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A contentious negotiation with the material he uses is at the centre of artist Asim Waqif’s oeuvre. Best known for his work with bamboo, the artist also creates aesthetic sculptural forms from waste. Verve interacts with the recipient of the first Asia Arts Pathbreaker Award 2024 at his studio in New DelhiI show up at Asim Waqif’s door in Vasant Kunj in Delhi, only to be told that he’s at his “workshop” in the building opposite.
Eventually, what happens to all these large-scale installations? “My installations take really long to put together — and then they are disassembled and sold to scrap or secondary markets. I like working this way, it’s better than making something that lasts forever and ever,” says Waqif. There’s no bamboo around right now, however. “Please write about that,” Waqif mumbles, adding, only half-jokingly, that he’s “tired of being called a ‘bamboo artist’ in all the pieces written on me”. The size of the apartment, and the monumental scale of most of his works involving bamboo, mean that Waqif’s installations are all site-specific. The workshop, instead, is filled with battered sheets of galvanised steel sporting shades of azure blue.
The conversation now shifts to the living room of the home that we have walked over from. Schools have been shut because of the biting cold and Waqif’s younger daughter’s Zoom class has just ended. Her doting father — whose most prized artwork is a henna drawing made by her in cahoots with her older sister and cousins on his hand — has been summoned back.
Clockwise from top left: A framed collection of insects. An animal bone collected during Waqif’s treks. Honeybee hives from Waqif’s apartment complex; the oil painting is by Meenal Singh, Waqif’s classmate from the School of Planning and Architecture in Delhi. A bamboo rhizome, along with rocks from rivers, are placed on an old Enbee speaker refurbished by Waqif.
“Once, I exchanged a pair of shoes for a sheepskin, on a trek. I then used that sheepskin to make a sculpture — and sold it. I miss that sheepskin.”