All my works are festive. My people are not rich, but they are very happy people. They enjoy the small, beautiful things in life. I am a part of what I paint.
Thota Vaikuntam
Sculptures
The Sacred Gaze
Thota Vaikuntam’s sculptures bring his iconic Telangana women into a striking third dimension. Stylised forms, bold profiles, and vivid colours echo the visual language that defines his art, while almond eyes, vermilion bindis, and ornate adornments root them firmly in his world.
The sculptural faces carry the unmistakable markers of Vaikuntam’s world: almond eyes, vermilion bindis, and ornament, rendered with the bold, earth-rooted palette associated with his Telangana subjects. The result is a sculptural language that is unmistakably regional and confidently global in its craft and address.
Threads of Tradition
Zardozi
Threads of Tradition: Vaikuntam in Zardozi
Artworks of Thota Vaikuntam have been reborn as sculptural relief in the Mughal-era art of zardozi, using layered padding, silk, and gold-plated metallic threads to build form that catches light and shadow. The atelier’s precise armature of thread and padding is enriched with precious and semi-precious stones and a contemporary palette of silver-plated copper wires, extending a lineage that values depth, durability, and brilliance.
Paired with Thota Vaikuntam’s vivid Telangana universe – flattened, iconic figures rendered in saturated primary colours and ornate jewellery – the embroidery translates painterly planes into tactile volumes without losing the graphic clarity that defines his women and villagers. Select works in this series have been produced as silk embroideries on velvet, bearing Vaikuntam’s embroidered signature and executed under the craftsmanship of the Shams family of Agra, underscoring the project’s fidelity to both artist and atelier. The result is an encounter where Vaikuntam’s colour and contour gain dimensionality through zardozi’s luminous surfaces, inviting viewers to read painting as relief and thread as sculpture.
I’ve taken from my people in Telangana. I draw them. I take my colours from them. I’ve taken details from their everyday lives, stylised them, and made them look grand. That’s my intention.
Thota Vaikuntam