Shreya Alok

Bio

Shreya alok is a contemporary ceramic artist whose work explores the intersection of material, memory, and architecture. With a background in craft design from Indian Institute of Crafts and Design, Jaipur, India in 2010, Shreya has developed a distinctive practice centred on hand-built ceramics that engage with themes of cultural heritage, urban history, and personal narrative.

Over the past 10 years, she has exhibited work in galleries and public spaces across, often focusing on sculptural installations that invite tactile engagement. Drawing inspiration from architectural motifs, vernacular crafts, and the layered histories of place, her work bridges traditional craftsmanship and contemporary artistic practice.

Deeply inspired by Islamic patterns and sacred architectural forms, she carves delicate surfaces that invite contemplation — blending hand, mind, and heart in what she describes as a form of subliminal spirituality. Her inclination towards Islamic geometry also draws her to collages, watercolour paper works and assemblage. Her sculptures reinterpret the fading grandeur of havelis and sacred spaces, reflecting on time, memory, and the quiet poetics of decay.

Shreya has participated in national and international residencies, a fellowship from CEPT Ahmedabad, India and solo and group shows including one at Lalit Kala Akademie, New Delhi, along with works being a part of a private collection in India. She has worked with reputed design studios in India before she started her own line of work with her studio named ‘Studio Karamica’ that houses her functional work along with ceramic wall art installations and continues to investigate how ceramic form can become a vessel for cultural dialogue and collective memory.

Artist Statement

Shreya Alok is a full-time ceramic artist living and working in the lower Himalayas of Dharamsala, India. Her practice draws deeply from the artistic and architectural sensibilities of Indian history, particularly from the 16th to 18th centuries. With a profound fascination for Islamic geometric patterns, Shreya carves delicate, intricate surfaces that invite the viewer into a quiet space of unity — where a skilled hand, a reflective mind, and an open heart converge in what she describes as a kind of subliminal spirituality.

Shreya’s work is an evocative exploration of India’s architectural past, reinterpreting the fading grandeur of havelis, palaces, and sacred spaces. Through clay, she challenges the notion of utopian perfection, finding beauty instead in the imperfect geometries and quiet irregularities that mark real life — where godly symmetry coexists with human imperfection. Her sculptures become meditations on time, memory, and decay, capturing the layered histories and textures of a world in transition.

At the heart of her practice is an inquiry into the coexistence of the social and environmental, and the urgent question of heritage preservation within sustainable, natural materials like clay. She reflects on the sacred geometry of nature, using it not only as ornament but as a metaphor for interconnectedness and impermanence.

In a time when artificial intelligence challenges the boundaries of human creativity, Shreya’s works stand as tactile, contemplative spaces — sanctuaries of curiosity and contemplation. As she says, “I like to see history from the lens of the present, emulating the past in the way it is today if I were to give it a physical form.”

Exhibitions