Got the mettle? Work with metal!

Amarjot Kaur

For Jyoti Singh, one of the few artists in the country who work with metal enamel, what particularly fascinates her about the medium is the process of making the artwork. That she is consciously adventurous while working with scales and dimensions of her artworks, she is careful not to let her expectations interfere with the journey of the product. She therefore dismisses the idea of pre-planning. “I like the process of working with metal and enamel. I can’t possibly make something on paper and expect to produce it on metal. The artwork evolves through every stage,” says Jyoti, who is originally from Kashmir, but is currently based in Delhi.

Though Jyoti, as she shares, was always interested in art, especially meenakari work on jewellery she only discovered metal and enamel technique a decade ago. “I was always so fascinated with meenakari, and the back of the jewellery. However, I set out to study philosophy and even taught the subject in Delhi University. No sooner than that, my husband and I realised that we didn’t want to stay in the city so we moved to Haryana, where I started doing pottery and terracotta. I was in my late 20s then,” she says.

For Jyoti, who loves working with metal, and has a strong bias for copper, the ideation of her art comes from spirituality, perhaps or common objects that fascinate her. “Copper, I like very much, because it is so soft and malleable. Also, the colours that I use are coloured silica with oxides that are sifted in a sieve and then heated to get both, the enamel and the colour. I just enjoy giving different concepts an original spin,” she shares.

While Jyoti places coloured and glazed copper and steel metal sheets on a wooden base, she experiments with their forms like making a protruding bindu, or an oval to demonstrate a connection with spirituality and cosmic energy and for mandala series, she makes colourful and interesting patterns that border on the contemporary and figurative abstract. Since Jyoti hails from Kashmir and that most artists paint about their roots, Jyoti as she speaks of the present and very turbulent situation in Kashmir, says, “I know many artists who sell art about the adverse situation in Kashmir, but I am not that sort of a person.”

Beside Totem and Screen, both of which are installations, Jyoti also makes functional artworks like bowls, boxes and lamps. As we explore Jyoti’s experimental metal enamel art in series like Ladakh, Yatra, Devi, Trypitch, Fragile and Windows, she shares that she is keen to work the same technique on jewellery. “My husband’s surgical equipment case inspired the fragile series, and my artwork on the base of that case is an irony to convey that everything is fragile, like the glass enamel coating on the hard, sturdy metal,” she signs off. 

(On till October 27 at 

Hyatt Regency, Chandigarh)