Pooja Pawaskar creates sculptural forms that sit somewhere between body and object. Working primarily with wood and clay, the Mumbai-born artist builds, carves, bends and encloses forms that seem to lean, protect themselves, open up or resist what we expect them to do. Her work is concerned with the vessel — not simply as an object that holds something, but as a metaphor for the body and the boundaries we create around ourselves. 

What draws us to Pooja’s work is that tension between being held and being contained. Some of her ceramic forms deliberately resist their traditional function: they tilt, narrow or refuse to reliably hold what a vessel is supposed to carry. The question underneath is deeply human — who decides what something, or someone, is meant to hold? 

That question became especially present after Pooja moved to France and shifted from carving wood to hand-building with clay. Wood required her to remove material from an existing mass; clay allowed her to begin with emptiness and slowly construct a boundary around it. The change transformed not only her process, but the way she thought about interiority, autonomy and form. 

Her sculptures don’t offer neat answers. They make space for something more interesting: the possibility of defining our own boundaries, even while we are still becoming.