Weighing Matters

When Spanish artist Armando Miguelez looks back on the last few months he spent at a steel plant at Tarapur,near Mumbai,he grabs his hair and gives out an anguished sigh. Known for creating public installations all over the world,his four-month project at MPIL Steel Structure Ltd has been a challenging task,but has also fascinated him. “The easiness with which an artist can engage in art in collaboration with a steel company here is something I couldn’t do in Spain,where I live,” he says. Made from steel scrap,Miguelez’s first project in India is called Tarazu,a five-meter-long and two-pound heavy weighing scale,symbolic of universal notions of “polysymmetric objects,like associations to justice,precision,equilibrium,counterpoints and so on”,as the artist puts it.

Miguelez,who has done part of his schooling from Pune,also engages in photography,drawing and sound sculpture. Installations,however,comprise his prominent works. Pursuing a different method in every work,a steel sculpture is his first. “Steel is eco-friendly and recyclable,and the material for my work comes from iron scraps. It also has a beautiful ageing process. After it is done,I want to leave it for a while to let the rust set in. Then,it will look as if it’s been dug out of the ground,and connote timelessness,” he says.