His dark materials

Manish Nai turns rusty metal sheets, butter paper and newsprint into textured collages. Nothing is quite what it seems

- HARSHA DURUGADDA

I'm fascinated with the way multidisciplinary artist Manish Nai works with materials. They are so familiar yet so unique in the way he chooses to use them.

Nai hails from a family of jute traders, and jute was Nai's material of choice when he started out as an artist. In some early works, he would remove threads from woven jute fabric and use the remainder innovatively by mixing it with paint and tracing paper to make collages.

The first time I saw Nai's work was at Bikaner House in Delhi in 2021, at a group show organised by Nature Morte gallery. There, he covered large wooden poles with waste fabric that had been compressed under extreme pressure using a hydraulic press. These were displayed leaning against a wall, making good use of the high ceilings. It played well to the architecture of the space.