The Art of yoga
75 Kg of Beach Plastic. Eight Six-Foot Yoga Poses.
One Festival That Brought It All Together.
Client
Govt of Puducherry
Year
2025
Design Portfolio
Circular Design & Material Transformation
Type of Work
Conceptualization
Prototyping
Installation
Since 1993, Puducherry has remained India’s leading destination for international yoga. The 30th International Yoga Festival, held from January 4 to 7, 2025, brought over a thousand participants to the MICE Pavilion in Puducherry. Three decades of this city's
commitment to the celebration of yoga and wellness. Lieutenant Governor K. Kailashnathan and Chief Minister N. Rangasamy inaugurated the event. School children performed a mass yoga demonstration along Beach Road. The city showed up. And so did we, with eight six-foot-tall sculptures made entirely from plastic pulled off
Puducherry's beaches.
Red Chariots, the event management team behind the festival, brought us in as part of the 30-year milestone celebrations. The brief was exciting: create large-scale art installations that embodied the spirit of yoga while making sustainability tangible, not as a side note, but as the centrepiece.
That is exactly where recycled plastic from Puducherry's beaches becomes meaningful.
The same ocean these yoga participants face during their morning practice also carries
tonnes of plastic waste. Using that waste to build sculptures of yoga poses, right here, right
now, closes a loop that people feel, not just understand.
The two-week build involved sorting and cleaning beach plastic, pressing it into heat-fused sheets, cutting and shaping each pose, and then transporting and assembling all eight pieces on site, navigating real logistical challenges along the way. The installations now stand at the Puducherry government office premises.
Watching festival participants walk up to the sculptures, pausing, leaning in, asking questions, is what drives every project we take on. That curiosity is not just a nice moment. It is proof that the material changed. It is no longer a waste. It is a conversation.
We are grateful to the Puducherry government, the dignitaries present, and everyone who
made space for this work. At Maarpu, plastic is never a problem to manage, it is an untapped material. We set out to unlock its potential, one installation at a time.
