Creative heads

Inside Aman Khanna's meditative workspace in Delhi, the chaos of clay beautifully coexists with the strains of British jazz and Bollywood tunes, finds ARMAN KHAN. 

- ARMAN KHAN

While making the very first of the clay faces that he is now famous for, Aman Khanna went all out with a wooden bat. The ball of clay first had to be pinched with the fingers to make it hollow and subsequently receptive to being moulded into shapes and forms. Swinging the bat on clay balls would transform them into a smile, droopy eyes, or just a smirk. The possibilities were endless.

"I'd constantly keep hitting the clay with a bat, and with each hit, a new expression would emerge," Khanna says. "So I might intend to make a specific form, but the material lends itself to different meanings."