One of the first artists to feature on Diary of a Tile Addict back in 2016 (and even earlier in Tile UK where she was covered in 2003) was the incredible Lubna Chowdhary. Specialising in hand glazed, individually unique tiles, her works were once available for public consumption and purchase on a small scale for interior projects, offering vibrant artworks that can be a permanent fixture for a space.

Realising the scope for larger projects, Chowdhary now focuses more on comissions, of which she has completed many for hospitals, hotels, and architecture and design firms. Other notable comissions have been completed for Tesco, the BBC, and Nokia. As well as these large works, Chowdhary has also been shortlisted for the Jerwood Prize in Ceramics and has completed artists residencies at Camden Arts Centre, Victoria and Albert Museum London and IASPIS Stockholm.

One of the most recent comissions has been to produce an artwork for a new building in London’s Liverpool Street, designed to imitate a journey of sorts where the city is experienced in fleeting glimpses through the windows of a train.

Chowdhary’s style has colour very much at the forefront of her designs, demonstrating the bold achievement of bringing together both “minimalism and ornamentation”. Playing with shape, texture, and glaze have all been extremely important when creating an aesthetic marriage between inspirations. Combining East and West and mixing the common with the unfamiliar her work is a spectacular comment on disparate cultural narratives.

Chowdhary’s most recent solo exhibition – Certain Times – was presented by Mumbai-based gallery Jhaveri Contemporary demonstrates the variety in her skill and the reality of Asian and South Asian city architecture. Finding balance between “tradition and modernity, and the rational and spiritual” is of the utmost importance and is showcased beautifully in Chowdhary’s overlapping forms in varied hues and tones.

Lubna Chowdhary
Contemporary Art Society

A new post by Hanna Simpson, Diary of a Tile Addict, October 2020.