundamentally, I think a lot of humans are drawn to different things and we all like to try different things. Man is innately a curious being. So, to me too - many seemingly diverse things are of interest. And so, I thought, how does one create a whole ecosystem to sustain one’s expanse of interests? I like writing. I like photography. I like problem-solving. I ended up in some kind of non-linear and not-so-planned way to curate a life full of different components. And in that regard, I consider my studio to be multi-disciplinary.

Have we “over designed”?

Siddhartha: I think this is a subjective and very personal attitude.How much does one engage, how much do I design, or over design are all conscious choices to make based on situation and context. And yet, this idea of saturation applies to every aspect of human existence. So for instance, why do people renounce a worldly life and become monks? And for each one, the journey of knowing when something is ‘over’ or ‘under’ is very intimate and subjective.

Independent movement

Siddhartha: Maintaining independence is an act of courage. I think we are increasingly seeing some institutional structures and frameworks to support small and independent enterprises. There are initiatives from institutions, galleries and the like - to partner with other smaller, more independent entities. It's a very long and thorny road though and I wouldn't hold my breath expectantly.

Personal wealth or a source of funding helps, but that's not enough. Because ultimately the quality of your mind and work is what will garner a consistent positive response. It is a fine balance, to remain independent and follow the tune of your own heart or strike a compromise with external stakeholders. And that may come with heartache, but it keeps me free to make choices which resonate deeply within me.