Indian Artist Looks to Bring Works to the Everyman

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/arts/06iht-rartwaqif06.html

Version 0 of 1.

MUMBAI — “I wasn’t interested in contemporary art, and I never thought I would become an artist,” said Asim Waqif, whose debut European solo show, “Bordel Monstre” (Monstrous Mess), opens at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris on Friday.

But Mr. Waqif, a former architect, said he felt limited designing within the confines of an office, and about seven years ago he started producing avant-garde installations.

For the Palais de Tokyo display, which runs through Jan. 21, Mr. Waqif, whose previous works have incorporated video, sound, dance and sculpture, has used unconventional material, weaving debris — like discarded wood panels, wiring, plastic waste, metal and dry waste — into an elaborate, interactive sculpture.

The 34-year-old multidisciplinary artist described the exhibit as a “means of making people aware of their own movement, to take into account an element of risk in their lives, of being careful and conscious.”

In an effort to stimulate all five senses, he built mechanical pedals and electronic panels into the mazelike structure so that spectators could actively engage with the work.

“People will be actors in the work, which includes light and sound,” said the show’s curator, Daria de Beauvais, by telephone. “It will be a unique experience for the audience because they will be able to hear, see, walk, feel and smell the work.”

“Bordel Monstre” is the culmination of Mr. Waqif’s fall residency in Paris, which was supported by SAM Art Projects, and is the first exhibition to be displayed in the recently expanded Palais’s Music Temple room, a space originally dedicated to creating electronic music. Describing the large room as “challenging to work in,” Ms. Beauvais said she was impressed by the artist’s ability to make it his own. “The way some people work with canvas, Asim works with space,” she said.

Mr. Waqif’s art is deeply informed by his background. “Because Asim trained as an architect he has a strong understanding of materiality and space,” said Pooja Sood, who runs the artists’ association Khoj, based in New Delhi.

Sunita Choraria, a prominent Mumbai-based contemporary art collector, whose garden displays the artist’s large-scale bamboo and rope sculpture “Zuk 1,” agreed. “He gets scale, volume and how to intervene in large spaces,” she said.

“Zuk 1,” a site-specific installation meant to act as an entrance to Mrs. Choraria’s garden, draws on the multiple ways bamboo is used in India, including scaffolding for construction projects. Light but extremely durable and able to handle weight, bamboo is considered a pedestrian material in India because of its abundance.

The use of bamboo underscores Mr. Waqif’s specific interest in vernacular architecture — the creation of innovative constructions using traditional, local materials — as well as in environmental sustainability. Since his initial foray into art seven years ago, he has built an oeuvre that comments on India’s consumerism and its effect on the environment.

His focus on India’s rapid economic development reflects a wider concern here about the price of such growth. Two years ago, Mr. Waqif created “HELP, Jumna’s Protest,” with his own funds, spending about 60,000 rupees, or $1,100, to install a work made of plastic bottles, LED lights and a metal frame spelling out “help” on the heavily polluted Yamuna river flowing through Delhi.

“We have such a strong association with water bodies in Indian culture but modern Delhi has been designed with its back to the river,” said Mr. Waqif. “The sheer amount of waste and sewage that is dumped into the city has obliterated the river. I tried to recreate the persona of the river goddess coming back using new-age technologies like LED lights.”

At a summer residency last year at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, where he was one of 65 artists selected from 2,041, Mr. Waqif deconstructed a studio space and transported the walls to an old, partially open-air shed on campus, where he reinstalled them, and then placed dead wood, moss, leaves, blankets and plastic around the work, to document the way these elements had been incorporated and absorbed, said Sarah Workneh, the co-director of the school, via e-mail.

Mr. Waqif then documented the way changes in the weather and the vagaries of nature affected the work, gradually taking over and harmonizing with the structure. The result, he said, supported his belief that “decay and destruction have an important role to play in adapting to the dynamism of society.”

“It was great in how he stretched himself in the natural environment, the community and the language of our campus, to create an architectural and emotional experience that was representative of his personal visual interests,” Ms. Workneh said.

Heidi Fichtner, a curator based in New Delhi who has worked with Mr. Waqif on many of his projects, said that the Skowhegan works, which incorporated various elements, including photographs and videos, will eventually be utilized elsewhere. “So the reality of decay is transformed into something new, loaded with significance and continuity,” she said.

Mr. Waqif grew up in what he describes as the liberal atmosphere of an academic household: his father was dean at Hyderabad Central University and his mother is an Urdu-language schoolteacher. The family is Dawoodi Bohra, a Shiite Islamic subsect known for its progressive values, but Mr. Waqif said that as children he and his friends never gave much thought to religion and that even today his work is more informed by his Indian identity than a religious one.

In fact, one of the main concerns of his work, Mr. Waqif says, is the absence of a tactile, experiential aspect to contemporary art. “Marketability has taken away the ability to touch art, to feel it,” he said. “It’s considered fragile. Art should be viewed as living, evolving, organic.” To counterbalance this rarefied approach to art, many of Mr. Waqif’s works have an element of interactivity.

“He is challenging a lot of set ideas of what art means to us,” said Aparajita Jain, his longtime gallerist at New Delhi’s Seven Art Gallery.

Tying in with his desire to make his works physically accessible, and his use of readily available materials, another main concern, he said, is making his art socially accessible, connecting with the Everyman, not just wealthy art collectors and gallerists. His works are often intentionally placed in unglamorous, arbitrary surroundings like abandoned buildings, far from the sleek world of urban galleries.

“I am not hung up on specific materials,” Mr. Waqif said. “What’s much more interesting is, who can access the work? Who can come see it? Contemporary Indian art is so disjointed from the public. It’s elitist. I want to connect with the average person in India.”