Amrita Sethi, NFT artist who created Voice Art

Posted by Ravindu Dabarera Posted: Jul 16, 2021

Having worked for over 15 years as a banker, Amrita Sethi took the bold leap into the art sector. SiGMA caught up with Amrita during our Dubai show to get a deeper look at her work

Amrita wasn’t always an artist, having started off initially in the finance world as a banker for 15 years. About 3 years ago she looked to find a “more entrepreneurial calling”. “I’d been in the corporate world for a very long time,” she explained, “so I wanted to do something a bit more entrepreneurial.”

In that move from the corporate world to the entrepreneurial world, I decided to connect to my creative self. When we’re younger some of us have that creative instinct and I had some time off and thought to myself “I’d love to connect to that”.

As if she had conducted a cost-benefit analysis as an ode to her past life, Amrita ended up creating “Voice Note Art”. The multi-media art form felt so unique to her that she copyrighted it. She took this opportunity to hone her skills since she wasn’t formally trained as an artist.

Bankers talk about Art, Artists talk about Money

The leap from banking to art isn’t one you hear of often. “It is a kind of duality, and the duality exists in all of us,” she said, going on to note that “we’re channelled to do one thing or another.”

At the beginning, I felt almost embarrassed to say to my financial community that I was an artist because I would be judged. On the artist side, they almost see money as a bad thing. It’s a bit like you can’t be seen as being creative if you understand money.

What is Voice Note Art?

To create her art, Amrita first captures a word, any word, and extracts the shape and structure of the soundwave. Each of the lines of sound are then taken and drawn to match the meaning of the work.

It’s all based on this concept that “a picture can say a thousand words”. If you flip it on its head, a word is worth a thousand pictures.

As she explained, she’s capturing your story but in a dynamic way, using your sound and your story. Whether it’s a person, a city, a feeling – any word has got so much depth and dimension that you could tell that story within the artwork.