Natasha Desai

Natasha Desai is a mosaic artist based in Dubai. Her practice began with a fascination for the ancient art of tessellation — the painstaking arrangement of small pieces of stone, glass and ceramic into a whole image — and has grown into a body of figurative, landscape and abstract work exhibited across the UAE.

Every piece begins as raw material — sheets of stained glass, hand-poured smalti from Venice, marble offcuts, iridescent tiles, gold leaf laid behind glass — cut by hand and set one fragment at a time. The process is slow by design. It's what gives each surface its unmistakable movement of light.

In parallel with her studio practice, Natasha teaches. She was the first artist in Dubai to introduce the Picassiettetechnique — the French tradition of building mosaic from broken china — and has since led hundreds of students through their first cuts, setting and grouting.

Her studio welcomes commissions of all scales, from small portraits and pet studies to architectural installations for homes, gardens and public spaces.