Asim Waqif's recent works, including वेणु [Venu] at Hayward Gallery in London (2023) and Improvise at Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2022) are characterised by their intricate designs, and sustainable materials, redefining the relationship between art and the environment. Waqif tackles ideas of consumption through his installations, and his fearless embrace of risk prompts viewers to confront their perceptions of stability in the built environment.

In recognition of his contributions to contemporary art, the Indian artist was recently honoured with Asia Society’s prestigious Asia Arts Pathbreaker Award. This accolade is a testament to his ability to consistently experiment with standard conventions of medium, geography and discipline, and pave the way for expressions that resonate across cultural and geographical boundaries.

In an interview with STIR, Asim Waqif provides insights into his artistic philosophy and ways of exploring risk in the realm of public art.

Vasudhaa Narayanan: What is your perspective on the current state of public art in India?

Asim Waqif: In India, public art is still immature. We have sculptures on traffic islands and public buildings which are largely decided by bureaucrats, while real estate and infrastructure projects are spewing out celebratory artworks. More recently, we have seen decorative murals in the name of street art all over our cities. Sometimes, they pretend to have context and community involvement, but mostly I find them quite shallow. The history of street art is inherently political and non-conformist. In India, it has manifested as decoration and a device for hegemonic propaganda.

Vasudhaa: How do you intend for your artistic interventions to intervene in the public space? What is the objective of it? Do you want to make a statement or is it for beauty?

Asim: Public art has interesting potential. One can tackle a subject without obviously taking a side. The grey areas in the middle are important for me. While working in activism, I often felt that the messaging was too direct, even accusatory. I think if one criticises someone then the person tends to get defensive or pass the blame. Art allows me to create questions playfully without an immediate resolution. The viewer is pushed to contemplate and introspect. Answers may emerge from their own thinking and this has a dynamic potential.

I prefer not to make permanent works in the public domain. Eventually, they tend to become a part of the greyness of urbanity. I think temporary gestures create a more impactful dialogue. And in eventually removing an artwork from the public domain, the space it once occupied becomes available for new endeavours.

Vasudhaa: Could you describe your process, and how you negotiate the spaces you work in?

Asim: Lately, I prefer to do projects over two or three phases across multiple visits. It can get difficult to go to a new place and immediately get into production. Initially, I do speculative research about the local context, socio-economic conditions, the lived environment and waste management, without an end goal in mind. This allows me to find things which I may not have noticed if I went in with a preconceived idea. From this research, the seed of the idea emerges.

I resist giving a very definite visualisation. I want to be free to innovate in the fabrication process and bring out the textures of the material I'm working with.

Vasudhaa: Do you see your work as collaborative and equitable?

Asim: I love collaboration. I am not aiming to be equitable. I find collaborators with the relevant skills and we collectively figure out the tools and materials required to realise the project. Instead of making all creative decisions, I want to create a conducive environment for fabrication such that each member of the team can flourish. Of course, there is a hierarchy, but I am controlling parameters and systems rather than the details of exactly how something is fabricated.

Vasudhaa: You have made iterations of existing works, and also repurposed materials from earlier sculptures. How important is the philosophy of iterations in your work?

Asim: We live in an economic system called consumption, which is a rather peculiar word because it means to use up and finish. So consumption in combination with planned obsolescence is going to create many new landfills and hills of trash in the near future.

For me, the art object itself, once made, is not that precious and never has been. I have often reused older sculptures to make new works. Reuse is a very important aspect of my practice, whether it's my own trash or the trash that the economy or society puts into the world.

Vasudhaa: Tell us about your experiments with bamboo at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, and more recently with वेणु [Venu] at Hayward Gallery in London.

Asim: Two things I find amazing about bamboo—whole bamboo is very strong as a pipe, but when split it becomes very flexible. The craft of bamboo work uses both of these properties in combination to create various structures. Even though it's a static form, it has a contemporary aesthetic with a sense of movement. I am trying to scale up these structures to make architectural forms and spaces. I find that basket weaving has a lot of similarities with algorithmically generated parametric designs. I am experimenting with vernacular basketry instead of computation to arrive at these forms. I also made bamboo percussion instruments for both projects using the space between the nodes as a sound box.

Vasudhaa: With the support of the Samdani Art Foundation, you have been working on a site-specific bamboo plantation since 2017 titled Bamsera Bamsi, in Bangladesh. You are taking the time to allow a project to evolve and build a relationship with the land. Can you talk about your continued engagement with earthworks as a form of your practice?

Asim: I don’t see myself as an earthwork artist but the living root bridges in Meghalaya inspired me to think of projects with a long production time. These bridges take three to five generations to make. The person who begins making a new bridge will probably not use it in his own lifetime!

The site in Sylhet, Bangladesh is very conducive for growing bamboo in terms of soil type and weather. The village folk have been growing and using bamboo for many generations. We first did mulching and removed the topsoil, which was then mixed with dry leaves, cow dung and a fermented concoction made by my brother, Nadeem. Then we dug a lake and used that earth to make mounds slightly higher than the surroundings to plant the bamboo, as bamboo rhizomes don't like to get flooded. We planted 13 different species using two different propagation methods. Companion plants like kochu and palms were transplanted from the surroundings. We put local fish in the lake and there’s a thriving ecosystem of frogs, snakes and birds on the site.

Now in its seventh year of experimentation, we are enmeshing the growing bamboo with harvested and seasoned bamboo to create a nest of cocoons. We are also making various aeolian and percussion instruments with bamboo. I have given myself 15 years to experiment with no real end goal in mind.

Vasudhaa: Your work encourages people to enter it, and become a part of it, as opposed to the traditional nature of ‘seeing art’. Could you talk about what you want people to feel?

Asim: I visited the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris many years ago. They have an amazing collection of musical instruments from around the world including India, the Pacific Islands, Indonesia, and Africa. To me, they seem to be stagnating in their climate-controlled prisons. In the obsession to conserve the object, the possibility of musical production is lost.

While museums navigate such boundaries, some of my interactive works are specifically designed to counter this museum experience. If you are a passive viewer, then you’ll see it as an aesthetic object and you may not realise that there are other aspects to the work. If you are curious and irreverent, then new experiences will reveal themselves.

Vasudhaa: How do you balance your commercial and artistic practice?

Asim: Galleries are a marketplace for generating wealth from artistic pursuits. I want to earn a living from my work but I am personally not interested in getting into sales, transportation and insurance, so the gallery system provides an essential service for me.

However, galleries tend to push artists to keep producing what is easy to transact, and the lure of money can be hard to resist. I want to be on both sides of the fence and make some works that can sell while other large-scale works have no possibility of transaction. They cannot be resold or remade. Both these practices intermingle and build on each other.

Vasudhaa: Finally, what are you working on currently? What excites you?

Asim: I was in Japan in November 2023 to research a project for the Forest Art Festival in Okayama. The installation will be made in September this year. Japan has such an amazing tradition in the use of bamboo and I’m excited to work there. But honestly, the future looks limiting as we move towards a more conformist society. It has become difficult to critique. Self-censorship has crept into practitioners, institutions and businesses. Hysteria and paranoia are rampant. Everything is a celebration and I am feeling quite nauseated.