Artist recycles e-waste from banks into 10-ft-tall statue

Over 250 desktops and 200 motherboards, cables, 15,000 rivets and more than 9,000 screws — no, this isn’t a list of items at a junkyard but e-waste that has been given a second life as a 10-ft-tall statue by a Jaipur-based artist.

Installed at the entrance of the Mall Road branch of State Bank of India (SBI) in Kanpur, the statue, ‘Matraka’, shows a woman sitting with folded hands and crossed legs atop a 5-ft-high platform. The face of the statue is represented by the SBI logo.

This statue is the brainchild of sculptor Mukesh Kumar Jwala, who worked with his team to complete it in a month’s time.

The e-waste used for making the statue was collected from various branches of the bank.

”Various parts of computers were used to make this e-waste wonder. Its height is 10 feet and 15 feet with the platform. If we talk about the actual height, it would be 25 feet (if the statue was standing). Waste from over 250 desktops has been used to make this statue,” Jawala told PTI over the phone from Jaipur.

”An armature of iron rods was prepared and then the shape of the statue was moulded on it using the outer bodies of CPUs. Later, the parts used inside a computer were used to make clothes for the statue. For this, over 200 motherboards were cut into thousands of small pieces,” he said.

SMPS (switched mode power supply), RAM, mouse, cables, modem cards, aluminium parts, keyboards and DVD writers, etc. were also used in making the statue.

The statue is held together by 15,000 rivets and 9,000 screws, said Jwala, who has undertaken several such projects in different states in the past.

Multiple pieces of debit and credit cards were used for making the SBI logo, he said.

”This is the first time that e-waste has been utilised in such a way in Uttar Pradesh,” he added.

SBI Deputy General Manager Neelesh Dwivedi said he and one of his seniors found out about Jwala’s work while they were looking for e-waste disposal options and they approached him.

”’Matraka’ humanises SBI as a woman and shows our bank’s commitment to the environment,” Dwivedi said.