December 21, 2022

Pooja Pawaskar Investigates Negative Space Through Her Wood Sculptures

Pooja Pawaskar learned furniture design at Savannah College of Art and Design and woodworking from her grandfather, a carpenter in her native Mumbai, India.

Now based in Ottawa, Canada, Pawaskar crafts unique sculptures and functional objects—in species including beech, oak, and ash—that express ideas like impermanence and imperfection, and that draw on aesthetic philosophies such as wabi-sabi and kintsugi.

Her latest series, In the Gaps Left Behind, investigates the compositional possibilities of negative space; the rocking sculptures, such as Sofanisba, in mahogany, posit flaws and holes as growth opportunities that make the objects—and us as viewers—more human. “New things can reside and thrive in the gaps between spaces,” she says. The collection, alongside other recent works, is on view at Gensler’s New York office through Jan 6, 2023.

a woman holding a rocking sculpture, the Sofanisba, in mahogany

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