Educated as a medical doctor, the German-Egyptian sculptor Dr Gindi spent her entire life wandering around different cultures and alongside emotional abysses. She attempts to understand why certain phenomena appear as they are and why she interacts with them in the way she does.
“Over the years, my experience in both science and life has taught me that our existence and options are infinite – if we allow them to be. Submitting to fate and having a sense of resignation can often be the norm, but if we can metamorphosize these attitudes, we shall be able to model the infinity of our existence”
Her classical training as a sculptor enables Dr Gindi to approach humanness more profoundly. Through working with models and meticulously exploring the human morphology, inner dialogues are evoked and reflected in her works. Her sculptures are made from different materials. The most recent ones are generated of clay and later transformed into bronze.
DR GINDI
My work is full of dichotomies as I seek to stage paradox and harmony. I am not dogmatic about my style as I make sculptures that resist codification. I am always developing and thus returning back to its origins – the figurative kneading of clay.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
In a previous interview, you said, “Leaders are like sculptors who give life to an otherwise supine clump of clay. Leadership is always non-linear in the beginning and transformational at the end. If leaders adopt a combination of thinking and feeling — a process that allows creative intuition into a business — they can achieve ongoing creativity and sustainability.” This resonated with me as an important point. Regrettably, the extractive nature of capitalism is somewhat detached from concerns for humanity, nature, and the common good. How best can we turn that type of short-term thinking around before the planet, like a dog riddled with fleas, shakes us off its back?
DR GINDI
As a sculptor, I aspire to model the infinity of our existence – I know, that’s a very long perception and even longer effort. I am looking for the organic in our being and that shimmying state of infinite being. Likewise, I believe that human mankind should not be driven exclusively by momentary gratification but shall instead think about what lives on when our lives end. The shortcomings of capitalism are obvious – it is mostly based on self-interest and competition, and it is often anti-collaborative on the macro-level. As an artist, I recommend redesigning capitalism, to make it more socially oriented and inclusive. Markets need to grow for the benefit of all, obliged to support the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in general and the environment in particular. Coming to the first part of your query, on leadership: I am asking loudly what the deeds are leaders would like to be remembered for. Well, I think leaders should inspire others to launch themselves into the future while remaining predicated on the present. Glaring minds bring people together, striving to create value that lasts an elongated time — even forever — rather than aiming for short-term goals. And yes, leadership also needs to be non-linear in the beginning and transformational at the end.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Have you always been concerned about the health of our planet? How does it inform your work?
DR GINDI
Absolutely, I have incessantly and increasingly been empathetic about the health of planet earth. Human civilization depends on a flourishing nature and the wise stewardship of natural resources. Unfortunately, we human beings easily plunge into the déjà-vu of earthy consumption when life is back to what we perceive as normal, as the common standard. And we continue to destroy our planet. I personally believe that human health and planetary health are indissolubly linked. As an individual – and as a sculptor – I want to make a difference, knowing of course that art alone cannot fix the problems of the world. Artists will not solve climate change, inequality, and poverty, but we can incite change, through our relatively prominent position as persons of public interest.
I consider nature as the essence of things, as the fertile space nurturing us, giving life to us.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
And from where do you draw inspiration?
DR GINDI
I draw inspiration from the conceptual engagement with the world of ideas. Attempting to defy a given context, a current state of affairs, I am torn between conjectures and refutation. My creative process is almost a tale of woe as I become part of my work, trying to find answers to the eternal questions of humanity. Where are we coming from and going to? What is truth and its inherent paradox? And how should we act, within that infinite world?
I need the freedom to reason in all directions. I am aware, though, that knowledge is often incomplete as our surrounding habitat is permanently changing. Hence, my creative process is by no means an algorithm or a magic wand. Tossed and turned by doubts, I approach the idea of infinity from different angles, testing the underlying principles of my conceived sculptures. By doing so, I get struck by poetic flashes. And my sculptural skills help me translate flash into form, not least in order to leave form at the bottom of its limb. The substance - kneaded by my hands and fingers – begins to loom in front of me. In dialogue with the end that is its beginning.
As a curious human being, I read every literary and philosophical text I could put my hands on. And I never stopped as I was always interested in the human search for meaning. Currently, I am very much into Spinoza. I discovered his work at an early age but he only recently emerged as my favorite thinker. Spinoza – a pantheistic philosopher – affirmed that the divine nature must be infinite both in its essence and in the number of its attributes. The infinite is everywhere. Embedded in nature, the infinite is the ultimate explanation of existence. I got fascinated by Spinoza’s views of infinity as seen in nature, it later became the leitmotiv of my practice. He rejected what thinkers before him had called ‚final causality‘, i.e. reality understood in terms of ends and purposes. His and my views are quite similar to the Eastern Zen and Daoist traditions. Like Spinoza, many non-Western thinkers illustrate the ambiguity of being and the non-linearity of time. It is as if everything is connected or occurring at the same moment, giving our existence meaning and purpose.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
When you are working on a piece, do you conceptualize it first? Or in the beginning, allow for it to form and materialize independent of thought?
DR GINDI
I started to work with clay, in a more traditional way – also with sketches, mock-ups, etc., the process we learn at the academy. Works could sometimes take several weeks and months, and yes, with lots of reshaping. Over time I developed my own process, trying to express the human condition - and not necessarily the real form or reality as we might perceive it. This switch, this search for my own personal way of sculpting was a true necessity, as I can now benefit from all the ideas and beliefs gravitating around me - without being bound to rules and expectations.
Well, it is hard to further describe my process of sculpting but there is perhaps an organic approach I am taking. I am sometimes holding a magnifying glass up to my work, as well as taking a distance. I am in permanent interaction with my works, it is as we – the artefact and myself - engage in a very intensive dialogue or even a disputation.
I believe that I am rather good at fictionalizing myself – sometimes my work might look distinctly personal and confessional with threads drawn from my life, at other times it is entirely chimerical. When sculpting in my studio certain memories might emerge, such as feelings, philosophies, and world views that have a more direct link to something deeper and broader. Well, I don’t know, I just hope.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
One of themes your explore in your work is infinity. What drew you to this subject?
DR GINDI
Infinity - for me - is a metonymy for having the courage to prehend the extraordinary, the aerial, the realm without bounds. The concrete gestalt of the infinite very much depends on each and everybody of us, the individual wanderer. It can be the Devine for some. Or the vast universe for others. Infinity is, I believe, at the root of human fulfillment, it is a territory of being that epitomizes those things which cannot be understood - a deep dive into the probe of what it means to be oneself. And the oneness of everything - which is always endless, going on forever.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
After being a physician, what inspired you to pursue art and become a sculptor?
DR GINDI
I originally studied medicine in Budapest and Berlin, and started to work as a physician - experiencing the agonizing of both body and mind — an overarching theme recurring in my later sculptural practice. I was asking myself how our irrevocable decay can be brought to a halt, at least in our imagination. What do we really possess? Our wet flesh of decaying, membranous mass? Unveiled bones in space and time? Is there perhaps a state of infinity we can yearn for? I was captivated by the infinite since attending medical school and even before, in its many varied semblances. And baffled by the idea of the potentially never-ending. At one point I gave up my promising medical career as I wanted to fully devote myself to three-dimensional art. Following my passion I drifted into the unknown territory of sculpture, molding a niche for myself there. By no means that I regretted that choice - it is never too late to become a sculptor, especially when you want to model the infinity of human existence – the theme I was exposed to and attached to earlier on as a medical doctor. And I began to understand: even if our body and mind mature if we mellow, if we become heavier — we are lighter. We are infinite.
Some of my sculptures are replete with images of decay - bodies are sundered, torn apart, and distorted. You see, mortality and its stern harbinger called disease had accompanied me ever since I studied and practiced medicine. Whilst depicting human decay, I endeavor to add a sense of transformation towards the infinite. The characters in my sculptures yearn for such infinity, for that vast magnitude of choices - leaving us redeemed and enshrined.
Death is not the end of life but rather the assumption of a different dimension. Still, my experience as a physician taught me that demise remains an unmentionable topic in our societies. Most people prefer not to talk or even think about withering away; we refuse to acknowledge death as we know that it will arrive one day. But embracing infinity in the moment of bereavement might have a positive impact on our life. Living is nothing but a rehearsal of our waning, consciously and sensuously. In thinking about decay and, by the same token, venerated infinity, we are contemplating ourselves – and we live on.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
You are a traveller, not only in your transdisciplinary career path, but also culturally. Tell us about your background and how it contributed to the artist you are today.
DR GINDI
Look, whatever our respective definition of the elusive word identity may be, it feels – in my very case - mostly defined by the tug of personal history and less by labels of being half something and half something else, or of being someone with a migration background. I neither want to be in nor come out. The fact is that I was born to a German mother and an Egyptian father and that I was raised in Europe. I am currently living in Switzerland. Labels hanker to amalgamate a wide range of groups with a common cause and shared experiences. But I feel it levels off entire cultures, and the individuals in question. I want to rescue an identity that was cast off, my own. And I remain loyal to the diversity in my life and work, searching for an identity beyond the daily disguise.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Travel is also an important part of your creative process.
DR GINDI
I travel a lot, indeed, I like the movement, the impressions, the scents in the air – but I am not a typical tourist as I don’t follow the rhythm prescribed by travel agents. I am rather a tourist in my own life as I move on as a chronologist of the kinetic veracity being sensed. Back to my studio, I start the sculpting process with a focus on my experiences and a certain degree of self-inspection. I willingly urge to understand the figures I am sculpting and every aspect that envelops my touring through time and space. The result is neither a maladroit selfie taken somewhere on a beach nor an accentuation of my blooming identity, but rather a touchstone into the future. And I will soon set out again to the next journey and gather affinities into terra incognita, traveling between anxious poetry written on birth wards and ancient fairy tales told on death ferries. My journey will quite likely mature into surprising visual experiences, sorts of subcutaneous rehearsals for the traversing of time across the oceans, mountains, and jungles I have never seen.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
How did you arrive at your style or artistic voice?
DR GINDI
My biomorphic sculptural forms shall reflect my zest for life. This view can be uplifting and symbiotic - but can also be precarious … there is always a threat when all senses are entwined so closely with this one thing that you are trying to achieve and improve all the time. As a result, my sculptures might be difficult to grasp as they aren’t closed in on themselves, but avidly open to a phenomenological tenue. And you might see and agree, my sculpting language is dense and does not lend itself to clear cuts. My design vocabulary is perhaps somehow idiosyncratic, turned away from the world as we know it. I developed something like a private language over the years, a language through which my observations are named. This very private language is an utterance of my creative process, …. giving each discovery words, phrases, a grammar - finally creating and nourishing a new diction.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
What meanings do you put in your work? What meanings have spectators told you they perceive in your sculptures?
DR GINDI
My artworks represent a deep shyness, and spectators might relate to them in the same way they may relate to literature and philosophy – as all of us naturally sense a quest for meaning. The spectator is indeed - imaginably - making a connection, not just as an interpreter, but as an activator, because art is a medium, a recital – to actualize our imagination. My sculptures shall not be prescriptive – I leave the spectator to interpret from each piece the narrative that resonates with his own personal experiences. And I do not want to question the viewer’s perception. What my sculptures are, and what they do to the spectator, can perhaps never fully be understood yet it does not necessarily need to be understood. That is how I feel about my own work.
I don’t think that my work evokes sedition. But rather a certain affectedness. The spectator might feel with my protagonists, during their moments of truth, the bifurcation in their lives, the choices they have to make; their fragility. I hope that my oeuvre makes spectators aware of their own human subtlety.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Tell us about your acronym Dr Gindi.
DR GINDI
My acronym Dr Gindi is not a pen name or a moniker. Gindi is a typical Egyptian surname, and my doctoral title is added to it, as I was educated as a medical doctor as you know. And yes, I omitted my first name, perhaps to protect my true identity, my many identities. More importantly, I conceal my gender at a time where everybody speaks about identity. With my own work, I rather inquire about the eternal questions of humanity like the quarreling with death and the reasoning for sense.
