Space Studio presents:
CITY and CITIES – By Gulammohammed Sheikh
An artist, storyteller, poet and writer, Gulammohammed Sheikh is a pioneering figure for Indian contemporary art with an artistic practice spanning over six decades. His works are layered with images, narratives and mediums to bring forth his experience, travels, memories and curiosity in creating links between history, politics and the present. Through paradoxical situations in his work, Sheikh continues to push the boundaries of medium in painting, sculpture, writing, photography and digital media in a collage like manner. In the foreword to a book on the artist, At Home in the World, Chaitanya Sambrani describes the artist’s works such: “Just as works of poetry need a sharper concentration, the paintings of Gulam, much like the poet he is, seek to reveal themselves only to the patient viewer. His paintings are not ones to be looked at for a few minutes to try and extract the meaning, as if they were a puzzle. Gulam's works nearly always need us, the viewers, to have a contextual lesson on his thought process, on his ideas, on his journey towards his work.”
In 1981, Sheikh declared his life-manifesto: “Living in India means living in several cultures and times.” The exhibition presented here at Space Studio is a comprehensive display of the artist’s preoccupation and exploration with the City of Baroda, alongside other Cities that have entered his work over the years. Rooted in socio-economic contexts, City and Cities contour the effects of ethnicities, religions and people. In 1955, at the age of eighteen, Sheikh shifted to Baroda from Surendranagar. In Baroda, he first studied and later taught at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the M S University. Baroda was also a doorway to the world for the artist. From here, Sheikh travelled extensively to study and explore London, Europe, USA and other countries. Every new city added layers of memory maps to the artist’s mind. He explored situations and characters – both mythic and real – that became subjects in his works. Sheikh was drawn to literature and read history extensively. He participated in literary circles to discuss poetry, criticism and storytelling while also writing essays and poetry alongside. He played with language and explored various styles of poetry influenced by Labhshakar Rawal in Surendranagar, Zaverchand Meghani, Nirmal Verma, Shrikant Verma, Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena, Sunil Kothari and Pradumna Tana. Sheikh experimented with the Kathiawadi dialect and moved into free form and vernacular writing. Eleven poems on cities, including Jaisalmer (1963), an outcome of Sheikh’s travels in Rajasthan, are on display here with English translations. These poems were also composed into songs by Vanraj Bhatia, the recording of which can be heard alongside a presentation of Sheikh’s photographs of Jaisalmer. The artist looked at writing and painting as mediums that complimented and layered each other.
Sheikh’s observations and memories of the cities influence the storyline with which these works could be read. His interest in mapping and picturing the world that are evident in the series Mappamundi (early 2000s – ongoing), can be seen influencing the studies of the City through sketches and cross sections of aerial maps. In 2006 and 2010 Sheikh travelled China extensively. His research resulted in a seminal work that included painting, sculpture and installation, titled CITY: Memory, Dreams, Desire, Statues and Ghosts: Return of Hiuen Tsang displayed in Shanghai in 2010 – 11. The original drawing for the work is on display here along with reprints of the large painting panels and replicated editions of the sculptures. The exhibition here also showcases the artist’s working process that involved satellite imagery of Baroda taken from Google Earth. Describing this work in his essay At Home in the World, Sambrani writes: “The city was populated with the minutiae of everyday life, much in the manner of other essays into the world-picture that Sheikh has made over the decades, but punctuated by haunting memories of violence, most recently that of 2002. The sloping, ellipsoidal section along the ground was built up in papier-maché relief to represent major institutional buildings including Baroda's administrative, legal, penal, educational and regal apparatus. Papier-maché statuettes stood at various junctions in the relief even as images of statues commemorating rulers and heroes dotted the painted city. Sheikh's stated intention was to create 'other spaces of memory, dreams and desire', to imagine what a seeker after truth travelling the Silk Road such as Hiuen Tsang (Xuanzang) might find if he were to walk to contemporary Baroda after concluding his business at Nalanda.”
Alongside the City and Jaisalmer poems, the exhibition also presents a series of Sheikh’s original prints and reprints of paintings that explore the artist’s curiosity with the city and its people. It is pertinent to note the visual angle of observation or the bird’s eye view that allows for the viewer to enter the work as an observer. This is how the artist has collected memories and visuals over the years and layered them through different mediums using storytelling, mystery and growing layers of memory to his work. His ongoing preoccupation between the city and the world are arterial to this exhibition as they are to his practice, and in a way also to how each of us navigate our everyday encounters with layers of memory creating meaning in what we take away objectively or subjectively, with time and with people with who we encounter our histories.
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Born in Surendranagar, Saurashtra, Gujarat in 1937, Gulammohammed Sheikh completed an MFA in painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Baroda, Vadodara. He received the Commonwealth Scholarship at the Royal College of Art, London in 1966 and was later conferred an associate of the academy. At MSU, Baroda, he taught art history and painting and also served as a visiting artist faculty at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002 and a visiting fellow at Delhi University in 2004. An avid writer, Shiekh was also a writer/ artist in residence at the South Asia Regional Studies department at the University of Pennsylvania in 2000 and has participated in several other residencies internationally. Among many accolades, Sheikh was awarded the National Award by the Lalit Kala Akademi in 192, the Padma Shri in 1983 and the Padma Bhushan in 2014. His works have been exhibited widely across institutions, galleries, museums, biennales and triennials, and are held in important public and private collections around the world.
Curatorial and Installation Team: Ramchandra Gandhi, Kavya Oza, Chirag Panchal, Veeranganakumari Solanki, Studio Gulammohammed Sheikh, Alembic carpenter and lighting team
Click here to watch the talk by Gulammohammed Sheikh on the occasion of the opening of his solo exhibition 'City and Cities' at Space Studio, Baroda
