Internationally recognised art and literary critic, writer and cultural producer. Published in ELLE, Glamour, Esquire and Cosmopolitan; member of the Union of Writers.
Plastic wrappers, bottle caps, the bright packaging of a vape: the things we handle every day and forget almost at once. In TRAsh, an ongoing series of photographs and digital collages, the multidisciplinary artist and designer Asif Shaikh turns that material into images that are hard to walk past, and then asks us why we stopped. Works from the series include Smoking Candies, Unwrapped, Second Skin and After Wear, all made in 2026. We spoke to him by email about waste, typography and what comes next.
How did TRAsh begin?
With very ordinary things. “I wasn’t searching for unusual objects or materials that were already visually interesting,” Shaikh says. “I was looking at things we use every day and almost immediately forget about: plastic wrappers, bottle caps and packaging.” He began collecting and photographing them and noticing categories. Vape packaging caught his attention first: “It can be incredibly colourful and playful, almost like candy, despite what sits behind that appearance.” That contradiction became Smoking Candies.
It was also the moment the project found its form. “I began introducing typography and realised that a few words could interrupt an image completely. The work became less about documenting discarded material and more about taking something familiar and shifting it just enough to make you look at it again.”
You write about the contradiction between attraction and consequence. How do you keep a wrapper attractive while showing what comes after?
“I don’t choose an object because it’s beautiful. An awkward shape, damaged surface or unpleasant texture can actually be more interesting to me.” He photographs or scans the material directly and works on colour, scale, layering and composition afterwards, but stops short of polishing it: “The damage, texture and awkwardness need to remain visible.”
The effect he is after comes in two steps. “I like the viewer to have two reactions: first, ‘I want to look at this’, and then, ‘why am I looking at this?'” And: “The image can be seductive without allowing you to completely forget what it is made from.”
What changes when an object is photographed and collaged rather than shown as it is?
“A discarded wrapper shown exactly as it is will probably be read as rubbish. Once I photograph and collage it, I can remove it from that immediate context. I can enlarge a tiny detail, isolate a texture or put two things together that would never normally meet.”
The process also makes room for words, which in TRAsh rarely explain the image. “Sometimes they contradict it or make you question the connection between the two,” he says. “I don’t want to tell the viewer exactly what to think. I want to give them enough information to recognise something, but leave enough of a gap for them to make their own connection.”
How do your design work and your art practice feed each other?
“I’ve never really separated them.” Shaikh came to visual communication through architecture and landscape architecture, and still thinks in terms of space, material and how someone encounters a work. “Design taught me to communicate clearly and to be conscious of every visual decision. Art gives me permission to use those same tools without needing to arrive at a clear answer.” That is why typography sits so naturally in the series: “I don’t see it as text added on top of an artwork. It becomes part of the image.” Or, as he puts it: “Design helps me construct the visual language, while art lets me disrupt it.”
What are you working on next?
Pieces of Us, a participatory project that starts with people, place and everyday materials. The first edition is being developed in Leicester, taking the city’s relationship with textiles as its starting point, with participants bringing their own memories through conversation, walking, photography, mapping and making. Shaikh does not want it to be one project repeated elsewhere: “Leicester might begin with textiles, while Manchester, Scotland or another location could begin with a completely different material or local history. The structure can travel, but the work has to change with the place.”
