NAI & THE ART OF REUSING
Mumbai-based artist MANISH NAI, known for his photographs of faded billboards, says he likes to compress the city in his work, literally. Interested in the nature of time and space, he compresses ordinary objects to make pillars, boxes and just about anything. His latest solo show, which opened recently at Het Noordbrabants Museum in the Netherlands, is a commentary on the temporariness of Mumbai.
Why do you work with waste?
For me, it’s new material though it is discarded from daily life. During the last few years I have been working extensively with old clothes, newspapers, cardboard boxes, etc. My idea is to ‘reuse’ and completely transform the core form into something else.
How did you start compressing waste material to make art?
I am a trained painter. While using jute as a surface for my painting almost 15 years ago, which is when I began my career as an artist, I realised that I could pull out the threads and create patterns as jute is made of vertical and horizontal threads. I started storing discarded threads in boxes. When I opened the box, I observed that the threads had taken the shape of the box. That’s when I realised the sculptural possibility of my work. For me, it is a very intense and natural shift from one dimension to another. Making sculptures with clothes is a very physical and labouroriented work, and my work is more about reusing and reprocessing.
The Prudential Eye Awards (held in Singapore) named you as one of the best-emerging artists in its painting category, yet you’ve said you started photographing faded billboards precisely because you couldn’t paint.
I had decided to send the billboard photos, which I view as ‘found paintings’. These are pure photos, but people thought I had done some digital work. I started photographing billboards during the recession when the advertising agencies were affected, the billboards were empty and rain and sun left their marks on them. For me, it is a kind of visual that doesn’t give complete information and the text and numbers are unclear. like the economic conditions.
“During the recession, billboards were empty, rain and sun left their marks on them. Text was unclear like the economic conditions”