About
Mascot Mansion is an ongoing project by Nishat Akhtar bringing her favorite iconic figures and other imaginary concepts to life. In a world where artificial intelligence has become an increasingly prevalent way of making, this project centers the joy of handmade, imperfect processes and artifacts.
It all started with a papier-mâché Gritty and slowly grew into a collection of characters, objects and obsessions personified made from cardboard, wood, felt, foam and whatever else might do the job... a lot of things from the dumpster really.
Nishat draws inspiration from sports, cartoons, movies and music: it’s things that have lodged themselves in her brain and seemed worth figuring out how to bring to life. After a while, the collection needed somewhere to live, and thus Mascot Mansion was created. A website, a zine, maybe a parade or a window installation someday? It’s what it wants to be and what the characters need it to be.
Making the Mascots
It usually starts with a sketch, a decision about materials, and then some deep focus mashing newspaper into papier-mâché armatures, bending cardboard and firing up the hot glue gun. There’s a lot of trusting the process when you’re about halfway through, but it almost always comes out just right: perfectly imperfect. The turnaround can be relatively quick, too, depending on drying time and the humidity in the air. Everything in the Mansion so far has been a personal project, but select commissions are welcome for consideration!
Friends of
the Mansion
This project wouldn’t exist without the people who taught me how to use some tools, gave these objects places to be, or put them in front of a camera. All of this helped bring the Mansion to life.
Huge thanks to Sakura, Buck and Finn at Plink Graphics, whose open briefs for The Show prompted many of these pieces; Purl, for teaching me how to use a lathe and helping me turn a 2x4 into an enormous pencil; and Bijan and Braulio, for Exhaust at Fisk and encouraging me to make a sculpture with three days to go.
An especially huge thank you to Ben Sellon and Itzcuauhtli at Half Court Studio, whose photography, lighting and physical set design gave these objects a world beyond my garage.
