India, May 29 -- To visit the new V&A East museum in London, one must walk across a massive installation embedded into the cement floor outside it. The great white ceramic circles interconnected on vines, look a lot like flowers, segments of DNA or some entangled design. But artist Lubna Chowdhary, who created it, refers to it as her own giant kolam at the threshold of East London's art district.

Chowdhary was born in Tanzania to parents of South Asian origin and moved to England at a young age. She cites big-city architecture, especially in the industrial area of Rochdale in Greater Manchester, as a big influence. She was also her mother's helper in her job as a seamstress. But at London's Royal College of Art, she chose to study cerami...