One will have to look beyond Amin Guljee to understand him. He is mercurial and impulsive. He is innovative and creative with an intense desire to be communicative with his audience. The language for all his purposes he uses, is the curve and contours of his products.
The effusion that the language of his work displays is always restricted to his background and upbringing. His father who is an engineer and a disciplinarian in matters of fine arts, has influenced him to focus on subjects that have potential of expansion and are multifaceted. His Bachelor of Arts in economics and art history from Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA, has exposed him to international works, trends and transitions that continue to mould the mood of painters and sculptors and their critics.
He has traveled from paintings to sculpture, jewelry designing, and fashion shows to recording history in concrete, and seldom in metallic shapes.
The Forgotten Text is a metallic sculpture that Amin Guljee has designed stricting himself to the history of Sindh. In its strings, which join one ring with another and one square to another square that complete the pattern, are so delicately connected with each other that the entire figure looks like an unfolded booklet on the cultural history of Sindh in chronological order. This sculptor is probably the only of its kind in Pakistan. It is to be installed at one of the roundabouts in the main Clifton area. Guljee thinks that with the passage of time the roundabout would come to be known as Guljee Roundabout. It would also remind people of Karachi that they belong to a place, which is the custodian of one of the oldest civilizations of the world.
He says that one of the important aspects of his work, as an artist over the last fifteen years, has been his ongoing endeavour to lift sacred text from the two dimensions of a page and bring in into the three dimensions of sculpture. Text for him is fascinating as it defines a culture and a civilization.
Text is the inspiration for his monumental sculpture. The text he has used for this sculpture is from Moenjoderao. Historians have not succeeded in deciphering this ancient script, 'and for me its appeal lies in this sense of mystery'. Who were these ancient Sindhis who built this meticulously planned city more than three thousand years ago? Does this ancient great city of Sindh have a connection to the modern metropolis of Karachi?
He thinks Moenjodero, like Karachi of today, was a vibrant centre for ideas and innovation and rose because of trade and commerce. He thinks it appropriate; therefore, that the sculpture made in homage to Karachi should be created from symbols of this forgotten language. Entitled "Forgotten Text", this monumental work is made from three hieroglyphic symbols joined together to create a form suggestive of a chariot racer.
Sindh is the link between our nation's most immediate future. With this in mind, "I have attempted to marry the past and the present through my use of material."
The hieroglyphic at its top, for example, is embellished by computer motherboards covered in copper. Elsewhere he has used glass and Sindhi mirrors. These are made of metal silicates and silicon, a substance of the primordial past, is used in modern technology, particularly in the creation of transistors and solar cells. The overall effect will be to reflect not just light, but "ourselves as a city and as a nation".
Guljee opened the door of his residence to a select gathering of art lovers, critics, and diplomats and media personalities for the pre launch of his sculpture. Glaxo Smith Kline, Merck Marker, Pakistan State Oil, Pakistan Tobacco Company and Siemens Pakistan sponsored the creation of this sculpture.
The multinationals have in the recent past developed a taste for encouraging fine arts, performing art and corporate philanthropy in the greater interest of a civil society. The interest these four sponsors have shown in assisting Amin Guljee develop the sculpture which is both historically important and culturally rich in content is a welcome sign. It has brought the local people and the artist closer.
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