Amin Gulgee

amini gulgee

I would like to start by saying sorry for the lack of posts over the past few weeks.

I know some of you may be wondering what happened but I know most of you don’t care.  As I’m too sure who reads this section.  Let’s face it…there are better things to read on this site than my section.

Anyways, the short version is that I had computer problems followed by net problem.  Sooo….things were looking great – NOT.

Okay, I know you guys aren’t reading this for my life story so let me tell you about this week’s artist.

Actually this week’s artist was pointed out by a friend, whom we will name shockresistant7.  On another note, the artist is more of a Sculptor.

So let me introduce the sculptor, Amin Gulgee.

Amin Gulgee is an innovator of tradition. His medium is metal, his inspiration the varied and rich spiritual history of his native Pakistan.  He is one of the many sculptors to bring Islamic calligraphy into a three dimension sculpture.

Amin Gulgee has exhibited extensively in the USA, Europe and the Middle East.  In the ten years that the artist has been exhibiting, his work has followed many different directions, from the purely abstract to work that is inspired from Hindu mythology, Buddhist civilization and Islamic calligraphy. Although diverse, these directions influence and nourish one another for they all attempt to depict the spirituality of man.

For those who are currently living in Malaysia, they can see his latest exhibition at Galeri Petronas in Kuala Lumpur.  The exhibition will run till the 18th January 2009.

Khayaal Theatre

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When people talk about art, most people think of pretty pictures that the eyes can feast upon.  Maybe it can show you a wonderful piece of craftsmanship, displaying the skill that some people have been blessed with.  On the other hand, it could show something that will give you nightmares for the next few weeks.

However, many people forget that a performance can be an art form too.  Using words or stories to provide stimulation for the soul.

So for my choice of art this week, will a be a performance art brought to you by Khayaal Theatre

Khayaal is an award-winning British arts enterprise that develops and produces original dramatic interpretations of classic Muslim world literature for the stage. In its ten year history, Khayaal has developed a strong reputation as the sole dedicated producer of professional theatre inspired by Muslim world culture and heritage in the West.

Inspired by the universal trend within classic Muslim literature and the challenge of producing what theatre luminaries, like Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski and Antonin Artaud, have described as ‘theatre of the invisible made visible’, Khayaal has created its own genre and brand of entertainment whose formula of wisdom and humour has won it popular and critical acclaim nationally and internationally. It has attracted a large, culturally diverse, cosmopolitan audience for its work, and gained the interest of a wide range of interested parties including local authorities, arts organisations, businesses and venues.

Although founded by Muslims, Khayaal proactively involves both Muslims and Non-Muslims in all aspects of its work. Over the past decade, Khayaal has shown that its work has the capacity to bring together communities and encourage a greater appreciation of universal virtues as well as of the literature and arts of the Muslim world. Whereas many talk about integration, reconciliation and intercultural dialogue and understanding, Khayaal practically demonstrates this in creative enterprise.

Hassan Massoudy

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Hey guys,

I hope you are all well.

I think my illness is gone, but I think I may have made my PC ill.  It’s not working well at the moment and I think I might need a hammer to fix it.

So if I start to post things late, you now know the reason.

For this week I wanted to focus on Hassan Massoudy.

Hassan Massoudy was born in 1944, Irak, and at the age of seventeen, he started to work with calligraphers in Baghdad for eight years. In June 1969, he attended Fine Arts School in Paris.

Hassan’s creations came out from the meeting of the past with the present, the Eastern art with the Western art, from tradition with modernity. He has been perpetuating the tradition of calligraphy craft at the same time as breaking it; he simplifies lines, tending to purer lines, adding colours opening on to a wider unlimited world. 

Hassan’s calligraphies carry out a rhythm, a musical structure which echoes back to the very remotest of times. The emotion is very strong when looking at the movement of his lines, their weight, their lightness, their transparency, the balance between black and white, the fullness and the vacuum, the concreteness and the abstractness.

Hassan makes his own inks and pigments from a chemistry of his own and from a personal selection of papers.

Kids will be Kids

We were tipped about KidswillbeKids. Nabeel Akbar publishes his own books for children from this publishing house.

We did not read their books, but we checked a video based on one of their stories, and the story was nice, Masha’Allah,- even though the video was a little amateurish, it seemed to me that on print it will look a better.  There is need for more such efforts.

Edge of Arabia

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Many of you may be pleased to here that I’m feeling a lot better since last week.  However, a lot of you probably don’t really care.

Anyways, as I was searching for fun art stuff for you guys to check out, when I came across this exhibition that is currently running in London –

Edge of Arabia exhibition

This exhibition is set to shed new light on the largely unknown contemporary art culture of Saudi Arabia. A new generation of artists will be in London to take part in the first ever comprehensive exhibition of contemporary saudi art staged in the UK.

Edge of Arabia, will feature the work of 17 Saudi contemporary artists, male and female, whose work explores the complex and diverse identities of 21st century life in the Middle East.

The issues addressed are as much personal or domestic as they are global. The artists have chosen not to focus on negative perceptions of the Middle East or artistic and intellectual clichés associated with the region and instead present a contemporary world view that is as unpredictable as it is beautiful.

The exhibition will run till the 13 December 2008 at the SOAS Brunei gallery, university of London.

Richard Henry

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Okay, So I’ve spent the past week mostly ill.

Even though I can take time off work, it doesn’t make it anymore fun.  I mean I spent the best part of week screaming in pain.

Anyways, I am still ill so I’m going to make this short and sweet.

The artist I have chosen you to view is Richard Henry.

Richard Henry is an artist and teacher with a particular interest in the contemplative aspects of pattern. He teaches courses linking geometry and art at The British Museum, Birkbeck and The Slade.

I would write more but a got a huge headache, so visit his website to learn more about him.

BTW…. Richard if you ever read this, then I’m sorry for the rubbish blog.  I’ll make up for you somehow.  Erm…do you like milkshakes?!

Letter to a New Muslim

Abdussamad Clarke.

So you are a new Muslim, and you may be such even if you have a lineage of Muslim ancestors that stretches back for generations, for each person who genuinely discovers Islam, confirms it and determines to live by it is always new.

You are beginning to find your feet in this strangely topsy-turvey world that is Islam today and that is especially upside-down in our already upside-down world here in the West.
You are assailed on one hand by the serious squad and their differences, a topic we dealt with at some length in the first part of this letter. On the other hand, there is the assault of the celebrities, nasheed singers and the whole burgeoning ‘Islamic’ entertainment industry. Reading the early history of the Muslims, it is very hard to find a match for this strange new culture of pop Islam, or the exotic panoply of superstar scholars and lecturers who fill our screens and the platforms of our conferences.
How did we get from ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, may Allah be pleased with him, to this endless procession of celebrities, expert scholars and orators? As you are a new Muslim, we dare to think that you might question all this, that you really yearn for the authentic, that you would like somehow to live and die in Islam, not merely trying to prove to the world that you are exactly the same as them in every way, except that you are ‘Islamic’. No, you have decided that you are a Muslim, and not merely ‘Islamic’, if I dare express your thoughts for you.

Read on.

Via Tip Us Off

[Image coutresy: The Jamoker]

The Native Returns

Raza Rumi.

Twenty years ago, I left Lahore. Excited by prospects of quality higher education and the adolescent yearning for freedom, this was a moment that only with age I have understood. A flash that alters the life-path even when one is not aware of it. As I grew up and visited Lahore from a multitude of cities and continents, Lahore’s provincialism and inward-looking ethos irked me. However, the splendour of its lived history and multi-layered present fascinated me endlessly. A false sense of fatalism whispered that my exile was going to cover a life-span.

The last few years were spent abroad: so dejected I was that not living in Lahore would mean living just anywhere. When I decided this summer to return to Pakistan, I was astounded by the reactions from all and sundry. I was told that I am ‘mad’ to have chosen to return to a burning, imploding and crashing Pakistan. Such is the power of global corporate media that even the discerning and schooled Pakistanis have started to believe in the failed state mantra scripted outside Pakistan.

My own parents, temporary residents of Islamabad, scared by the blasts advised me against it. Others from the more indulgent school of thought were aghast with my decision to return to a country where power outages, crumbling urban infrastructure and pollution define urban living. Of all the nightmares cited was that who knows if the country would survive? Such cynicism and unmasked pessimism about Pakistan is always disturbing, yet familiar. My question is when was the country not about to unravel since 1947?

Continue reading.

[Image coutresy: fredericknoronha]