Hope amid decay and dereliction

Monica Arora

There is something unusual, almost insidious, about artist Asim Waqif’s artworks that evoke a sense of awe amid onlookers. The Delhi-based architect from the School of Planning and Architecture had a stint as an art director for documentaries, film and television before he succumbed to the lure of full-fledged art practice.

One cannot walk into a show by Waqif to expect works of beauty. What meets the eye are ruins from decaying structures and crumbling buildings, all painstakingly collected to form an integral part of his installations. For instance, in his latest solo exhibition, Residual Fears, on view at Nature Morte in Delhi till May 5, the interiors seem to have undergone a temporary makeover to accommodate his artworks.

The numerous installations leave the audience baffled, some by their sheer volume, the rest by their sheer audacity. One can discover several installations under the genre Ground Zero: Truck bomb at Northgate Hotel, Kabul (2016) described as “a UV Print on aluminium composite panel, worked on with a CNC router, folded and mounted on an aluminium frame” or Ground Zero: Coordinated Bombing in Karrada, Baghdad (2016) or even Collapse analysis of municipal demolition under Supreme Court oversight, comprising “a microprismatic sheet mounted on aluminium composite panel and archival print on vinyl”, which are direct references to these incidents in recent past.

These works speak volumes about the disturbing and heart-wrenching socio-political scenarios existing in various nooks and crannies of the world today, including the systematic decay of the social, moral or economic order and the acts of fear, violence, mindless bloodshed practiced randomly by one nation against the other, based on prejudices of caste, colour, creed, gender, misogyny or just human greed to subjugate. Other artworks such as Rubble, Blight or even MG Road talk of the methodical demolition associated with the breaking down of urban structures, old, majestic bungalows in many posh colonies of New Delhi, such as Greater Kailash, to give way to structured multi-storeyed builder flats or the MCD’s brutal axe that fell on MG Road in view of “illegal constructions”, whose remains motorists still encounter on the road by the same name, enroute Gurugram from Delhi.

And not just this show, even his previous exhibitions speak critically of the atrocities of the contemporary world, particularly in countries such as Afghanistan, Israel or Syria. Developing countries with rubble, leftover construction material owing to rapid modernisation, depletion of the mineral and forest cover, wastage and unavailability of water, exhaustion of natural resources by some developed countries and even basic deprivation of food, clean air, water, electricity in underdeveloped nations and similar themes are an integral part of his thought-provoking displays.

“I am trying to explore the creative potential of decay and dereliction,” he had stated in an earlier online interview and indeed, the fact that he wants “trash and waste material” to be on display, effectively conveys the pain and angst he feels for issues plaguing the modern world.

It is indeed difficult to not get affected by Waqif’s evocative displays, deploying items from dilapidated buildings: small window pane handles, pieces of doors and window sills, rubbish accumulated at construction sites, steel pipes, and amidst these, carefully nurtured bamboo stems, “harvested and seasoned by the artist”, suggesting that he is invoking the inner human voice, which has somehow got lost in the rat-race of building a successful life.