Neo Lippan is the Underground Art Society’s way of taking Kutch’s traditional mud and mirror craft and twisting it into something contemporary. It keeps the clay, the shimmer, and the textured surfaces while layering bold symmetry, abstract patterns, and unexpected reflections. It is the old and the new colliding where heritage meets a modern, slightly trippy perspective.
Lippan art, or Lippan Kaam, started in the villages of Kutch, Gujarat. Artisans would mix clay with mirrors and press it into walls and floors, creating raised, reflective patterns. The designs were often inspired by nature or geometry and they were not just decoration. They added texture, light, and even insulation.
Neo Lippan does not erase that history. Instead, it experiments with it. Traditional patterns are deconstructed and recombined, mirrored and repeated, forming shapes and angles that feel both familiar and strange. Faces, flora, animals, geometric forms, anything can appear in ways that bend expectation. The reflective surfaces catch light differently and pull the viewer into a new rhythm of shapes and space.
It is flexible. Neo Lippan can be small, a canvas accent, or large, transforming a wall into a living artwork. It is rooted in craft but open to experimentation, bridging the gap between ancient technique and conceptual play.
At its core, Neo Lippan is about perspective. It asks us to see the familiar differently and to notice how light, texture, and symmetry can change how we experience a space. It is tactile, visual, and a little unpredictable. Neo Lippan is a reinterpretation, not a replication, of a centuries-old craft.