Meet the artist making brick walls talk

Talking to a brick wall may be seen as shorthand for talking into emptiness or words lost to the cold and the unfeeling. But it’s an idiom lost on 44-year-old sculptor Girjesh Kumar Singh, whose work turns that notion on its head.

In his hands, bricks no longer stand for silence; they become a container for buried emotion. Carving has long been revered as a delicate art. And Singh, a sculptor from the Gangetic plains of Uttar Pradesh, spent a long time understanding the stones in quarries, learning their textures, their temperament, their language. After years of being immersed in this, he sought something deeper—something unconventional and more visceral.

For him, a brick became this piece of paradox—a keeper of truths and journeys—and his chosen medium. Within it lie air pockets, grains of sand, scattered granules. As he carves, it resists and yields, entering a dialogue with memory and material. He shapes it, and it shapes him in return. “Every brick carries memory of its origin, every choice is a negotiation,” he says. Brick, thus, becomes the co-creator, bearing stories of breaking, joining, loss, and return.

Known for creating sculptures out of broken bricks from demolished walls, Singh’s material of choice has led him to scour demolition sites as if they were gold mines. “One brick might feel heavier, denser or rougher than another. There are variations in colour, texture, and weight. I may look for a particular size, but more than that I am attentive to the consistency. I pick it up, feel how it bonds with cement, judge its quality,” says Singh, an admirer of Indian temple art and sculptures, about his artistic process.

Like with anything handmade, no two works of his look the same. Some bricks are underfired or riddled with sand; others are firm and stubborn. Sometimes, he deliberately leaves a part of a work unfinished, the edges unshaped, the surfaces unhealed. His chisel does not smooth every scar, for to conceal a wound is to deny its truth.

In the latest edition of his ongoing series, Laaga Chunari Mein Daag (2024), inspired by a verse from Kabir, Singh carves faces that speak of a shared humanity where creation and destruction merge. These are bricks that weep, smile, show anger and ennui. And each brick head can take up to 10 to 15 days to create.

Since this series is rooted in identity, the face becomes the first point of reference—the surface where our features, expressions, and choices in hair or headgear reveal who we are. It is also the image through which the world most readily recognises us. What makes these works compelling is the medium itself, which lends them a tactile, almost living quality. No two gestures can be replicated; each is a singular, unrepeatable act.

These faces are neither portraits nor likenesses. They carry no names, no tether to biography. A bearded sadhu holds a universe of stillness: deep-set eyes reflecting silent wisdom, a rudraksh entwined in the matted hair, weathered skin mapping years of devotion, and an aura that radiates faith. A woman is adorned with headgear and earrings, ornaments that are testament to pride and tradition. The brick carries a small white spot—like a hidden jewel—gracing her nose as if it were an impromptu piercing.

In 2009, Rukshaan Krishna of Rukshaan Art saw a powerful tenderness in Singh’s work, an intensity capable of evoking emotion in its pure, unspoken form. What began as professional patronage grew into a rare and symbiotic partnership, sustained not by the gallery-artist relationship but by shared beliefs. “I’ve seen people before his work moved to tears,” Krishna recalls.

Exploring themes of identity, migration, and displacement, these works have been part of solo and group shows in India (from Kochi to New Delhi) and abroad (from Chicago to Singapore and Dubai). Next year, Singh will be participating in a group show at Mumbai’s Rukshaan Art Gallery in January and will also make an appearance with the gallery at the India Art Fair in New Delhi, in February.

Migration and identity pulse beneath the surface of Singh’s work. “When you migrate, you never fully leave a place behind,” he explains. His own life has been shaped by movement. Born in Semra, Uttar Pradesh, Singh took to studying liberal arts in Allahabad and Varanasi, before rounding it off with a Master’s from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. Today, Vadodara, or Baroda, has become his home.

In the work, Doors Which Open to Let You Leave (2017), the entrance emerges as a symbol, central to our memory of home. “When I think of home, it is often the entrance that first comes to mind—whether I am stepping in or stepping out, the door anchors my sense of place,” Singh says. For those leaving their parents’ home, the door embodies both release and return—they are let go, yet the door’s very presence ensures the possibility of coming back.

Over the years, the scale has changed. The faces are bigger and more detailed. In his sculptures, the mortar clinging to the bricks embodies identity, while the bricks themselves map the journey of displacement, memory, and belonging. “Some move in search of liberation, others by force of destiny. But the things that bind you to the construction never let go,” he adds.