Hands off

Art republik looks at the organically artistic process of manish nai.

- Tyen Fong

Coming from a family of textile merchants, Indian artist Manish Nai grew up around design and textures. Born in 1980 in Gujarat, India, he graduated in Drawing and Painting from the L. S. Raheja School of Art in Mumbai. The Prudential Eye Awards held in Singapore named him one of the best emerging artists in Asia. Known primarily as a sculptor, Nai uses a variety of media to form his compositions, consisting of mostly organic material. His multiform work seems to take reference from Arte Povera in the use of discarded materials, cardboard, papers and fabrics.

In the early 2000s, Nai would exploit the opportunities offered by leftover jute from his family business, a plant fibre widely used in India used mainly in clothing, to create his pieces. He would compress the jute and cardboard to form the raw material of his sculptures. Aligned to a wooden structure, his compressed sculptures would fall within the frontier of two and three-dimensional planes.