Jayesh Sachdev is a multi-hyphenate creator whose practice traverses art, sculpture, design, murals, fashion, and branding. As founder of the award-winning Quirk Box and Quirk Box Design Studio, he has continually challenged conventional creative boundaries. His landmark Zara x Jayesh collaboration marked an international milestone, bringing Indian art into a global art-fashion-sculpture dialogue. Sachdev’s multidimensional practice blends hybridity, mythology, surrealism, pop culture, and cosmic storytelling, often merging traditional visual languages with cutting-edge technology. Through monumental forms, immersive installations, and interconnected narratives, he transforms art into an evolving, multisensory experience, inviting audiences to question categories, embrace imagination, and discover new possibilities through contemporary visual culture. 

Looking back at your childhood, was there a particular moment that first sparked your interest in art and creativity?

While sport was my first love, Art and Design were not my first instinctive go-to in my Childhood, however it was still highly encouraged. I think I was always making things, imagining worlds, pulling things apart and putting them back together differently. Lego or living in my fantasy of stories from the books I read, there was always curiosity. I was far more interested in what something could be than what it was supposed to be. That curiosity has probably stayed with me more than anything else. Even today, most of my work begins with a “what if?”

Photographs: Courtesy of Jayesh Sachdev

From those early beginnings to becoming an internationally recognised artist, what has been the biggest turning point in your journey?

There have been many, but I think the biggest turning point was allowing myself to stop being defined by one thing. For a long time, there was this pressure to choose. Am I an artist, designer, fashion designer, sculptor, illustrator? Eventually I realised I didn’t need to choose. The moment I embraced being multidisciplinary, everything opened up. My work became much more recognisably mine because I stopped worrying about which box it belonged in.

You recently became the first Indian artist to collaborate globally with Zara. How did this collaboration come about?

Zara approached me for the collaboration, and what made it particularly exciting was the scale of it. It wasn’t simply about putting artwork onto clothing. We developed an entire visual world around the collaboration, across fashion, objects and sculpture. At the centre of it was Pounce, a 10-foot tiger sculpture that took around three months to build. Seeing something that began in my studio translate into a global brand collaboration was quite surreal. Pounce later found a permanent home at the NMACC Art House in Mumbai, which gave the project another life beyond the collaboration itself.

Your work spans art, sculpture, murals, fashion, branding, technology, and immersive experiences. What drives you to explore so many different creative fields?

Curiosity, mostly. I get bored very easily creatively, and I actually think that has been useful. I don’t see sculpture, fashion, technology, painting or design as completely separate disciplines. They’re simply different languages available to me. If an idea works better as a 17-foot sculpture, I’ll make that. If it needs to become a garment, an interactive screen or a mural, I’ll follow it there. The idea comes first. The medium follows.

Your work often draws from mythology, symbolism, and cosmic ideas. What do these stories and symbols help you express through your art?

What fascinates me about mythology is how incredibly contemporary it still is. Beneath the gods, creatures and symbolism are very human ideas: fear, desire, power, contradiction, identity, transformation, faith.

I’m interested in taking that visual vocabulary and pulling it into the present. I’m not trying to illustrate mythology literally. I use it almost as a psychological language. A creature made from several different animals, for example, can become a way of talking about the multiple selves that exist within one person. The mythology becomes a starting point for conversations that are really about us.

Photographs: Courtesy of Jayesh Sachdev

As your work keeps changing and evolving across different mediums, where do you find inspiration, and how do you keep yourself creatively curious?

Almost everywhere, and rarely only from art. Travel, architecture, mythology, cinema, conversations, fashion, technology, Japanese illustration, something I see on the street, sometimes even a mistake in the studio.

I also deliberately expose myself to things outside my own field. I think creativity becomes repetitive when you only consume the kind of work you already make. I’d rather discover something I don’t completely understand. That discomfort keeps me curious.

Can you recall a project or artwork that didn’t go as planned, but ultimately became an important learning experience in your creative journey?

Honestly, a lot of my work doesn’t go as planned. Some of my favourite sculptures have changed completely while being made. Something doesn’t balance, a material behaves differently, a proportion feels wrong, or an idea that looked brilliant on a screen simply doesn’t work at three metres tall.

I used to see those moments as problems to fix. Now I see them as part of making art. Sometimes the work knows where it wants to go before you do. One of the biggest things I’ve learnt is not to become so attached to the original idea that you miss the better one appearing in front of you.

Through Quirk Box and Quirk Box Design Studio, you have built successful creative businesses while continuing your personal artistic practice. How do you balance business opportunities with staying true to your own creative voice?

I don’t think art and business necessarily have to fight each other. The important thing is knowing what you’re willing to compromise on and what you aren’t. Running Quirk Box and the design studio taught me how ideas function in the real world: budgets, production, deadlines, teams, clients and scale. My personal practice gives me the opposite freedom. It allows me to make something simply because I believe it should exist. The interesting projects are where those two worlds meet. I’m happy to collaborate commercially, but I still need to recognise myself in the final work. Otherwise there really isn’t much point in having me involved.

Do you believe the future of art and design lies in multidisciplinary creativity, and how do you see this evolving in the years ahead?

Absolutely. I think the boundaries are already disappearing. Artists are working with code, fashion designers are creating installations, architects are building digital worlds, and technology is changing how audiences experience physical art. AI, AR, interactive environments and new fabrication technologies will make those boundaries even less relevant. But I don’t think technology itself is the interesting part. Technology is just another tool. The real question will always be: what are you saying with it? The future belongs to people who can move between disciplines without losing their own voice.

What is the one piece of advice you would want aspiring artists and designers to carry with them throughout their creative journey?

Stay curious longer than everyone else. Don’t be in such a hurry to find your “style”. Style is usually something you recognise in hindsight after years of making things. Experiment, make bad work, change your mind, learn things that seem completely unrelated and don’t worry too much about fitting neatly into a category. Your job isn’t to become what the creative world already understands. It’s to keep making until the world understands what you’ve become.

Interview & Text: Sumayya Rafeek