Mappings

Artist: Gulammohammed Sheikh

August 27, 2004 | 6.30 pm
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

One of India’s best-known artists, Gulammohammed Sheikh, has been painting and teaching art in an art career spanning of over four decades. A poet, writer and art theorist as well, the artist has been a Professor of Art History and Painting at the M.S. University of Baroda, and has lectured in various art centres in India and abroad. He has also contributed essays, articles and papers to various books, catalogues and journals. Experimental and explorative in material and medium, the artist works in a variety of media, including painting, printmaking and digital art.

Traversing historical and mythical spaces of paintings long admired and bringing these into the artist’s experiential arena has been an old habit. The routes through these trajectories opened multiple terrains: of maps, charts, vignaptipatras and a host of paintings that invite negotiations, mediations and appropriations. Gulamohammed discovered a picture postcard of the Ebstorf Mappamundi (map of the world made in 13th century Europe, now lost) a couple of years ago, which triggered a desire in him to make painted maps. Learning techniques of digital collaging at an interactive workshop organized by Artunderground (a gallery devoted to digital art, based in Baroda) facilitated the process of inventing new maps, by implanting sites of his choice into the circuits laid out in the Ebstorf Mappamundi.

In order to overcome the limitations of cloning the digital technology imposes, the artist decided to paint over every inkjet print to play a jugalbandi of the hand, mind and machine. This presentation and discussion will involve an in-depth analysis by the artist, in context to his recent works, which will be exhibited at the Guild Art Gallery from August 23-29, 2004.