Amrita Nambiar is a visionary contemporary artist and designer based in Bangalore, India, and the founder of Olie, an experimental lighting studio she established in 2019. A graduate of Chitrakala Parishath with a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts, Amrita blends artistry with innovation, creating sculptural works that explore the profound interplay of light, shadow, and emotion. Her creations transcend traditional boundaries, harnessing the transformative power of light to evoke deep wonder and challenge conventional design.
Olie is an atelier that combines art, design, and craftsmanship to create intentional, conceptual lighting pieces. With a dedicated team of twelve, the studio meticulously handcrafts each piece through slow, deliberate processes. These light sculptures offer more than just illumination; they are quiet, impactful statements that invite reflection and evoke a sense of awe.
Olie’s work has gained recognition at prestigious events like The Playground by MuseLAB – RAW Collaborative ’22, The Maker’s Trail curated by Manju Sara Rajan at Unboxing BLR ’23, and On Paper Off Paper curated by Ankon Mitra at Apparao Galleries – India Design ID ’24. Upcoming exhibitions include Isola Dubai Design District and the Indian Museum’s 210-year celebration in January 2025. Through her art, Amrita Nambiar continues to redefine the role of light as a medium and push the boundaries of contemporary design.
In this thought-provoking conversation as part of DTalks, Amrita delves deep into the nuances of her practice and experience as a designer.
Q. How would you describe your signature design aesthetic, and how has it evolved while working in India?
Amrita Nambiar: Constantly evolving. But I think what has stayed through the years has been a touch of whimsy that tends towards surrealism, no matter my medium of choice. I love the idea of taking something that I find hopelessly wondrous and elevating it to almost something you would imagine in a wild dream. Whilst living and working in India, this land of constant inspiration, movement, people, cultures and stories – I am riding this wave of optimism, joy and collective celebration that seems to be the general mood in the community right now. It’s an exciting time to be an artist and designer in the country and I’m grateful to be here and I think my work reflects some of this exuberance.
Wildlings, courtesy of Amrita Nambiar
Q. What influences and inspires your current work? Could you share some movements, designers, or elements of Indian culture that have shaped your practice?
Amrita Nambiar: I’m starting to realise that growing up in the Middle East, and then moving to a lush Bangalore twenty years ago filled me with a deep love for wilderness, trees, and nature that was missing entirely during my childhood. My fascination and wonder at the natural world shows up consistently across my work. I also find inspiration in deep emotions – be it grief, anger, helplessness and try to create work that might provoke a similar emotion in the viewers who experience it. My pieces are always looking to immerse the viewer. Either through scale, or exaggeration, or through an interactive element. In that sense, light is a remarkable medium and can transport a viewer almost immediately just by switching the piece on.
I have always been wildly influenced by the surrealist movement in art, as well as the work of women artists – their journey and often a reflection of their life and sometimes struggles. Dali’s clean lines and flow of movement in his work have been a profound memory. In more contemporary culture – as an artist who has moved between design and art – I look up to India Mahdavi greatly. Her use of colour, approach to both her work and practice, have been inspiring ways to approach building a work-life that lends to one another.
Q. Could you walk us through your creative process? How do you move from initial concept to final execution?
Amrita Nambiar: As an introvert, I find myself at odds with my love for people, the people of India in particular and our incredible artisanal communities and the need to be alone with my thoughts. I’ve developed (over the years) a system of going to my workshop where my artisanal and design team works thrice a week and I get to spend two days a week in solitude to just be, ruminate, write and sketch out thoughts that usually then lead to an artwork.
As an idea occurs to me, I write it down .. to pick it up at another time sometimes. And I let myself sink into the idea and imagine it into reality. Once I can see the piece I want to make in my mind’s eye, it translates fairly quickly into a sketch. My design team then details it out further with me to include sizing, and renders the sketch to make it more realistic, and materials are decided. Since I like to work with light as my rather powerful medium of expression, very often, the medium of choice depends on what type of drama I wish to create with the light.
Then we begin to create the three-dimensional version of the piece. I draw it out to scale, and our welding artisans hand-hammer metal rods to the shape of the drawing, and we take it step by step until it reaches the finishing section, where the textile ‘glowing’ bits are handcrafted and finished.
Q. Your work often involves collaborations with artisans and other creatives. What draws you to these partnerships, and how do these collaborations enrich your design practice?
Amrita Nambiar: I’ve always wanted to work in partnership with the community that India is blessed with. It seems to me that to not do so, would be a huge waste of opportunity to learn, grow and strengthen the craft community. As an artist and designer, I felt like I could make a significant impact. In turn, of course, the artisan’s craft and skills make my art larger than life, richer than I could have dreamed of and more relevant than if I had done it alone.
With every new technique, material and skill that I discover – I am newly inspired. Each collaboration with a new partner/ artisan often takes years to materialise into a final piece, and sometimes it may not work out at all. But for the ones that do, it is always very rewarding to see the results.
Q. Looking back at your portfolio, which project represents a significant turning point in your career, and among your recent works, what project are you most proud of and why?
Amrita Nambiar: The first light sculpture that we got to do changed everything for me.
It was my first attempt at creating an artistic piece with light that was deeply conceptual and approached in a way I would an art project ( not a functional design one) and seeing that piece titled ‘ Reflections’ come into being and the final result of the piece in the space I envisioned It for – I knew I had to try it again. There is so much possibility with light, natural materials and making surreal art pieces, I am constantly inspired.
When I first put up pictures of the project with Reflections in it on Instagram, the response was overwhelming, we got calls and emails for more commissions for sculptural lighting, and I made sure to constantly push the boundaries with each one, slowly building a significant body of work. Over time, it became obvious that there was a beautiful future to be had here.
I am particularly proud of a piece called ‘ Wisdom of water’ which we completed very recently and is currently showing at the Indian Museum in Kolkata. This piece was deeply inspired by the Cauvery river. I was moved to create an immersive sculptural light that People could stand on, observe and walk across the boulders in the piece to ‘cross’ the river. It is experimental in that it is multi-media using wire mesh, paint, ceramic, mild steel and textile. The piece has sound built into it and the overall illusion is one that you can slip into. Something I always love for my work.
Q. What unique challenges and opportunities have you encountered as an emerging designer in the Indian design industry, and how are you working to overcome these obstacles?
Amrita Nambiar: The challenges I have faced have to be related to the craft sector. This segment is so unorganised that while it is full of promise and so abundant, it is also very difficult to work with given the difficulties in reaching the artisans, training them to fulfil a vision and arrive at a competent skill set that can translate the work to the standard I wanted. Setting up a workforce that could envision what I could see and then craft these one-of-a-kind pieces was challenging and in some ways, continues to be .. but with time we have been successful in setting up processes to make this a bit smoother.
I think I’ve been fortunate in that India is finding its voice in the design world and the community and industry are very open and welcoming to newcomers.
The only main challenge has been finding talent, both artisans as well as designers for our team that fits our ethos and becomes part of the Olie fabric. We’ve been very lucky to have formed an incredible team that is the very foundation for Olie, but as we grow – adding to this proves to be one of our biggest challenges.
In terms of opportunity, there has been so much. The world is looking to India for the kind of exemplary, meaningful work coming out of this region and we’ve benefited from this. Olie just travelled to Dubai design week to showcase for the first time internationally and was received very well. India itself has looked inward, with architects and their clients making conscious decisions to commission work as locally as possible and with the spurt in creativity in architecture and interior design, the brief and budgets have been opened up to allow for so much freedom.
Q. How do you approach sustainability and eco-friendly practices in your designs, particularly considering India’s traditional wisdom and contemporary environmental challenges?
Amrita Nambiar: I think India’s traditional wisdom when it comes to sustainability is in using natural materials for packing. From wrapping food in leaves, to carrying homemade baskets to go shopping, our grandmother’s lived sustainable lives.
Re-using things. Nothing in India is traditionally just thrown away. Culturally, it’s a habit to pass old clothes down to siblings/ cousins, and the same goes for most commodities.
At Olie, we have come to the conclusion that the only way to solve the sustainability issue is to be as circular as we possibly can. A few years ago, we dove deep into the materials we use and went through a process to understand the life cycle of each material and how to ensure the additional waste of each material does not end up in a landfill but in the right kind of recycling centre. The materials we could re-use ourselves, we did.
We even innovated a new material using the waste of the sticker paper that we were using, but couldn’t find a recycling centre to take. Packaging of course, became the next big battle to address. From using biodegradable bubble wrap, to simple crushed newspaper and cardboard boxes – we try to keep our packaging simple but effective and request our clients to return the bubble wrap to us for reusing if possible.
Besides this, our actual making process is entirely handcrafted – enabling minimal water and energy usage, as well as our material palette is primarily natural materials like cotton textile, banana fibre, cane, hemp paper, etc.
Q. What’s your most exciting recent design or art discovery that’s influencing your current thinking?
Amrita Nambiar: It isn’t just any one thing. I’ve recently had an explosion of exposure to many artists and designers and different aspects of each of their work and stories have stayed with me. From the way Chanakya uses embroidery and thread in combination with stone sculptures, to the layered, textured work of Manish Pushkale, to the incredibly detailed surreal work of Manjunath Kamath that I got to witness at the Indian museum show in Kolkata, where we are currently showing. Listening to India Mahdavi talk during Dubai design week was extremely insightful, as a designer that I admire so much – listening to her thought process both as she navigates her career as well as approaches different works, from furniture to lights to artwork – I am highly inspired, and currently processing it all.
Q. How do you build visibility and reach out to potential clients – what platforms and strategies have worked best for you?
Amrita Nambiar: About six years ago, when I just initiated the lighting studio, I connected with a few architects and interior designers to ask them what they might be looking for and understand what I could possibly do with Olie.
They gave us our first few projects, albeit with much simpler lights, but I consistently reached out to more designers and architects introducing them to what we did at the time as well as briefed them on what I hoped to do with sculptural lighting. Everyone was incredibly friendly, helpful and supportive and I couldn’t have pushed forward the way I did without those connections.
I also use Instagram as a space similar to that of a journal, where I air my thoughts, tell stories of how a piece came to be, what inspired it, give a glimpse into our crafting process and it’s been a powerful way to connect with a large, diverse audience in a deeply personal manner.
We also like to do at least one show a year to meet the people who support us and commission our work in person.
Q. From your experience, what are the crucial dos and don’ts for young designers trying to establish themselves in India, and what professional forums or communities would you recommend they join?
Amrita Nambiar: India is a vast country which is quite crowded with so much talent as well as industry. The only way to stand out is to take a risk, tell your story, put out a powerful body of work and connect with as many people in the community as possible and say yes to opportunity.
I get a lot of joy and support from my local design community. It’s wonderful to share stories and the load of being an entrepreneur with others who are in the same boat. Find your local communities and participate in them, it’s always rewarding.
Q. As you look ahead, what kind of projects or directions would you like to explore?
Amrita Nambiar: I am starting to love the idea of mixing disciplines, a large-scale light sculpture with an acrylic painting next to it, perhaps. playing with dimensions and mediums in a space. I am hoping to do more with technology, to make my work even more surreal and feel more intuitive.
Q. For aspiring designers looking to make their mark in India’s design landscape, what wisdom would you share from your journey?
Amrita Nambiar: I think this is a piece of advice we hear often, but when you hear it – it’s hard to truly grasp the full meaning of what it means: Do not try to go by a ‘formula for success’. You have to put in the work, put in the hours and listen deeply to your intuition to create something that is you. This process could take many years, enjoy the journey and redefine what success means to you in the meantime.
Image Courtesy: Amrita Nambiar
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