Gilded Fractures
Created by: Aarti Bhalekar
The piece was featured as part of the British Art Fair at Saatchi Gallery, London 2025.
The piece is a combination of 3D renditions of endangered flowers from India (Blue Vanda Orchid, Crinium Lily, Siroi Lily, Neelakurinji, Yellow Colchicum, and Himalayan Blue Poppy) and an augmented reality experience. Users can move up close to the flowers, entering a digital secret garden where they encounter these endangered species within a mystical, immersive space.
All the flowers are wrapped in golden threads, and even the surrounding species, such as butterflies, are entwined with gold. These golden threads represent the concept of kintsugi, a Japanese philosophy.
Kintsugi teaches us that adversity can be transformed into something beautiful and resilient, that wounds can heal over time, making us stronger. Through this piece, I aim to convey that although these flowers are endangered, there is hope that our environment can allow them to heal and return more resilient in the future.
Unity Behind the Scenes
The piece went through multiple iterations, exploring glow effects, spatial placement, and scale. It evolved from a scaled-down piece displayed on a plinth to a large-scale installation. The final decision to increase the scale allowed audiences to move their camera freely around the space and experience the work in a more immersive way.
The intention was to highlight the fragility of these flowers. Because they are endangered, they are initially enclosed within a glass box. After a few minutes, the glass shatters, allowing users to move closer and engage more directly with the flowers.The glass-breaking effect was implemented in Unity using visual scripting.
3D Illustrations
These illustrations were created as part of the marketing materials for Saatchi Gallery.
The 3D illustration assets shown below were developed in Blender and then imported into Unity for use for the augmented reality experience.
Due to texture translation limitations between Blender and Unity, the visual treatment of the flowers was adjusted in the Augmented Reality Experience / Unity to ensure the intended meaning of the piece remained clear to audiences.
