Surrounded by old circuit boards, copper wires, and dismembered electronics, Zayd Menk, 21, uses Google Maps to measure the dimensions of a New York high-rise and then takes out his saw. He is building a model of Midtown Manhattan out of discarded e-waste.
Menk, originally from Zimbabwe, is currently living in the UK where he studies Fine Art at UCA Farnham. He is due to graduate in a few months. A weekend and afterschool art project in 2017, his scaled replica of the city streets and geometric buildings of Manhattan took him only three months to complete. Menk was in high school at the time.
After one of Menk’s teachers persuaded him to pursue art, he began “painting” with defunct electronic components. Inspiration came when he saw the resemblance between circuit boards and city features, and then Midtown Manhattan started taking shape.
“The piece was made entirely from broken/defunct electronics, trying to create a dialogue around electronic waste and ecological impacts,” he said. “It was an attempt to explore the consequences of ‘man.’”
The Midtown Manhattan piece was exhibited in 2017 and 2018, where Menk received a few offers to purchase the piece. He declined the offers and the piece is currently in storage, but he does plan to auction it sometime in the future.
Since then, Menk has been busy at work with jettisoned electronic junk. In 2018, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company commissioned him to make an e-waste replica of Westminster, London. It is now being displayed at one of the company’s offices, in promotion of their various recycling centers.
Menk, still busy experimenting with his art, says, “Currently, I have moved away from literal depictions of cities and am attempting to try and explore this medium of waste in more unique and critically engaging ways.”
His recent work includes films and pieces that employ old CRT monitors, machine learning experiments, radio transmitters and receivers, and a number of other technological items. Technology is a theme that has seemed to stick. It is the common thread in all of his works.
When The Epoch Times asked Menk about his interest in cities and technology as prominent features in his art, he referred to a social critique from German philosopher Walter Benjamin: “There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.”
Menk finds the quote from Benjamin relevant to his own practice of art, and says, “I’m absolutely fascinated by how far modern technology has progressed and continues to accelerate, and in appreciating these monuments of civilization, I am interested in the often overlooked footprints of this technology.
“The tangents are vast and innumerable—everything from the questionable ethics in mining, the required precious metals, the labor of the products’ manufacture, the planned obsolescence designed in those products, the consumers right to repair, the waste generated by the consumers’ need to ‘update’ the technology, the ecological impacts of the landfill it creates.”
Menk’s work, seen at various art exhibitions and on Instagram, thoughtfully begs the observer to pause as he suggests that it is “imperative to consider more closely the unintended ripple effects of supposed progress.” It is perhaps this very thoughtfulness and concern that demonstrates one of the greater facets of man.
