BEFORE i knew the turning
Not a corner turned, but a curve remembered
Size: 48 x 48 inches
Medium: Mother of Pearl – flat white tiles and golden swirls, coloured glass and silver tiles.
iNSPIRATION
Before I Knew the Turning arises from the unforgettable wisdom that transformation rarely erupts in a single moment. They move through us as a slow, continuous arc. In creating this piece, I found myself returning to that truth — the idea that life’s deeper shifts do not announce themselves — the patient curve of growth happens in the background of our days. It reflects the soft, unmarked turning of my own path—one that revealed itself only long after the curve was complete.
As a child wandering the Mediterranean coastline in Tripoli, Libya, I stood before centuries-old Roman mosaics, unaware that their quiet endurance was imprinting itself on me. Life later carried me back to India: through Economics at Delhi University, an MBA, and the demands and velocity of a corporate career. A pivotal chapter unfolded during my stay in Moscow, as a wife and mother, where the monumental public mosaics and the solemn brilliance of Russian iconography quietly shifted my gaze, deepening my connection to the medium.
Propelled towards mosaics yet again in Moscow, I started making them quietly, instinctively, as though guided by a memory deeper than intention.
Only now, as a full-time mosaic artist, do I see how seamlessly this transformation unfolded. There was no single decision, no moment that announced itself as the turning point. It was a gentle curve—an evolution so organic that I recognized it only in hindsight.
Before I Knew the Turning is shaped by that realization—the understanding that ‘becoming’ often happens before we even know we have ‘begun’.
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eXPRESSION
In Before I Knew the Turning, the materials speak the language of gradual transformation. At the mosaic’s heart, a red-blue-silver orb holds the moment of turning — where impulse softens into insight and the self begins to change. The shimmering mother-of-pearl background offers a luminous field where understanding seems to glimmer into being—soft, shifting, never fixed. It echoes the quiet light that guides us without fanfare, revealing itself only when viewed from a certain angle. Along the left border, the golden mother-of-pearl swirl tiles trace the very curve this work honours. Their warm arcs suggest motion without haste, illumination without spectacle—a path shaped by patient, radiant unfolding.
Across the composition, transitions are fluid: colours merge, lines drift into one another, and textures alternate between reflective and matte, echoing the dualities of clarity and uncertainty that accompany any inner shift. The mosaic breathes in a rhythm of continuity, embodying transformation as a gentle, inevitable flow.
This piece stands as a testament to the soft rewritings of the self—the arcs we travel unknowingly, and the grace of discovering, in hindsight, how beautifully we have turned.