KOCHI: Asurreal bird rests on the table, its vibrant red and black wings spread out. Clutchers, the nozzle of a medicine bottle, an earbud went into the making, and lo, the bird charms one with its finesse and beauty. Every artwork is like this, the refuse turns into a thing of joy.
Sathya Narayana Moorthy believes in organised vandalism, that the destruction of something leads to the creation of something else. “For me, art is a creative expression. I am not too keen on doing something which has already been done. I want to discover something new, contribute something new to the field of art,” an excited Sathya adds. And thus he ventured into the world of fashioning out found object sculptures.
For Sathya, trash is not really something to do away with, instead, it becomes his raw material. Bottles of all kinds, caps, discarded pens, refills, everything, in fact every other piece of waste is turned into sculptures. The refuse is stuck to each other not with glue, but by tying them up with a one-inch rubber band. Once the skeleton is made, it is covered with a tissue paper, fevicol, and water mix. After this, it gets painted and worked upon.
As a kid, Sathya was an ardent admirer of the MAD programme in POGO TV. It was when he volunteered as an art interpreter at the Kochi Muziris Biennale (KMB) that he got his first calling to pursue the art field. It all started with soda bottle caps, and then progressed into a variety of scraps, making stunning artworks from the waste.
Then the engineering graduate decided to quit his job and invest himself in art.Consumed with the creative world, he came back to his home at Alappuzha. His room turned into his workspace, where he would collect the refuse. Soon he started taking workshops in schools. “Each piece of scrap is a character or a concept. I wanted to give life to them,” he says. He is currently a student of the Toonz Academy.