Textual content by Anish Gawande. Pictures by Asad Sheikh.
Asim Waqif in his Delhi studio.
I present up at Asim Waqif’s door in Vasant Kunj in Delhi, solely to be instructed that he’s at his “workshop” within the constructing reverse. Struggling to comprise a chuckle — I’ve by no means heard of an artist’s studio being known as a workshop earlier than — I stroll over. I’m not the primary to make this error this morning; Verve’s photographer Asad Sheikh had additionally proven up at his residence a couple of minutes earlier (earlier than being promptly escorted to Waqif by his youthful daughter).
As I enter the house — the third and smallest house he’s operated out of after the pandemic — it turns into clear why “workshop” is perhaps a extra applicable moniker for Waqif’s studio. A large assortment of objects are strewn throughout the 4 rooms, with works in various levels of completion stacked up on tables and towards partitions. A whole bunch of instruments are stuffed into drawers, mendacity on chairs and occupying pleasure of place on counter areas. Crowbars and hammers, screwdrivers and indistinguishable items of flat metallic all come collectively in a melange that gives a revealing glimpse right into a trademark dwelling, respiration model cultivated during the last twenty years.
Sheets of metallic strewn round in Waqif’s studio.
Maybe it’s apt that Waqif thrives in such a setting. He studied on the College of Planning and Structure in Delhi after which labored as an artwork director on movie units and as a documentary filmmaker earlier than lastly taking over the mantle as a full-time “artist”. His apply spans a spread of disciplines — from artwork and structure to design — and has pushed conversations round what constitutes public house and the way we occupy these. He’s additionally fairly good at what he does: the explanation I’m right here is as a result of Waqif is the recipient of the primary Asia Arts Pathbreaker Award being introduced by the Asia Society India Centre in February.
As we meander throughout rooms, he tells me about how his first job after faculty was as an apprentice at an old-school carpenter’s workshop the place he was “taught methods to preserve instruments earlier than being allowed to make use of them”. I ask him what his instrument of alternative is. The reply comes instantly: “Knives!” With a gleam in his eyes, he pulls out a powerful assortment: scythes historically used to hack via fields or forests, curved saws to chop the rounded edges of bamboo, pruning shears with shorter blades however longer and sturdier handles. They’ve been collected from everywhere in the world and utilized in all types of tasks through the years. His favorite? A fragile, extremely sharp Japanese knife. “That,” he assures me, “is for sushi.”
Glimpses of the artist’s assortment of knives.
Waqif is finest recognized for his work with bamboo. After his first set up baans (2005) — as a part of a residency at Khoj Studios and prompted by the Delhi-based arts organisation’s director Pooja Sood — he has gone on to make Durga Pujo pandals out of intricate bamboo mesh in Kolkata and (most lately) a spectacular bamboo shelter for the Hayward Gallery terrace in London as a part of the distinguished Bagri Basis Fee. His most formidable challenge, nevertheless, is a bamboo plantation in Sylhet, Bangladesh known as Bamsera Bamsi. Supported by the Samdani Artwork Basis, the plantation — now coming into its seventh yr — is a dwelling sculpture that Waqif returns to periodically to mould and form into newer varieties, crafting bridges and buildings and shapes right into a grove that retains getting denser.
Ultimately, what occurs to all these large-scale installations? “My installations take actually lengthy to place collectively — after which they’re disassembled and bought to scrap or secondary markets. I like working this manner, it’s higher than making one thing that lasts without end and ever,” says Waqif.
Left to proper: A metallic sheet that has been reshaped by way of repeated knife thrusts on its floor; A prototype of an set up.
A contentious negotiation with the fabric he makes use of is on the centre of Waqif’s work. As an architect, he frolicked visiting a wide range of stepwells throughout Rajasthan — a ardour that’s continued, albeit in a morphed type. With bamboo, Waqif has been on the forefront of a analysis challenge began in 2005 that appears on the “prototyping of non-chemical bamboo-seasoning strategies primarily based on vernacular practices within the North-East of India”. Bamboo, Waqif explains, is perhaps pure — however the poisonous merchandise used to deal with it to forestall it from decaying have a major destructive impression on the atmosphere. The ecological sensitivity intrinsic to his apply, then, calls for an moral dedication in direction of discovering an answer.
There’s no bamboo round proper now, nevertheless. “Please write about that,” Waqif mumbles, including, solely half-jokingly, that he’s “uninterested in being known as a ‘bamboo artist’ in all of the items written on me”. The dimensions of the house, and the monumental scale of most of his works involving bamboo, imply that Waqif’s installations are all site-specific. The workshop, as a substitute, is crammed with battered sheets of galvanised metal sporting shades of azure blue.
Cyanotype photograms on galvanized metal — Waqif’s signature work with metallic.
Created in collaboration with an area trunk maker in accordance with paper fashions common by Waqif, these sheets are a part of a brand new physique of labor that he’s taking part in round with. As soon as bent into form, these sheets — resembling origami mountain folds — are then formed utilizing Waqif’s assortment of instruments earlier than getting colored utilizing a exceptional photosensitive cyanotype course of within the darkroom throughout the workshop. The result’s stunning sculptural varieties washed over with placing, virtually fluorescent tints. In fact, as with the whole lot Waqif does, the aesthetic exists primarily on the service of the political. With bamboo, Waqif turns to the politics of sustainability. With rubber waste, he’s making an announcement on consumption. He remarks playfully, “Individuals with extra privilege create extra trash. So, I wish to see if I can put some trash again of their properties in some form or type — that’s what I’m making an attempt to do with the sculptures.”
Waqif is deeply troubled by consumption and jogs my memory that tuberculosis was as soon as known as consumption as a result of the illness noticed the physique eat itself. Within the fashionable world, this analogy runs deeper: we’re consumed by what we devour. His work extensively reuses supplies that will in any other case be thought-about nugatory — Bordel Monstre, his first exhibition in Europe on the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, used bits and items left over from earlier exhibitions; All we go away behind are the reminiscences, introduced on the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Modern Artwork in Brisbane used reclaimed timber from demolition websites throughout the town; and Fairly Wrecked on the Chicago Structure Biennial used discarded rubber tubing from the Chicago Useful resource Middle.
Left to proper: Waqif together with his youthful daughter; A henna drawing made by his daughters and their cousins on his left hand.
The dialog now shifts to the lounge of the house that we have now walked over from. Faculties have been shut due to the biting chilly and Waqif’s youthful daughter’s Zoom class has simply ended. Her doting father — whose most prized art work is a henna drawing made by her in cahoots together with her older sister and cousins on his hand — has been summoned again.
Sipping on a cup of chai that’s simply been supplied to me, I ask whether or not Waqif has learn the ebook I despatched over once we first spoke just a few weeks in the past. He hasn’t. The ebook in query is E. M. Cioran’s exceptional A Brief Historical past of Decay, written after World Conflict II, and I’m curious to delve deeper into Waqif’s aesthetic and theoretical engagements with the tortuous, advanced methods through which supplies come aside at their seams.
“Decay and destruction often have a destructive connotation in individuals’s minds. However if you wish to construct one thing, it’s important to break one thing. Breaking and demolishing can truly be constructive processes,” Waqif muses. “To me, decay is a type of preservation — like fermentation. It can save you issues by rotting them.” This fascination with rot informs Waqif’s work in Delhi, which — with its consistently shifting demographics and structural transformations — provides an excellent canvas for each statement and creation. As one a part of the town falls into disuse, one other takes on a brand new lifetime of its personal, igniting the artist’s curiosity in deserted areas. We share our experiences as two migrants to the town — him, an older one from Hyderabad, and me, the newer entrant from Mumbai.
Clockwise from high left: A framed assortment of bugs. An animal bone collected throughout Waqif’s treks. Honeybee hives from Waqif’s house advanced; the oil portray (beneath) is by Meenal Singh, Waqif’s classmate from the College of Planning and Structure in Delhi. A bamboo rhizome, together with rocks from rivers, are positioned on an previous Enbee speaker refurbished by Waqif.
Animatedly, Waqif factors to how zoning laws in Delhi (launched in 1961) prohibiting combined land use had reworked the character of historic markets. Whereas beforehand shopkeepers used to reside above their shops, a ban on industrial institutions working in areas marked for residential use reconfigured dwelling and dealing patterns within the metropolis. These laws have been overturned in 2006, leading to yet one more churn — the most recent amongst an extended litany consistently reshaping the town over centuries, every obscuring however not totally erasing the one which got here earlier than.
As we wrap up our interview, I pause to ask how his perception in regeneration and reuse seeps from the creative and theoretical into the private. Waqif admits that he’s a hoarder, however insists that he has no sentimental attachments to the issues he hoards. In actual fact, he tells me that over the course of shifting to the smaller workshop after the pandemic, he gave away dozens of kilos of ins and outs to the kabadiwala. At this level, I sense that parental tasks are tugging Waqif away from our dialog. I ask my last query: what’s the one factor he’s given away that he nonetheless misses?
“As soon as, I exchanged a pair of footwear for a sheepskin, on a trek. I then used that sheepskin to make a sculpture — and bought it. I miss that sheepskin.”
Anish Gawande is a author and curator. He’s additionally the founding father of the Dara Shikoh Fellowship, an interdisciplinary arts residency, and Pink Record India, the nation’s first archive of politicians supporting LGBTQIA+ rights.
