![WEAVING ON CANVAS](https://cdn.magzter.com/Harper's Bazaar India/1720438301/articles/9vzD7Dbcc1720530271040/WEAVING-ON-CANVAS.jpg)
For more than six decades, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh has been a weaver of worlds. Not on a loom, but on canvas, and with words as fine as threads. He is a painter, a poet, and a writer who sees time not as a linear path, but as a shimmering fabric where past, present, and future intertwine. Bazaar India sits down with the 87-year-old for a conversation at his exhibition at Mumbai’s Chemould Prescott Road, titled Kaarawaan and Other Works, organised in association with Delhi-based Vadehra Art Gallery.
Harper’s Bazaar: Your early work explored the subconscious. How has your art evolved?
Gulam Mohammed Sheikh: It is difficult to put down in a few words what transpired in a career of over 60 years. A series of changes took place over time depending upon the change of location, and changing contexts: historical, social, political, and personal, all together necessitating changing perspectives. During the early ’60s, when I began my professional life as a painter, an image of a solitary horse preoccupied me: it was quite different from MF Husain whose horses were timeless whereas my horse was an animal harnessed to a tonga drawn from my childhood experiences. In the late ’60s, I sought magical encounters in the elements of landscapes depicting trees rising over mountains alongside images of erotic play. What transpired in subsequent periods is too complicated and rather long to describe. Your comment about the role of the subconscious is not off the mark, but I would add that it was a conflation of the conscious, of social and historical awareness with the subconscious that perhaps guided those works.
HB: But you have had your disagreements with the purely abstract. What made you focus on a socially reactive figuration in your art?
Denne historien er fra June - July 2024-utgaven av Harper's Bazaar India.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra June - July 2024-utgaven av Harper's Bazaar India.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
![WHERE YOUR LOVE STORY COMES TO LIFE](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/251/1797069/tSJ2IO4aP1723806901764/WHERE-YOUR-LOVE-STORY-COMES-TO-LIFE.jpg)
WHERE YOUR LOVE STORY COMES TO LIFE
The Leela Ambience Gurugram makes weddings a core memory.
![SUMMERIN EVERY BITE](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/251/1797069/G-IJti29n1723806586092/SUMMERIN-EVERY-BITE.jpg)
SUMMERIN EVERY BITE
Jumeirah unveils a new menu across its European properties.
![SOULFUL SOJOURN](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/251/1797069/D-2mvN-7m1723804996884/SOULFUL-SOJOURN.jpg)
SOULFUL SOJOURN
Inside the new-age luxe rejuvenation hotspots that are raising the bar.
![MANAGING MENOPAUSE](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/251/1797069/AlYDfBiQ61723804806314/MANAGING-MENOPAUSE.jpg)
MANAGING MENOPAUSE
Experts offer advice and support to help women enter a new chapter in their lives.
![WEIGHING IN](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/251/1797069/1l4zhU7PY1723804662295/WEIGHING-IN.jpg)
WEIGHING IN
Have we come to a point where weight loss injections and procedures are unavoidable?
![DRAPING HERITAGE](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/251/1797069/WpC0yLGSL1723804465581/DRAPING-HERITAGE.jpg)
DRAPING HERITAGE
Actor Swastika Mukherjee traces the influence of Thakurbari in shaping the sartorial identity of the sari and recreates five looks from the era.
![BEYOND THE BREAST](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/251/1797069/FFi-E4_b11723804361441/BEYOND-THE-BREAST.jpg)
BEYOND THE BREAST
Political and social factors, that don't have much to do with artistic or aesthetic understanding of art, play a vital role in shaping community attitudes towards nudes.
![THE SHAPE OF YOU](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/251/1797069/tr9ABDDug1723804127006/THE-SHAPE-OF-YOU.jpg)
THE SHAPE OF YOU
Six experts shine the spotlight on how fitness is finally viewed beyond weight loss.
![To Eat Or To Not?](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/251/1797069/EMTZCdu0w1723802464854/crp_TO-EAT-OR-TO-NOT.jpg)
To Eat Or To Not?
This halfway disorder may be more serious than you realise.
![NEXT OF WIN](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/251/1797069/3kPmOT5hY1723803956410/NEXT-OF-WIN.jpg)
NEXT OF WIN
Female athletes are reclaiming their bodies and beating the male gaze at its own game.