Beyond the diplomatic meetings, the 18th BRICS Summit is inspiring a creative welcome across India.Prefer HTon Google As leaders of the 11-member BRICS grouping - Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE - converge on Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi for the September 12–13 summit, the occasion is also being marked through art.Odisha's sand artist Manas Kumar Sahoo has created a vibrant artwork welcome to BRICS leadersSand becomes a canvasManas Kumar Sahoo's sand artOdisha-based sand artist Manas Kumar Sahoo has created a vibrant sand animation in Puri on Friday as a welcome to BRICS leaders arriving in India. Made entirely through sand, the artwork brings together portraits of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, alongside an illustration of Bharat Mandapam, where the summit will be held. Sahoo completed the elaborate piece after eight hours.BRICS leaders carved in chalkBijay Kumar's chalk artOdisha based chalk artist Bijay Kumar, has created one-centimetre-tall chalk portraits of the five founding BRICS leaders - Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi, Xi Jinping and Cyril Ramaphosa. Using specialised micro-tools, Kumar carved each face directly into blackboard chalk, spending up to two days on a single portrait. The complete artwork took him nearly a month of painstaking work at his workshop in Berhampur. The miniature composition also incorporates colourful BRICS lettering, the five countries’ flags and the official 2026 summit logo. It was officially finished and unveiled on Friday. The South African Embassy has contacted Odisha miniature chalk artist Bijay Kumar to discuss sending his intricate BRICS chalk sculpture to South Africa.A taste of IndiaThe BRICS media kit goes beyond the usual summit paperwork. Curated by the Ministry of External Affairs in collaboration with three state governments, the kit brings together products from Bihar, Odisha and Gujarat, giving international and Indian media a taste of the country’s regional food traditions and craft heritage.From Bihar come sattu and makhana. Odisha contributes coffee from Koraput, while Gujarat contributes colourful handicrafts such as Ajrakh and mirror work. The selection was deliberately put together to tell what the MEA describes as the “India Story” to journalists covering the summit.Diplomacy on canvasDr Jagjot Singh Rubal acrylic artIn Amritsar on Friday, artist Dr Jagjot Singh Rubal has taken the BRICS welcome to a much larger scale with a 5 × 8 ft acrylic painting featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other global leaders participating in the summit. Created in the artist’s Amritsar studio, the large-format work brings the leaders together in a single composition, conceived as a tribute to international cooperation and the growing significance of BRICS. Rubal completed the painting ahead of the summit and expressed the hope that it would be displayed at the summit venue; otherwise, he said he would send it to Modi.