Hand Painted mural
Parallel Worlds was an immersive wall art project created in collaboration with interior designer Parantap Bhatt, within a double-height living space framed by vertical wooden windows and a central lighting element. The architectural setting, both lofty and contained, offered an ideal canvas to explore visual storytelling through spatial tension.
Pomoco was invited to design two facing murals within this space, each meant to mirror and balance the other, extending into a narrative that unfolds across walls and time. The intervention wasn’t merely decorative; it was intended to introduce a mythical ecosystem into a domestic environment. The brief gave us freedom to expand into a speculative realm that bridges folklore and fiction.
The core narrative of the mural draws from a hybrid universe, where creatures from Indian mythology coexist with beings from contemporary science fiction. Airavats, Garudas, and deer of Hindu iconography appear alongside Purgils and Lothcats from the Star Wars universe, united in a landscape untouched by human presence.The aim was to construct a parallel ecology which was neither utopian nor dystopian, simply otherworldly. This alternate world suggested a coexistence of belief systems, pointing to how mythology continues to evolve in today’s cultural imagination. Rather than illustrating a single story, the mural presented an open-ended world leading to many.
To bring this complex visual system to life, we collaborated with Gond artist Koushal Tekam from Madhya Pradesh, with whom we’ve previously worked through our partners at CraftCanvas. The Gond tradition which is rich in line, pattern, and repetition became our language of choice for expressing this world. Together, we translated the idea into two layers of composition. The first layer was directly painted onto the wall to create a grounding landscape a rhythmic, almost meditative terrain. The second layer involved handcrafted MDF cutouts of each mythical creature, painted in Gond style and mounted onto the mural, for dimensionality and sculptural presence. We guided the design process through curated palettes and pattern systems, ensuring the work maintained its folk art references while inhabiting a contemporary space.
The outcome was a fantastical narrative unfurling across architectural scale, one that invites interpretation through quiet observation and slow engagement.
