Art for heart’s sake
11 May 2012 3:12 AM GMT
‘An artist, writer and educationist, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh has effectively pioneered a historical engagement of art with its respective sociopolitical quadrants. In his tenure as a professor of art history and painting at Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara, and through numerous visitorships, residencies and publications, has contributed to a renewed understanding of cross cultural themes in artistic pedagogy, in an Indian as well as an international context.’
Rejecting the Mumbai Progressive Groups’ ideological obsession with the Paris School of Art, Sheikh diverted his attention towards Mughal and Pahari miniatures, Sufi and Bhakti poetry. The idea of magic realism pervades through his works in a manner that they superimpose the greater spirit of the art with a distinct sense of the divine and the mythological as seen through the medium of folklore.
Vadehra Art Gallery presented the works of the artist in Delhi, his first solo exhibition since 2001, at the Rabindra Bhavan, Lalit Kala Akedemi. The show featured Sheikh’s seminal piece Kaavad: Travelling Shrine: Home, which premiered at the exhibition Chalo India: A New Era of Indian Art in Tokyo in 2008. A kaavad is a mobile wooden shrine, also referred to as the storyteller’s box. These contain hinged doors that open to reveal a painted narrative, which the travelling performers of Rajasthan known as the kavadiya bhats used in order to illustrate an epic, or a myth. A kaavad operates by way of revelation, mounting anticipation and curiosity as the performer unfurls the innermost core; the long delayed closure is reached.
Sheikh’s kaavads trace a different journey, a newer possibility. It is a medium through which belief systems, social, cultural and political of the past and the present could be effectively examined. The archive of reference is diverse — from contemporary citations of violence, displacement and migration to fabled journeys, epic myths, Kabir’s dohas, to autobiographical accounts.
The second piece that was on display at the exhibition was City: Memory, Dreams, Desire, Statues and Ghosts - Return of Hiuen Tsang. This was first displayed as a part of the exhibition Place-Time Play India- China art exhibition in Shanghai 2010.
The City is an attempt at reconciling two conflicting spaces—that of the fragile dreams and memories as constructed and negotiated solely through the individual’s perspective and of the realty as viewed through an within a space fraught with violence.
While in the kaavads, Sheikh explored the concept of the Mappamundi (medieval European maps of the world). His landscape here brings together the visuality of the satellite images such as the Google maps and the bare drawings of the archeological site maps. A smaller, accordion fold-book, titled Whose Kashmir expresses Sheikh’s angst hostile reactionaries and brutal acts of violence perpetrated by open acts of militants in Kashmir, Palestine, Turkey. He uses Mappamundi to illustrate an idyllic world liberated from strife, violence and death. This book shows Kabir at his loom, St Francis preaching to the birds, Majnu looking for his beloved Laila, Mary Magdalene rushing to touch Christ. ‘This accordion book is symbolic of my hope of seeing a world at peace with people like Kabir and the lovers like Majnu,’ says Sheikh. The smaller kaavad dealing with the alphabet book designed for children speaks of the gross tampering knowledge meant for children in a post riot nation state. Sheikh is unapologetic in his satirical Ga for Gandhi, Ksh for Kshatriya, Ka for Kamal, La for Lotus and Tra for Trishul.
Sheikh acknowledges the imposing presence of mysticism. It pervades the overall body of his work in such a manner that he effortlessly weaves poetry through imagery.
Rejecting the Mumbai Progressive Groups’ ideological obsession with the Paris School of Art, Sheikh diverted his attention towards Mughal and Pahari miniatures, Sufi and Bhakti poetry. The idea of magic realism pervades through his works in a manner that they superimpose the greater spirit of the art with a distinct sense of the divine and the mythological as seen through the medium of folklore.
Vadehra Art Gallery presented the works of the artist in Delhi, his first solo exhibition since 2001, at the Rabindra Bhavan, Lalit Kala Akedemi. The show featured Sheikh’s seminal piece Kaavad: Travelling Shrine: Home, which premiered at the exhibition Chalo India: A New Era of Indian Art in Tokyo in 2008. A kaavad is a mobile wooden shrine, also referred to as the storyteller’s box. These contain hinged doors that open to reveal a painted narrative, which the travelling performers of Rajasthan known as the kavadiya bhats used in order to illustrate an epic, or a myth. A kaavad operates by way of revelation, mounting anticipation and curiosity as the performer unfurls the innermost core; the long delayed closure is reached.
Sheikh’s kaavads trace a different journey, a newer possibility. It is a medium through which belief systems, social, cultural and political of the past and the present could be effectively examined. The archive of reference is diverse — from contemporary citations of violence, displacement and migration to fabled journeys, epic myths, Kabir’s dohas, to autobiographical accounts.
The second piece that was on display at the exhibition was City: Memory, Dreams, Desire, Statues and Ghosts - Return of Hiuen Tsang. This was first displayed as a part of the exhibition Place-Time Play India- China art exhibition in Shanghai 2010.
The City is an attempt at reconciling two conflicting spaces—that of the fragile dreams and memories as constructed and negotiated solely through the individual’s perspective and of the realty as viewed through an within a space fraught with violence.
While in the kaavads, Sheikh explored the concept of the Mappamundi (medieval European maps of the world). His landscape here brings together the visuality of the satellite images such as the Google maps and the bare drawings of the archeological site maps. A smaller, accordion fold-book, titled Whose Kashmir expresses Sheikh’s angst hostile reactionaries and brutal acts of violence perpetrated by open acts of militants in Kashmir, Palestine, Turkey. He uses Mappamundi to illustrate an idyllic world liberated from strife, violence and death. This book shows Kabir at his loom, St Francis preaching to the birds, Majnu looking for his beloved Laila, Mary Magdalene rushing to touch Christ. ‘This accordion book is symbolic of my hope of seeing a world at peace with people like Kabir and the lovers like Majnu,’ says Sheikh. The smaller kaavad dealing with the alphabet book designed for children speaks of the gross tampering knowledge meant for children in a post riot nation state. Sheikh is unapologetic in his satirical Ga for Gandhi, Ksh for Kshatriya, Ka for Kamal, La for Lotus and Tra for Trishul.
Sheikh acknowledges the imposing presence of mysticism. It pervades the overall body of his work in such a manner that he effortlessly weaves poetry through imagery.
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