Bvlgari celebrated Diwali with 'Passing the Light,' a terracotta exhibit in Jaipur, blending Indian artistry with its iconic Serpenti motif. Created by artist Doyel Joshi, the installation featured 4,500 hand-sculpted diyas, honoring the kumhar community and showcasing a harmonious fusion of heritage and contemporary design.
On October 11, Bvlgari, the long-standing icon of contemporary Italian art, marked its enduring presence in India through the "Passing the Light" exhibit, a luminous and artistic expression of Diwali, created in partnership with Indian artist Doyel Joshi.
The exhibit was built around a massive 'Passing the Light' installation that showcased 4,500 hand-sculpted terracotta elements inspired by traditional diyas and shaped to look like the Bvlgari Serpenti motif’s iconic scales pattern.
Indian author and former actor Twinkle Khanna, who was present at the exhibit, put into perspective the growing gap between brands and cultural appreciation. "What we lately see are brands taking our Kolhapuris, our jhumkas and recently our mirror work and claiming it their own. The line between appreciation and appropriation is very clear, and this is clearly appreciation,” she said.
This sense of appreciation of Indian art, culture and those who preserve it is precisely what drove Bvlgari's Jaipur exhibit — artwork that honours the ancestral mastery of the kumhar community and the local craftswomen who shaped each piece through a dedicated social enterprise.
While the project united Joshi's contemporary vision with ancient traditions and sits at the intersection of living heritage, generational knowledge and how communal hands sustain the continuous transmission of light, it also celebrated the artisans as true co-creators.
The installation comprised of terracotta elements inspired by traditional diyas and the amusing play of the patterns of light and shadow to pay tribute to the endless passage of knowledge, creativity and light as generations pass.
Joshi shares that working with the brand on this installation "has been a conversation between two very different histories of making, one shaped in clay, the other in gold, that speak, in the end, the same language of transmission. This installation carries the generational knowledge of the earth it is made from and the hands that made it, passing the light forward,” said the artist.
"The thing that really sticks," she feels, "is the early conversations we had with the Bvlgari creative team. It wasn't about jewellery. It wasn't about materiality, what it would become, or the scale of it. It was about us trying to find human stories with each other."
The CEO of Bvlgari, Laura Burdese called India is a place of "profound significance" in the brand's story, one whose exceptional heritage of artistry, craftsmanship and ritual has long inspired how Bvlgari creates and engages with the country.
"This year, that spirit finds a deeply personal expression through our collaboration with artist Doyel Joshi. Each of her terracotta elements is unique, shaped by hand and by the character of the material itself. In this dialogue between earth, craftsmanship and human touch, something deeply meaningful emerges: the transformation of the familiar into something new, without ever losing its roots. This is also at the heart of Bvlgari’s philosophy of luxury," she says.
"True luxury is not simply about creating something beautiful; it is about giving meaning to what we inherit, preserving the knowledge and stories carried through generations, and allowing them to evolve with relevance and imagination. It is through this continuous dialogue between heritage and the present that culture remains alive, and that beauty becomes a bridge between people, places and generations.”