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Lot Essay
The mystical landscapes that populate Gulam Mohammed Sheikh’s paintings, with their organic forms and vibrant, almost-psychedelic colours, are informed by a consciousness of the surreal in the seemingly mundane, and a keen awareness of the extensive range of visual cultures always available to artists in India. As Sheikh noted, “When you walk the streets you see all kinds of ephemera from the popular realm. You also live with the consciousness of architecture, sculpture, painting achieved over so many millennia. There is the range of visual discourses to which we are exposed through our art school education, and our travel. So many sources are available to us.” (Artist statement, K. Singh, ‘Palimpsest’, Gulammohammed Sheikh: Paintings 1998-2001, New Delhi, 2001, p. 14)
Sheikh’s Mappings series of works was initially inspired by a postcard he found at the British Library bookshop featuring the Ebstorf Mappa Mundi, a circular 13th Century map of the world. For the artist, painted maps like the Mappamundi and Jain vignaptipatra scrolls allowed him to make the historic and mythical tangible, inviting new readings and negotiations between diverse spaces and times. In this jewel-like gouache, the map is carried on the back of a buraq, a figure borrowed from Islamic mythology and contemporary popular culture. Traditionally depicted as a winged horse with a woman’s head, the buraq is said to travel as fast as lightening, carrying Sheikh’s re-mapped worlds beyond their geographic limits.
Sheikh’s Mappings series of works was initially inspired by a postcard he found at the British Library bookshop featuring the Ebstorf Mappa Mundi, a circular 13th Century map of the world. For the artist, painted maps like the Mappamundi and Jain vignaptipatra scrolls allowed him to make the historic and mythical tangible, inviting new readings and negotiations between diverse spaces and times. In this jewel-like gouache, the map is carried on the back of a buraq, a figure borrowed from Islamic mythology and contemporary popular culture. Traditionally depicted as a winged horse with a woman’s head, the buraq is said to travel as fast as lightening, carrying Sheikh’s re-mapped worlds beyond their geographic limits.