An Artist’s Thirty-Year Affair With Copper

Karachi-based artist Amin Gulgee’s three-decade-long oeuvre spans metal sculptures, bold performance art, and collaborative curation. A well-structured new volume on his work, titled Amin Gulgee: No Man’s Land and edited by John McCarry, is neither fully academic nor a catalogue raisonné; it balances the two approaches with plenty of images, candid writings penned by Gulgee’s art comrades, and overly brief semi-scholarly essays. I’ll borrow writer H. M. Naqvi’s words from his own engaging essay on Gulgee’s extravagant performances: The opulently illustrated hardcover “demands attention,” as does the artist himself. 

Here’s why: Only a handful of books have presented a critical discourse on Gulgee’s stimulating art practice. In the seminal 1998 book Image and Identity: Fifty Years of Painting and Sculpture in Pakistan, the late Pakistani art historian Akbar Naqvi hinted at his disdain for the artist’s characterization of his own work as “Islamic art.” Twenty-six years and several catalogs later, No Man’s Land amends this gap by revealing pluralistic perspectives on Gulgee’s work.

From couture jewelry and biomorphic forms to mathematical and monumental structures, Gulgee’s copper works illustrate his mastery of material and technique. His textured self-portraits are self-deprecating. The smoother calligraphic designs are soothing. Invoking spirituality and science, they present an exigent engagement between Islamic and South Asian tradition and modern art through what art historian Kishwar Rizvi calls a “range of formal strategies, on his own terms” in her essay. Scholar Simone Wille also writes about the modular qualities of Gulgee’s sculptures, like “Metropolis II” (2006) and “Towers” (2008), which are made by welding copper sheets and meant to be viewed from all sides. Unfortunately, both essays add little to existing perspectives on the artist and ended abruptly. I craved more.

Meanwhile, in a refreshing interview, curator Maryam Ekhtiar asks the artist pertinent questions about his fascination with sculpture, scale, and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on his practice. Gulgee demystifies his process: He does not sketch. The sculptures are created intuitively in his studio, where he is “beholden to his process.” He does not take commissions because they cage his creative license. He counts the Mughal charbagh or cross-axial garden, Louise Bourgeois’s “Spider” (1996), Karachi’s disappearing botal gali or bottle street which gets its name from shops selling perfume bottles, verses from the Qur’an, and Gaudi’s Park Güell in Barcelona among of his inspirations. Notably, the artist recalls the trauma he endured in the wake of the 2007 murders of his parents — the internationally renowned artist Ismail Gulgee and his wife Zaro. He reflects on finding recuperation through performative works like “Healing” (2010), in which audiences watched as Gulgee’s fellow artists shaved his head. He reenacted the performance as Healing II in the midst of death in the pandemic, this time without onlookers. 

A heartfelt note by the artist, printed adjacent to a drawing, “Portrait of My Son (1982), sketched by the senior Gulgee, informs us that the book’s contributors — comprising artists, curators, art historians, a political scientist, and an author — were given no restrictions on their essays. That freedom facilitated distinctive approaches: a quirky essay by artist-curator Alexi Worth, who playfully mentions Gulgee’s eccentric social antics, and a piece by academic Gemma Sharpe placing his performance in conversation with that of other Pakistani artists such as Durriya Kazi and the late Ali Imam, as well as Marina Abramović. 

It speaks volumes about the values of prioritizing commercial success over critical artistic discourse in Pakistani publishing that, despite Gulgee’s influence, No Man’s Land is the first comprehensive monograph on the artist. It certainly should not be the last.

Amin Gulgee: No Man’s Land (2025), edited by John McCarry, is published by Skira and is available online and through independent booksellers.