“I’m obsessed with non-functional functional furniture,” says Alaiia Gujral, “I love the idea that you could sit on a chair, but it is probably going to be sort of uncomfortable.” Why not just call it a sculpture? She replies, “There’s an invisible wall between sculpture and people who experience it, whereas with furniture, people aren’t afraid to touch it, sit on it, get on top of it.” For the Indian born, Chicago-based artist and curator, this is not just provocation but a deliberate way of thinking that breaks the long-standing boundary between fine art and collectible design. It makes you think about how little you question objects and their associated meaning. This thread runs across her work, most recently visible in the KÒRA collection exhibited at India Design ID 2026. Featuring indigo, a material that has been at the centre of exploration by Alaiia over the years, the series of collectibles is informed by the process of making rather than a predetermined concept. At the India Pavilion of London Design Biennale 2018, she tapped into how the material simultaneously signifies luxury and labour. Eight years later, her work focuses more on the material’s characteristics and the process. “I think this is a moment where I’m transitioning into different spaces of art, design and creativity,” says Alaiia, expressing how she is anticipating what she might explore in the future. She has been creatively inclined for as long as she can remember. “When I was a kid, I used to communicate with my grandfather through drawings,” she reminisces about Satish Gujral. She spent her childhood “making things next to him”, using his paints and whatever she could find around the studio. Today, her practice is still led by the love of making and the conviction to strip back all associations between objects, techniques or meanings, and find entirely new modes of seeing. As an instinctual artist, she thinks through the process of creating, her hands “always scratching at a piece of paper.”
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“There’s an invisible wall between sculpture and people who experience it, whereas with furniture, people aren’t afraid to touch it, sit on it, get on top of it”
