From Pichwai to Brass: Jenjum Gadi’s ‘Transcendent Memories’ weaves tradition with spirituality

Transcendent Memories is a continuation of my last exhibition Apase – From My Mother’s Garden, which was a very personal exploration of childhood memories and the landscape I grew up in. I come from Tirbin, a small village in Arunachal Pradesh, and my early years were shaped by nature, ritual, and everyday life in that setting. When I moved to Delhi, I encountered many different cultures, but it was Pichwai paintings that truly resonated with me, they reminded me of home.

Both Apase and Transcendent Memories are rooted in nostalgia and a longing for the sacredness of the everyday. This new exhibition allowed me to deepen that exploration through sculpture and installation, bringing together memory, divinity, and the tactile language of material.

I’ve always been drawn to the process of making, whether in fashion or art, it’s the material that guides me. My fashion practice has long included intricate embroidery, and I see metalwork as an extension of that. Repoussé and chasing allow me to retain that attention to detail while exploring new dimensions.

Moving from soft textiles to hard metals like brass has opened up different ways of expressing emotion and memory. It’s allowed me to sculpt stories into form—stories that feel both ancient and intimate.

Pichwai paintings have always fascinated me—their abundance, symbolism, and the way they tell stories through nature and gesture. I’m deeply drawn to the spiritual world of Krishna and how joy, devotion, and beauty coexist in his artworks.

In my latest works, I inscribe delicate Pichwai-inspired motifs onto metal. And in Apase, I cast brass fruits. These everyday objects—bananas, coconuts, lemons—are transformed into vessels that hold spiritual meaning. The divine becomes tangible, and memory becomes sacred.

This fusion is at the heart of my practice. Growing up in a remote village, life itself was spiritual, there wasn’t a divide between the sacred and the mundane. A fruit from the garden, a prayer at home, or the sound of birds at dawn, all of these carried a kind of divinity.

In the brass fruits I’ve created, I try to hold on to that idea. They’re not just objects—they’re memories of my mother’s garden, but they also carry Pichwai motifs that reflect divine presence. For me, this is a way to honor both my roots and my personal spiritual journey.

Brass carries weight, both literally and metaphorically. It has permanence, which allowed me to create pieces that feel timeless. Unlike fabric, which flows, metal holds its shape and presence.

I was drawn to the metalwork I saw in the monasteries of Tawang. Their embossed surfaces told stories of gods, nature, and protection. I wanted to bring that sensibility into my own work—not just to recreate it, but to weave it into my story through the forms and textures that feel personal to me.

I focus on preserving the spirit rather than the form. Pichwai is full of detail, repetition, and beauty, it celebrates the divine through nature. I try to bring those same values into my brass sculptures by inscribing motifs by hand, working with artisans to cast real fruits, and maintaining that same meticulous devotion to surface and pattern.

It’s not about copying tradition, it’s about continuing it in a language that is true to my own experience.

My practice has always lived between worlds—between tradition and innovation, softness and structure, personal memory and shared heritage. Each material I work with has its own history and symbolism.

Textiles speak to touch, to clothing, to what we wear every day. Metal gives form to memory and permanence. When I work with these materials, I’m not choosing between tradition and modernity, I’m letting them coexist because that’s how we live today: holding the past while reaching for something new.

Craftsmanship is the soul of my practice. I’ve always respected the skill and time that go into handmade work, whether it’s a handwoven textile or a cast brass sculpture. I work closely with master artisans because their knowledge and experience are invaluable.

At the same time, I’m interested in pushing those techniques into new contexts. What happens when you cast a coconut in brass and inscribe it with divine motifs? Or embroider a garment with memories of a village ritual? These experiments allow tradition to evolve and stay alive.

I hope the audience feels a sense of quiet reverence—a reminder that the everyday world around us holds beauty, memory, and even divinity. Whether it’s a fruit on a tree or an old pattern from a temple, everything has a story.

Through this exhibition, I want to honor the personal and the sacred and invite people to see their own memories and surroundings with new eyes.

I’m always open to where the materials and memories take me. I’d love to continue working with metal, but also explore ceramics, paper, and sound. There are so many ways to tell a story.

I’m also deeply interested in community-based projects that involve local artisans and bring together traditional skills with new ideas. For me, art is not just about creating objects, it’s about creating connections.