YESTERDAY’S TRASH, TOMORROW’S DECOR

ø A wall piece with goat horns mounted on a mirror cut in the shape of a face.

Aswad Sheikh tells everyone he knows to inform him before throwing out the junk from their homes. What happens next is a work of art.

Aswad Sheikh, Founder of Trash Talk Studio

I have a business background. I didn’t study art, but always had a knack for fixing things at home, making new things, and carpentry. When I was young, whenever there were carpenters at home I would sit with them and observe; I’d take their tools and just play with them.

I was brought up in Dubai and studied there before working in the corporate world, which I truly disliked. One day, I woke up and decided that I wanted to live by myself and do something on my own. I told my parents that I was leaving and they were really upset about it.

I moved to Mumbai thinking that I would do something in advertising because I had ideas and I was creative. I took up internships and did a course in advertising. But it didn’t go too well because experience is essential and you don’t get a break so easily. Then something wonderful happened.

About two years ago, I visited Chor Bazaar in the city. While I was always interested in carpentry and fabrication, I had never put more thought into it. At the market, I saw so many vintage items just collecting dust. So I picked up some stuff and made art pieces which went to the Kala Ghoda Festival and a couple of other art festivals around Mumbai and Gujarat.

øAn old typewriter turns predator.

ø Rickshaws now have digital meters, but that doesn't mean the old ones can't be useful.

I made my first-ever piece after seeing an old typewriter. It reminded me of Predator, that old Arnold Schwarzenegger movie I grew up watching, and the image of the Alien with dreadlocks instantly formed in my head. I picked up the typewriter, took it to my one-room kitchen studio and gave it the shape of a predator’s body. It’s a 6-feet tall Alien with dreadlocks made out of bed springs. It looks cool and ferocious. While it’s something people won’t keep in their houses for lack of space, these installations make it to exhibitions and restaurant displays.

I give broken items a new shape and a new life. Rustic and rugged is my style – which helps when you’re starting out because of the constant pressure of being different from everybody else. In fact, I don’t like to finish a product completely and leave them at 95% done. People seem to like that it’s different and quirky.

I don’t focus merely on one subject, nor do I only work with metal or wood. I use anything I feel can be used in some way or the other for home décor. My recent work was agrarian, so I used these goat, ram and bull horns and converted them into a lamp. My personal favourite is a wall piece with goat horns on a mirror cut in the shape of a face. When you look in the mirror, it looks like you have horns.

ø Butchers often throw away horns. Trash Talk Studio picks them up and turns them into lamps like this one.

I love the idea of not looking for a subject. I can just be walking down on a street when an interesting item atop a raddhiwala’s pile of newspapers catches my attention. I also pull over when I spot something on a raddhiwala’s handcart. My materials and subjects are everywhere and anywhere.

I don’t really go to Chor Bazaar and other markets with the intention of buying a specific item to upcycle. I enter, walk around and buy anything in which I see potential. I imagine it from a person’s perspective and think whether he/she would like to buy that particular art piece for their house. Sometimes the idea comes immediately while on other occasions, I sit and stare at the piece and sometimes the light bulb atop of my head sets off a couple of days later.

I have my staple vintage cameras, wooden art pieces and broken lamps which I fix and add my own elements. Apart from that, I like to pick up pieces lying underneath the rubble, which have long been forgotten and have some history.

Anything that was made two or three decades ago was built with passion and by hand and a lot of hard work has gone into it. I try my best to not repeat any art piece or have any similarity between them as I like my clients to have the luxury of having a one-of-a-kind piece for their collection.

I think these days we have lost interesting things to talk about. So with every art piece, I also try to sell a story. I like to share the story of the piece with the person buying it so that they pass it on to those who see it later in their homes. I was making big art pieces initially, but they don’t really sell because most Bombay houses are small. Then I started making art décor for homes, restaurants and commercial offices, and earned commission through these smaller items. I initially called it Art Core, but later changed the name to Trash Talk since I work with a lot of trash.

ø An old-school camera gets a new life as a lamp.

ø A different take on the simple coat hanger.

For personal requests, people contact me and tell me that they have a particular piece and don’t know what they do with it. We sit together and figure it out. Recently, I met someone with a vintage radio that doesn’t work. We could convert it into a Bluetooth radio that works wirelessly, but with the body of a classic from her grandfather’s time.

I do everything from finding the material to attending client meetings to sitting with the fabricator. I make a trip to Chor Bazaar and raddiwalas once a week and return with a carload of stuff. I like to be present from start to finish so as to learn the process and live through the journey of making the product.

For now, I only have a workshop with my fabricators, but in future I’d like to have a workshop space, a gallery and a workstation where people can come with their broken items and we brainstorm for ideas on how to give that piece a new life and build it.

We have so much junk in India. We just use things and throw them away. In countries like the US, vintage items are kept because they have so much history. But here, we just give it to the raddiwala. When we give away old items and buy new things, it’s like we’re creating more waste. Instead, why don’t we take them out, upcycle and recycle them? After all, one man’s trash is another man’s décor.

AS TOLD TO MEHA DEDHIA