IN QUEST OF INFINITY: A CONVERSATION WITH DR. GINDI
Egyptian-born Dr Gindi is a visual artist who is widely known for her sculptural work. She is both a medical doctor and sculptor.
Her understanding of the human corpus engaged with a wealth of interpretations on human nature that propelled her into a range of sensed ideas and contrasting perceptions. Being able to take part in these, sometimes created shivers: but never are they vacuous encounters.
She imagines and builds semi-figurative bronze sculptures that infuse the most deadpan of abysses with invigorating poetry.
Dr Gindi, many thanks for speaking to us today. How did you finally decide on becoming a sculptor?
I feel as though I have lived many lives. I worked as physician in one of my former iterations. And I certainly didn’t turn to art for bemusement, though everything else is bemusing but not art. I felt an inner necessity to translate my personal medical experience of decay into sculpture. Death has always been a controversial subject in human perception, and it has developed into a negative stricture – I wanted to show that we can accept and embrace the essentiality of death. The practice of medicine is still a close thing to truth I see in my life, only now enwrapped by my sculptural practice. Today, like the physician in my earlier years, I am probing things when sculpting, while new scientific therapy and new creative nascency emerge. I try to open doors into a world without fear of death: the physician and the sculptor are united in that probe into infinity.
Your work focuses indeed on the concept of infinity and immortality. Does this have to do with our current times, when the future feels so uncertain?
The characters in my sculptures are not representations of dead persons during tragedy plays – they are real doppelgangers holding onto their tenacity of life. They infallibly coalesce with my compulsions of birth and death, as well as my profound hope that infinity alleviates human decay. For sure, death will always be a principal actor but the acceptance of our demise makes us bear our mortal condition and less likely to condemn our active life, or seek to escape from the future. We have the chance to play ourselves in that infinite theatre of life, in our current times and till the end of time. You see, I am probably a disguised dramaturgist.
Tell us about your greatest inspirations and influences.
I try to weave my creative visions into scattered meanings of symbols and narratives. The recollection of what I want to call collective memory is something I cannot really describe, but it is a happening. And there are my own memories on top which traverse everything. Take for instance my sculpture ‘Transfigured Immortality’ where I used a cast of my own lore and connected it with the human experience of tribulation and redemption with a string to one single point – the readiness to enter the sanctum of infinity. A female figure leans on her pyramid-shaped deathbed - and gazes into the desert. Even now, I could draw this image from memory as I visited the pyramids around Cairo many times. It felt like hovering between sky and earth - one of the most blissful inspirations stemming from my own past. Already, I had conceived the thought of boundless infinity whilst physically rooted to the sand of our existence.
Where does your creative process originate?
My creative process gives carte blanche to true improvisation combined with an influx of permanent reasoning. A perplexing contradiction, I know. I don’t heed when something is on my mind and when it is not. My fingers and hands, deeply engrained into the clay, will tell all. What is exciting for me is to materialize this eternal contention. I traverse the desert one thousand times, you understand, as I delineate the profoundly entrenched dichotomies of our being. As soon as I give shape to a form, I have reconciled it. And I enshrine in me that bald-faced call so as to abstract the oasis of infinity.
How would you describe your artistic style?
I don’t really follow a particular artistic style. I don't always have to make sense to others, though I might for me. As a result, my work possibly appears both ancient and contemporary, while my naivety leads to a slender and sometimes ruminative lucidity. My sculptures might look like coming from outer space but acknowledge tradition on other occasions. When working in my studio I often fully render out singular spheres, giving them a rather logical convexity, and yet grant other spheres representation by cryptic form and texture. What really matters is that my style - if there is anything like that - bespeaks of the infinity of our existence.
What does wellbeing mean to you? And what is the relation between wellbeing and infinity as exemplified in your work?
Wellbeing depends on ourselves. The transfer from a state of grief to a state of doing well and being well is an important aspect of my work. I often show the wounded psyche of my protagonists as they – almost instantly - have to dwell in a world in which their prevailing habits of reasoning and mannering are shell-shocked and made forlorn. Whilst deliberating on a particular strain or even torture of those doleful souls, I allude to the grounds of their struggle and the subsequent choices they are making. As their determination can be either constructive or destructive, I want to offer an enlightened focus on infinity to transform their self and potentially lead them toward wellbeing in the unlimited space.
IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
