Featured image: “লয় [Loy]” (2019), Arjunpur Amra Sabai Club, Kolkata. Photo by Vivian Sarky
In his monumental, swirling structures, Delhi-based artist Asim Waqif merges tenets of architecture and sculpture into sweeping site-specific compositions. Using natural materials like bamboo and pandanus leaves, he often incorporates found objects, scaffolding, sound elements, cloth, and rope.
Waqif draws on his studies in architecture and experience in film and TV art direction, considering location, material, and the experience of moving around or through the work. Building each installation involves complex “manual processes that are deliberately painstaking and laborious, while the products themselves are often temporary and sometimes even designed to decay,” he says.