Ideas that can't be junked

A group of artists are working relentlessly to make art from junk, thereby ‘up-cycling’ waste. One man’s trash is surely another man’s treasure, writes Hema Vijay

We don’t normally frame junk, or put it up on a pedestal. But then comes in a young man with some outlandish ideas on waste. It struck ‘Paperman’ Mathew Jose, who has long been working to get urban India to recycle paper rather than junk it, that paper was but one symptom of the larger problem; just the tip of the urban attitude iceberg which thinks nothing of churning up bins and bins of waste, day after day, so much so that the wall-e scenario of a junkyard planet seems more and more ominously plausible. So ‘Paperman’ decided to add life to waste by adding art to it.
“The thought of living with waste or junk is difficult to accept, or even understand.

Waste feels repulsive to many. But when we see an artwork made from waste, you feel drawn to junk. You lose the aversion,” elaborates Mathew Jose, a.k.a. Paperman, which also happens to be the name of the organisation he started to deal with the growing burden and challenges of managing paper waste. So he got together with Shylaja Chetlur and Nina Reddy, who run the chic art centre Art & Soul on the beautiful East Coast Road that meanders from Chennai to Pondicherry.

Together they conceptualised a junk art festival that included not just an art collection, but also an eco market, an eco fashion show and an online waste art contest. In fact, even the music band at the festival launch played some improvised junk music by incorporating junk from around the venue — like cola cans and tins — to their repertoire of musical instruments. At the fashion show, models scorched the ramp with outfits made from medical gauze, bubble wrap, mesh, and the like.
Thus was born ‘Re-stART Earth’. This fabulous collection of art made from junk, an idea that fired up the imagination of senior artists, as well as nine-year-olds like Nidhi, whose ‘Me and my pet dog April’, was an endearingly simple and positive work made from a disposable ice cream container, spoons, pepsi bottles, bits of old t-shirts, corrugated paper and an old smiley toy ball. Participating artists included noted names like Yuvaraj V, Vivek Rao, Shailesh B O, Sasi Kumar K, Sujatha Mundra, Riaz Khan, Ramani V V, Potrarasan S, Natesh M, Joyston Christopher Vaz, Jayaraj S, Chitra Mandanna, Arunagiri S and Anjan Cariappa. While some of these artists have been working with found material and discarded junk even prior to the conceptualisation of Re-stART Earth, others got infected by the junk virus and produced their first junk art here.

Eclectic collection

Inescapably then, it was an eclectic art collection, with as many media explored as the kind of junk the artists had access to. For instance, Yuvaraj V queries through an assemblage of one-time use objects, used match sticks and torn daily sheets of calendars, if the entire planet is becoming a ‘use and throw’ object for us humans. “Do we realise that we don’t have a spare,” he asks. Meanwhile, the sculpture of K Sasi Kumar, ‘Transition, Then and now’, made from scrap iron rods, has two sitting Buddhas and two trees; the sitting Buddha under the tree represents human humbleness; the other sitting Buddha happens to be bigger than the tree. “It reveals the attitude of man seeing himself (to be bigger) than the tree — i.e., nature,” he explains. While the bigger tree has birds, of course, on the other tree, no birds sing. And then there is artist Potrarasan who has created an outlandish landscape with building material like FRO and acrylic paint.

Of course, collage happens to a recycled art genre that is quiet ancient, though artists like V V Ramani, who work extensively with collage art, happen to be a rarity in the country. Here, he makes an art narrative that tries to understand the balance in our ecosystem. And rather than sniping and paste strips of paper in traditional collage format, Chitra Mandanna has stacked up folded strips of paper to create a sculptural version of collage art that lets you perceive forms by their surface level changes and directional arrays, rather than gross colour differences. Chitra Mandanna also works with discarded egg cartons and the magnetic audio tapes of the now extinct music cassettes and the like.

A dig at the future

Most intriguing is ‘The simple man of the future’, a three-part sequel by Joyston Christopher Vaz. The fractured installation is what you might expect if junk were to spontaneously evolve into a life form, when the world is awash with junk. Made with break wires, pedals, handles, car wiper blades, helmets and the like, this zany work is a show stealer. “Basically, it is a hypothetical concept that is set at a point of time in the future when man has already exploited and devoured all resources of the planet; he has become bionic and has to use whatever is available in the planet then, and ends up scavenging whatever is available,” Joyston explains. A work inspired by a genre of retro future and steam punk, it is a mocking take on man’s future, and was put together with junk donated from friends. Anjan Cariappa takes a similar dig at mankind through cartoons. She draws a link to our collective and unresponsive urban attitude to the piling up waste with a verse from the epic Mahabharata’s masterly philosophical chapter, Yakshaprashnam, that the greatest irony that exists in this world is that, though every human being witnesses death all around, we all live as if we are going to live forever. And of course, Shailesh B O makes a massive statement with his installation with found objects like cycle radials, tin cans and paper mache. “A cycle symbolises a bygone technology. The oil tins symbolise celebration. The movement of the cycle is loaded with celebration which liberates human kind. Movement of technology should liberate a human being rather than become his trap,” he states. Then there are the decorative art panels fashioned by Sujatha Mundra from discarded objects.

“Re-stART earth is not a solution. It is just one creative initiative to increase awareness about our environment and waste through art,” says Mathew, the young man who decided to venture into social entrepreneurship as a precursor to his MBA dreams. So, what is the status of the MBA now? “Every time I sit back to think seriously about my MBA, irresistible ‘junk’ projects come up. For now, I guess I just want to create sustainable solutions. It is my chance to make a difference.

Meanwhile, I am learning a lot”. Apparently, a scientist’s eye or an artist’s touch can redeem art, transforming it into value. ‘Up-cycling waste’ is what Mathews calls it.

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