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the-south-asian.com October 2000 |
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Amin Gulgee - Art for Thought
"..we study western art, we revere their heroes – it is about time that we start celebrating ourselves"
Amin Guljee, a young sculptor from Karachi, Pakistan, held his one-man show, earlier this year, at the IMF Gallery in Washington DC. In his early thirties, Amin has sculpted calligraphic forms and Buddhas in copper and bronze and exhibited his work the world over. Pakistan’s foremost sculptor, Amin’s natural and instinctive thrust is towards spirituality – his show in Washington was called ‘Searching for Light’. Amin graduated from Yale with a Major in Art History. In an exclusive to ‘the-south-asian’, Amin talks about his work, his beliefs, his values and his aspirations. His father is the eminent Pakistani artist Guljee.
Amin’s work speaks for itself – it can be seen and felt. But Amin the man is seldom accessible. In the following interview, Amin speaks passionately about what concerns every south Asian today - the concern of surviving and going through life as a thinking human being. On God and Religion God for me is everything – it is me –– it is you –– it is the wind outside – it is the light we see – it’s everything horrible and everything wonderful – I don’t see any separations – I see God in just about everything – God for me is the process of Life and the way things are – God for me is also Chance – the element in our lives that we do not control. The three most important paths of our life are birth, death, and love – all three are controlled by chance. One of my sculptures is called Chance – a DNA molecule with the word Allah inscribed on it – for me that is God. What’s beautiful about Islam is its submission to God and that there is a direct link between God and a person – nothing comes in between – you create your own balance between the divine and you – or between chance and you. God has created everything and everybody. All religions teach us to be good, to be happy, and to achieve a balance – that is humanism. All religions have basic similarities. My father is a great collector of antiquity and as a child, I would touch his Gandharas and Krishnas and talk to them – my understanding of them was not in a ritualistic way – I reacted to them as a child. I related intuitively to the Boddhisatvas. When I came back from college I wanted to recapture them and create them in my own image. When I do a sculpture of the Buddha – I am not a Muslim doing a Buddha – I want to belong for that moment to whatever I am creating. Today, there is a need for intellectuals to interpret religion. If one is happy, one does good things; if one is unhappy, one does bad things -–simple-minded perhaps, but that is the essence.
On his life and work I grew up in a house with paints and brushes but I had no hands-on guidance from my father. Studio art was the last thing I wanted to do. In fact my parents actively discouraged me not to become an artist. They feared that I’d have to struggle. It’s funny that I became an artist – I am non-romantic about an artist’s lifestyle. For all the pleasure and joy of work, one has to survive on one’s work. My life has been a series of accidents. I was in college, doing three majors in Art History, Architecture and Economics at Yale. Architecture was great – I got to paint and draw and create models – and at Yale you could just about do anything. In my final year at Yale I had to choose one major for my thesis. I hated Economics and thought Art History would be more interesting and challenging. My dissertation was on Mughal Gardens with special focus on Shalamar Gardens in Lahore. After my graduation I thought I’d try my hand as an artist and if I did not succeed, I’d go back and do an MBA. I had my first show in Karachi – and then I went to New York to live there as an artist. That was a difficult time. I had to go door-to-door with my jewellery pieces – art jewellery and gallery-wearable art. I had some successes. Initially my jewellery was very large – it was very unwearable – in New York it became scaled down. Basically, it is a sculpture with a hole. Whenever I get stuck on a larger piece, I switch scale and I move to a smaller piece. I enjoy making jewellery. Then I came home to Karachi – wanted to do larger work. I began experimenting and working with metal. Copper and bronze are the only glorious metals that exist – they stay forever – I like that permanence – not that I seek any immortality in my work – just the fact that they will remain. I am trying to bring Islamic calligraphy into my work. Islamic calligraphy interests me in two ways – on an intellectual level and also on an emotional level. Intellectually – because of the concept of God as an abstraction – like a geometric pattern which goes on and on and emotionally because I was born a Muslim.
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