Last week at the Grown Brilliance flagship store in New York, we joined the brand’s founder, Akshie Jhaveri, to toast to an artistic collaboration: “Diamond Nebula.” The presentation included a series of works created by the Indian artist Shreya Mehta, featuring paintings made of diamond dust. Aimed to reimagine the nature of diamonds, the series drew on inspiration from NASA’s discovery of 55 Cancri Ae—a distant planet believed to contain vast quantities of diamonds. Shifts the narrative of rarity and value toward something more expansive and philosophical, the pieces revealed hand-ground mineral pigments topped with lab-grown diamond fragments, exploring themes of pressure, light, and transformation.
Rather than depicting outer space directly, “Diamond Nebula” balanced raw textures with atmospheric abstraction, evoking an otherworldly and intimate sensibility. Her process—rooted in ritual, silence, and a sensitivity to natural materials—aligns with Grown Brilliance’s own ethos of sustainability and innovation, particularly in its use of repurposed diamond byproducts. With “Diamond Nebula,” the collaboration expands the language of art and jewelry, positioning diamonds not as symbol of luxury, but as an ingredient in a narrative about creation.
Mehta and Jhaveri shared with Whitewall how manmade and organic materials sparked a creative dialogue, the challenges and discoveries of working with unconventional forms, and how shared values—from environmental consciousness to philanthropy—shaped the project’s direction.
Collaborating with Grown Brilliance
Courtesy of Grown Brilliance.
Courtesy of Grown Brilliance.
WHITEWALL: Can you tell us a bit about your relationship with Grown Brilliance and how this collaboration came to fruition?
SHREYA MEHTA: It began quietly, about a year ago. Grown Brilliance (Akshie) didn’t come to me with a brief or a product in mind. She sent me diamonds and diamond byproducts, dust, shards, fragments, and essentially said —> see what you find. That kind of openness is rare. For an artist, it is everything. I wasn’t being asked to decorate or illustrate, I was being invited to sit with the material and listen. The collaboration grew from there, slowly, through curiosity. Diamond stopped being a gemstone in my mind and became a medium with its own weight, its own history, its own quiet insistence.
WW: Inspiration for “Diamond Nebula” came from NASA’s recent discovery of a planet composed largely of diamond, 55 Cancri Ae. Can you elaborate on this?
SM: When I first read about 55 Cancri Ae, something shifted in me. Here is an entire planet of diamond, out there in the dark. Suddenly what we treat as the rarest thing on Earth exists in abundance in the cosmos. That humbled me, and it also freed me. Diamond stopped being about scarcity or ownership and became about perspective. Diamond Nebula came out of that turning, the recognition that this material we guard so carefully is, on another scale, simply part of the universe doing what it does.
AKSHIE JHAVERI: The discovery of 55 Cancri Ae really shifted perspective for us. We usually think of diamonds as rare, precious objects, but this was an entire planet made largely of diamond. That contrast felt powerful. It introduced this idea of scale, mystery, and something almost surreal, which became the starting point for Diamond Nebula. We wanted to capture that sense of wonder and translate it into something you can actually experience up close.
WW: “Diamond Nebula” also aligns with a lineage of artists who have sought to merge spiritual abstraction with elemental materiality, including Yves Klein, Anish Kapoor, Agnes Martin, and more. How did this inspire you, too?
SM: These are artists I keep returning to, again and again. What draws me to Klein, Kapoor, Martin is that they do not try to depict the infinite, they create conditions for you to feel it. A single blue. A void. A grid of pencil lines.
My process is my own, shaped by my spiritual practice, but I share their intention, to make work that is not only looked at but entered. The thesis I wrote for this collection is in many ways an ode to them, a way of placing myself in that lineage while still finding my own language within it.
Creating “Diamond Nebula”
Courtesy of Grown Brilliance.
WW: Tell us more about creating these pieces. How were they made? Tell us about the materials, your studio, how long it took, etc.
SM: My practice is bound to the natural world. I grind my own pigments from plants, minerals, earth. I do not use plastics or anything toxic, everything that enters the work has to be alive in some way. Bringing diamond into this was both intuitive and a little unknown to me. I worked with diamond dust, shards, prismatic fragments, layering them into surfaces that built up slowly over many sessions.
Some pieces took weeks. There is a physicality in the layering, the body is very much involved, but there is also surrender. You learn to let the materials tell you where they want to sit. You stop forcing.
AJ: A big part of this process was working with diamond dust, which is actually a byproduct of growing lab diamonds. At Grown Brilliance, we’re always thinking about how to reduce waste, so using something that would otherwise be discarded felt very intentional. The pieces were built in layers, focusing a lot on texture and how light interacts with the materials. It was a fairly hands on, detailed process that took several weeks to complete. It also ties back to our larger commitment to sustainability, whether that’s repurposing materials like this or using recycled gold in our jewelry.
Courtesy of Grown Brilliance.
WW: What do these pieces and the name of the exhibition represent?
SM: “Diamond Nebula” lives in the space between the cosmic and the internal. A diamond is carbon that has been held under pressure long enough to become light. That process, to me, is not only geological, it is spiritual. Each piece carries that tension, something vast held inside something intimate. The outer universe and the inner one mirroring each other.
AJ: The idea of a nebula felt really fitting because it represents creation and constant evolution. These works are about pushing diamonds beyond their traditional role and exploring them in a more fluid, expressive way. It’s less about structure and more about movement, light, and energy. Overall, it’s saying that diamonds go beyond jewelry.
Imagining Art in Silence
Courtesy of Grown Brilliance.
WW: These works were created in silence. You mentioned, “During my period of maun vrat, my silent fast, I entered a state where language dissolved, and only vibration, color, and breath remained. In that stillness, the act of painting became prayer.” Can you tell us more about why creating this silence was important to you?
SM: Maun vrat is a Jain practice of silent fasting, and it changes the way you are in your own body. Without words, spoken, written, even the internal chatter, your attention moves somewhere else. You start to hear color. You feel the weight of a brushstroke before you make it.
The work that came out of that silence was not planned, it arrived. Painting became less of an action and more of a prayer (not sure if we want to add about praying?), something I was inside of rather than doing.
An Unusual Material: Diamond Dust
Courtesy of Grown Brilliance.
WW: What about working with “diamond dust” was of interest to you? Any interesting challenges or opportunities this material presented?
SM: Diamond behaves differently in each of its forms. Dust catches the light like a held breath. Shards cut and refract. Prismatic fragments throw color in directions you cannot predict. That unpredictability was both the gift and the challenge. The material also carries so much cultural weight, permanence, value, status & I had to find a way to let it be present in the work without letting it become decorative. It needed to feel integrated almost inevitable. Not applied to the surface, but part of it.
WW: Proceeds from the sale of your works were donated to the Make A Wish Foundation. What does this philanthropic tie mean for you and the sale?
SM: For me, the work has to go somewhere beyond the gallery wall. Supporting Make A wish felt right because the foundation works in the same territory the paintings do—possibility, transformation equals wonder. And there was a small serendipity that moved me. Maureen mentioned in her speech that Make A Wish has a star in their logo. These paintings are about stars, about a diamond planet, about light. That alignment was not planned, and those are often the connections that matter the most.
AJ: Giving back is something that’s always been important to us at Grown Brilliance and to me personally. Partnering with Make A Wish made this project feel even more meaningful, because it connects the work to something bigger than itself. It’s not just about creating something beautiful, but also about having a real impact, which is something we always try to keep at the core of what we do.
What’s Next
Courtesy of Grown Brilliance.
Courtesy of Grown Brilliance.
WW: What are you both working on next?
SM: I am developing a new series built around mirrors and reflection. It feels like the natural next breath after Diamond Nebula. If this body of work was about refraction, light passing through… he next is about reflection, light returned. The surfaces will hold the viewer, so that looking at the work becomes a form of looking at oneself. It stays rooted in stillness and slow material practice, but the inquiry moves inward.
Less about observing, and more about encountering. AWARENESS.
AJ: We’re always looking for new ways to collaborate, especially with artists who bring a fresh perspective. A big focus for us is continuing to build Grown Brilliance as a platform for both emerging and established creatives, while also finding ways to give back through those partnerships. There’s a lot we’re exploring right now across art and design, so this is definitely just the beginning.
Courtesy of Grown Brilliance.
