At nine, during the 2020 lockdown, Ishaan Gupta began folding paper almost by accident. His mother, a Furoshiki gift-wrapping artist, was learning the Japanese art through online classes, and Gupta would often sit beside her, helping when she forgot a fold or lost track of a step. What began as an occasional exercise in patience soon became an absorbing pursuit of his own.
Gupta eventually joined origami classes with Aditi Anuj, who runs the origami studio Adigami. “She started me off with simple models like a fish and a dinosaur,” Gupta recalls. Within six months, he was attempting a kusudama icosahedron, a modular model made from 30 individually folded pieces. “It was complicated, but so much fun. I practised it for an hour every day until I got it right.”
Six years later, that early fascination took shape as ‘An Origami Odyssey’, an exhibition at Delhi’s India Habitat Centre, from September 25 to 27. The exhibition was inaugurated by architect and artist Ankon Mitra, and it featured the 14-year old artist’s paper works across tessellations, geometric forms, animal figures, wall art and sculptures.
Paper and geometry
Of the different forms he works with, tessellations remain Gupta’s favourite. “They’re deeply mathematical and pattern-based,” he says. He points to a hexagonal tessellation designed by origami artist Eric Gjerde, in which a hexagonal sheet is divided into as many as 600 sections before being folded into a honeycomb-like structure. Animal figures come a close second. Unlike modular pieces, they often require working from complex crease patterns and demand an understanding of how a single sheet can be transformed into a recognisable form.
The scale of the work also means that origami is anything but an instant art form. Some pieces take an hour; others take days or even weeks. One of the largest works in the exhibition took Gupta two weeks of continuous folding and assembling.
For his animal figures, he often works from existing crease patterns by artists including Satoshi Kamiya, Riccardo Foschi, John Montroll and Shuki Kato. “Designing your own animal models takes a great deal of expertise and advanced thinking,” he says. Tessellations and modular origami, however, give him more room to experiment. “I keep folding and connecting pieces to form new designs, and the results can be just as breathtaking as the animal figures.”
Among the most demanding pieces he has attempted is Ryujin 3.5 by Satoshi Kamiya, considered one of the most challenging models in origami. The dragon requires a sheet of paper nearly a metre by a metre. “A single fold can take several minutes,” Gupta says.
The art of folding
Tessellations and modular pieces, which form a significant part of the exhibition, rely heavily on lines, angles, symmetry and proportion. Gupta is particularly drawn by mathematics and design, and origami gives him a way to bring the two together. “What fascinates me most is that origami mathematics goes far beyond paper,” he says.
The applications of origami principles extend into engineering and technology, from the Miura fold used to compact solar panels for satellites to origami-inspired approaches in the design of space telescopes, medical stents and car airbags. For Gupta, tessellations demonstrate that relationship particularly clearly. “They have real aesthetic beauty, but their foundation lies in mathematical precision.”
After six years of folding, Gupta’s collection had grown, while some of his older models were beginning to deteriorate. His mother suggested framing them to preserve them. “Once we began framing a few pieces, I realised they looked like proper artworks on a wall. If we were framing them anyway, why not put them together in an exhibition where people could see them, and even take them home?” he says.
‘An Origami Odyssey’ thus becomes a record of Gupta’s progression. The exhibition captures the patience required to follow someone else’s crease pattern, the mathematical discipline behind a tessellation and the freedom that comes with eventually creating something of one’s own.
He has begun exploring origami design rather than simply folding models created by other artists. “Following other artists’ patterns has taught me so much, but I now want to design my own animal figures and create even more complex tessellations, so that my work feels truly mine.”