Magic carpet: Sanjeev Shankar's New Delhi art installation explores the city's take on ecology and celebrates the nation's 'make do and mend' culture.

What happens when a thousand oil cans decide to fly? Artist Sanjeev Shankar, an alumnus of Mumbai's Indian Institute of Technology, decided to find out for himself when he created Jugaad, a public art initiative that transmutes discarded objects into a striking new composite structure. The project involved collecting, cleaning, cutting. perforating and stringing together hundreds of discarded oil cans to create a freestanding canopy supported by a system of pulleys and cables. Gently bowed like a giant hammock, the installation covers 70[m.sup.2], its myriad shimmering scales resembling a piece of oriental armour. Big square tins of cooking oil are a ubiquitous feature of Indian life and this initiative explores notions of sustainability, recycling and general material inventiveness. It also shows the potential for transforming mundane domestic objects into a thing of grungy, rough-edged beauty.

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Fugaad was first shown at 48[degrees]C Public. Art. Ecology, a three-week public art festival held in New Delhi at the end of last year. 'The aim,' says Shankar, (who also describes himself as a 'traveller, provocateur and creator') 'was to interrogate the teetering ecology of the city through the prism of contemporary art.' In this case, a notable feature was the involvement of the local community. The inhabitants of Rajokri, an urban village on the edge of New Delhi, were charged with gathering empty, unwanted cans and fabricating the canopy. The unorthodox use of scavenged materials tested the skills and the imagination of local metalworkers and fabricators.

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The canopy consists of two parts. The flat upper layer is made from 945 can covers, stitched together with rope fastenings like a patchwork blanket. Lids were cut out of the cans and painted with gula, a shocking pink pigment, to create a vibrant, pixelated effect. The lower layer is more sculptural, like a honeycomb, and consists of 692 can bodies joined together with bolts which act as shear connectors (each can is quite heavy, weighing up to 700g). The bottoms of the cans are perforated to admit light, which also filters through the proprietary circular openings on the can lids. After dark, artificial illumination is provided in the form of 20-volt halogen fittings set in the can covers. The two layers are suspended by pulleys using 12mm and 6mm diameter steel cables, fastened to a pair of supports anchored into the ground. During the day, light dapples through the canopy, providing shade in the baking Delhi sun, and at night the illuminated fittings sparkle against the metal skin.

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Fugaad is a Hindi term that describes the practice of achieving an improvised quick-fix solution using only the resources to hand. The project celebrates the act of jugaad and the jugaadis, who use constraints of resources or time as a launch point for (often surprising) innovation. Motivated by an inventiveness that underscores a culture of scarcity and survival, it suggests alternatives, substitutes, improvisations and make-dos. 'It gives new life to objects discarded as valueless. It reminds us that the familiar is not necessarily known,' says Shankar.