How 350,000 Discarded Cigarette Butts Came Together to Remind a Connection with Nature

It was at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in 2014 that ‘Artha’ became a central attraction, featuring a diamond-shaped artwork made from 10,000 discarded blood slides. "It aimed to expose what often lies beneath notions of prosperity within the context of Kochi’s colonised history," Prashant Pandey, the artist behind the work, says, as he reminisces about how he found the contrast of a diamond shape universally linked to wealth and aspiration, while the discarded blood slides reveal vulnerability and sacrifice, significant.

Cut to the present, and up north-west from Kochi, Mumbai is talking about the discarded 350,000 cigarette butts that have resulted in 72 new sculptural works, currently placed at the Gallery Maskara till February 28. "Each cigarette butt captures a small human moment: a pause, a wait, a breath. Over time, I realised they were not just waste; they were quiet records of everyday life," Pandey, a Jaipur resident, says.

The butts gathered over the last five years from the streets of Jaipur, along with public spaces, smoking zones at airports, friends' cafes and public areas, are central to the artwork, which appears to be in the leaf-life structures- much like remnants of dried leaves in the spring, while some are wall-mounted sculptures that resemble anatomical membranes, and floating cellular systems, and even a ladder, that neither goes up nor down.

Pandey involved helpers and his studio assistants for manually collecting the butts, about which he says, "Cigarette butts have always stayed with me because of how common and unnoticed they are. They are found everywhere, on streets, outside offices, at airports, in tea stalls and across social classes." 

Sculpting in blood

Coming from a family of traditional marble sculptors where four generations have been involved in making the marble deities for temples, sculpting took a natural course for Pandey. His family has recently made 'Ram Darbar' for Ayodhya Ram Mandir and almost 30 main murtis for the temple, while his father was among the three artists who made the idol of lord Ram in white.

Recounting the early days, Pandey shares how he would live on the first floor of the house while the ground floor - a factory and the showroom - would have the work with marble stones going on. "It fascinated me, as the materials would come from the mines and I would see my family carve them, while they would throw away the discarded materials from the marble blast stone," he says, adding that he would collect and play with them.

"From them, I learned patience, respect for materials, and the dignity of labour," the 42-year-old artist says, who would often try to gauge his understanding of the paradox involved with process. "The dieties are prayed to while the remnants are discarded. I would often think of the 'identity clash' associated with it," he adds.

However, Pandey's interests have been varied. As a child, he would be happy if he found a discarded watch and would mould and add things to it to create something new. Later, using human blood stains, including his, to represent the Kochi's hidden history to sculpting 'gift', an artwork from 2010 that mixed urine, sweat, tears, formaldehyde and iron to represent female foeticide through an infant's skull, he tried to emphasise "how certain lives are rendered disposable within social systems".

Working with what's left behind

For 'Biography', Pandey did not try to standardise cigarette butts completely. There were differences in colour, staining, decay, and compression, all of which became part of the surface. "These variations hold time. How long something has been used, exposed, or forgotten. I see those differences as texture rather than imperfection."

Talking about the five-year-journey behind the artwork with Local Samosa, Pandey shares that the cigarette butts underwent a careful cleaning and drying before entering the studio workflow. "This is important both practically and conceptually. It marks the shift from waste to material. But I am careful not to erase all traces of use," he says. 

All this while, the artist had to allow repetition and consistency to be part of his daily routine. "I would work on the pieces daily, often in small segments, allowing the repetition to become part of the day," he says. 

It would take Pandey one month to complete a single leaf. After cleaning and sorting, the cigarette butts are gradually bound together by hand. The form was, then, built slowly through layering and stitching, allowing the surface to remain porous and flexible. "There are long periods where the work seems unchanged, followed by moments when the form suddenly comes together. It’s a quiet, patientprocess."

As the process remained manual, it involved binding, weaving, stitching, and compressing by hand. "I avoid industrial techniques because the softness and irregularity are vital. The techniques are straightforward, but the time invested gives the work its density and presence," he shares.

However, Pandey did not have the final output in mind from the very start. "I allowed the material to guide the outcome. As the quantity grew, the leaf-like shapes gradually appeared. They felt organic, porous, and responsive."

At the Gallery Maskara, now, the pieces do not look forced for installation, and the artist was very mindful of the same. "The pieces are free to fall, hover, or rest instead of being forced into fixed positions as I think carefully about gravity, suspension, airflow, light, and shadow," Pandey says, adding that he wanted to give it the hint of a forest.

Even in this artwork, the movements and shadows are as important as the leaf-like structures created. When asked about the recognition he is receiving for this artwork, Pandey says it is encouraging and credits it to people responding to the “slowness and care in a very fast world.”

Working with the discarded materials for more than fifteen years now, Prashant Pandeys' early experiences of observing what was being discarded during idol-making by his family shaped his sensitivity to waste, as he says. Perhaps that is the reason he is now exploring marble blast stones for his next creation.