DR. GINDI | AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW BY IDA SALAMON. PhD | EXPLORING THE PASSAGE OF TIME AND SPACE EXTENSION IN CONTEMPORARY SCULPTURE.

AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH DR. GINDI
EXPLORING THE PASSAGE OF TIME AND SPACE EXTENSION IN CONTEMPORARY SCULPTURE.
BY IDA SALAMON. PhD

Dr. Gindi is one of the most exciting catalysts of contemporary sculpture. Of German-Egyptian origin, she initially studied and practiced medicine before devoting herself to sculpture. Guided by her medical practice, she endeavors to explore the passage of time and space extension while illuminating the wickedness of human decay. Unveiled of almost everything except for canorous resonance, her mesmerizing works take the form of morphologically inspired structures eternalized in bronze.
Dr. Gindi reminds us that a capacity for self-introspection and bravery is necessary to overcome the mere physical aspect of our personhood – she endeavors to model the infinity of our existence.
Her work, ‘The Fateful Choice,’ will be exhibited at the European Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona from
October 2021 – January 2022.

“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. Still, if we can metamorphosis these attitudes, we shall be able to model the infinity of our existence. ”
-Dr. Gindi

Dr. Gindi has shifted her life from the world of medicine to the art world. She had graduated from The Florence Academy of Art and already created ‘key points’ in her artistic career when she was chosen as the finalist at the 2021 International Art Salon (Port Reading, New Jersey). In addition, she was selected for the 2021 Figurative Painting and Sculpture Competition of the European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM) in Barcelona, Spain.
She is best known for her classical approach combined with a touch of contemporary. Her clay and bronze’ sculptures give a surprising sensation of ancient times, expressing the complexity of human existence with a substantial emotional impact. Her German-Egyptian roots are expressed in her artistic style and contain a fragrance of the various cities she has lived in, such as Florence, Berlin and Cairo.
It is a pleasure to feature an exclusive interview with a unique and fascinating artist!

Ida Salamon: Thank you, Dr. Gindi, for this exciting interview.
Before we start talking about your unique sculptures and the upcoming exhibitions, let’s first talk about your background in Art. You have made a significant shift in your life, from being a medical doctor in Germany to artistic life in Italy, studying at the Florence Academy of Art. This is a very unusual story. How did it all begin? When and how did you make the decision, and where does the passion for Art came from?

Dr. Gindi: It is a pleasure talking to you, Dr. Salamon. After working as a medical doctor in various countries, I decided I needed to study sculpture in Italy. Thus, I became the sculptor, Dr. Gindi.
The move from the hospital to the artist studio was like sailing across the ocean without knowing whether I will reach a safe shore. The journey that I have searched for and chosen was not the most apparent jaunt for a physician career, but the scientific aspects of medical practice and Art fit well with my representations. Science cannot be reduced to a formal, logical system or method – science, as applied to medicine, needs to be augmented by creativity, intuition, and – most importantly – empathy. Medical doctors and artists alike try to understand the motivation behind the things people say and do, their fears, hopes, and aspirations. In both professions, one needs to appreciate how culture, gender, moral perceptions, and other telling human factors shape a person, whether it is a patient in the examination room or as one of my ‘outpatient’ sculptures.

I. S.: Was the adaptation as an Egyptian immigrant growing up in Germany expressed in your Art? How would you describe the effect of several cultures on your artistic identity?

Dr. Gindi: I am willing to concede that I am an eternal migrant, an unnerving traveler in time and space. And I just happen to be of half-Egyptian and half-German heritage, and I might have many more astonishing ancestral facts within my own self. Early exposure to multiple cultures inspired me to switch tribal codes daily or even on a momentary basis. Whenever I packed to return to Cairo, I was infected by the travel bug, and I delved into the abundance that this magnificent city holds – the Nile River, the Great Pyramids of Giza, and most importantly – all that energy on the streets. Back in Europe, I shifted to the causal and constitutive role of my socialization, once again. But it’s more than a mere binary shift – the whole is in me. I entertain a relationship with some more profound me.
I reckon the cultural mélange I grew up with resulted in a universe of my own and, hence, the breed of sculptures I make. And I just keep on turning around, spinning around, with all my cultural fault lines.

“Many of my pieces seem to embrace and expand reach and time, arousing something we might call an ‘opposite space’ – the space around and between my sculptures.”
– Dr. Gindi

I. S.: You are living and working in Switzerland, but in the past years you’ve spent significant periods of your life in different countries such as France, Germany (where you did your Ph.D. in Medicine), Italy (where you graduated in Art), Hungary, and even in Asian countries. How do you choose your destinations?

Dr. Gindi: The self does not lie languidly in wait for us to unmask it. On the contrary, selfhood is made in the active, unending search for identity. I lived in several countries and traveled through many, many destinations – life for me always narrated fairy-tales in its untamed splendor, unexpected entanglements, and images of striking landscapes. My wanderlust has been motivated by my desire to explore the uncharted firmament and search the hitherto magnificent raptures, so I was fleeing sedentary life.
I have to tell you: I took long magnificent trips on a magic carpet, not worrying for a thousand miles, but I have always been flying back, finally – to rediscover my authentic self. Such introspection of identity and the destabilizing of reality is pivotal in my work. Identity, for me, is a sort of conceptual term if you wish. Like the characters in my sculptures, I am searching for the grammar of the ponderable realm in our human existence.

I. S.: How do all these different mentalities influence your artistic work? Where do you find the most characteristic and inspiring people?

Dr. Gindi: I am keenly interested in the phenomena of metamorphosis that takes place perpetually, eternally. And I am on the lookout for real people who stand or pose in front of me. But even more, for chimerical ones who provide antidotes to the wholesome groove of sagacity. Looking within those characters who de facto exhibit different mentalities over and over again, one state of their being gives way to another – as an evolution from sorrow to sanguineness and vice-versa. Indeed, it is an endless cycle, with neither a beginning nor an end, manifested in a non-dyadic nomad land of intricacy and materialized in frozen moments in bronze. That ill-tempered grief. That weightless bliss. I strive to form characters that remember and illustrate fragmented metaphors that evoke human reaffirmation with my sculptures.

I. S.: As a physician and artist, which emotions and actions are affecting you most?

Dr. Gindi: As a physician and artist, the unbearable ease of being fascinates me, solaces me. We know that our bodies are going to wither one day, but – seriously – we should live forever. I give infinity the go-ahead while dealing with the challenges of oblivion. Loneliness, sorrow, and decay are concepts that have always perplexed me in their ferocity. As a skeptical artist, I understand the human as shambolic, yet we are beings who I want to present in their many perspectives. If we are conscious of our temporality, not knowing whether our life will end today or tomorrow, we will live more sensibly. Everything we need is within us. I take infinity seriously.

I. S.: There is a lot of interest in the media about your work. Do you enjoy the publicity, or do you appreciate more being in the background and let your sculptures talk about you?

Dr. Gindi: Despite all the recent interest in my work, I essentially live the life of an introvert, utterly hidden from the public. I sometimes enjoy speaking with empathetic people like yourself if I feel that interest and inquiry go beyond the mere crust of being. Ultimately, I enjoy staying in my studio, interacting with the clay, as well as within the world of ideas. Torn between conjecture and refutation, I relish defying a given context, the current state of affairs. For me, the artistic process is almost a tale of woe; as I become part of my own work, I agonize with it, and I revivify with it. My sculptures shall speak for me and – most importantly – for themselves. I want to preserve the right to be wildly chameleonic and contest myself as I detest all those facile gratifications that make modern life so crummy and cozy.

I. S.: In your work, we can witness a strong impact of ancient periods. For example, the bronze sculpture “Transfigured Immortality” features an Egyptian queen lying in a comfortable position, almost raising a question, making a sign to the viewer with her hand. And although the sculpture is made of heavy metal, the character feels light and relaxed. What was the philosophical intention behind the sculpture?

Dr. Gindi: What a good question. For me, the potential infinity of what we are and what we might become invokes a sense of being without constraint, in contrast to being limited in our bodily and soulful cover. The concept of infinity goes back to ancient Egyptian thought. The Egyptians speculated about the infinite as the origin of all that is. Having spearheaded astronomy, they originated the world-image of the celestial sphere in an open universe.
Likewise, my work shall illustrate the cosmic order and the moment when infinity becomes a defined space. Many of my pieces seem to embrace and expand reach and time, arousing something we might call an ‘opposite space’ – the space around and between my sculptures. In ‘Transfigured Immortality,’ a Lady of Grace – some might say a Pharaonic Queen – is leaning on her last place of rest in the vast desert. She directs her right hand towards the infinite distance; her fingers seem to touch the universe with a sense of purpose. The sculpture imaginably expresses the idea that humanity is part of something bigger – through our quest for immortality as we connect to something verily timeless and universal. The infinite is given to us to experience life in spaces of symbiotic coexistence.

I. S.: In your sculpture “Beaufort 7,” we get a sense of Greek mythology. A fragile and flowing character made of solid metal bronze reminds us of Medusa’s head and a statue that sank into the depths from which it was just discovered. Were you trying to create a symbolic archeological figure expressing the depths of the sea and far-long cultures?

Dr. Gindi: I have been looking Medusa in her eyes many times, just as I wanted to pay respect to the cogency of the human grit required to endure the trials of life. The figure in ‘Beaufort 7’ is on a long odyssey, trying to return to his unknown home. That hero – or rather anti-hero – is sensing the mist of the sea on his face. Like myself during my own quixotic ocean crossings – and that’s an autobiographical note – the current may bear him far. Setting sail, he entrusts his soul to the wind. Unendingly, his lush hair is streaming in the fickle breeze.
In contrast to Homer’s Odysseus, who travels home to Ithaka impelled by cupidity and self-denial, my entranced hero doesn’t want to trigger the sirens of the sea to be angry. He just wants to become who he is, across the reaches of the sea, flushed by the waves into layered meanings of myths beyond Medusa-like archaeologies. Forever.

I. S.: Digging a little bit in your previous artistic styles, I have noticed some very white, clean-line, modern, and even cubistic influenced sculptures featured along with your article “The Intrinsic Allure of Infinity.” Can you tell us about your journey from this previous artistic style to your current artworks?

Dr. Gindi: Well, I really don’t want to develop a signature style. I start each work over and over, with the kneading of the clay in front of me, following my ‘humeur du jour.’ As a contemporary yet genealogy-embracing sculptor, I try to gauge the fluid border between realism and abstraction, silently approaching that border – and sailing back again. One day, perhaps, some lettered art critics might feel compelled to categorize my work. Let them do that. But I concentrate on the development of my sculptures. I know, I have a strong point here – my sculptures follow perception; they wittingly constrain the seduction of immediate visual awareness. They are indeed creatures of my mind rather than mere effigies of flesh and bones – they possess life on their own. They grow. They sprout. They bloom. Like the sculpture ‘Immanent Conception of Infinity’ you mention above: A human figure poses on the ground to explore the fabric of time and space. Birth is contained in life itself. Can everything that exists have neither beginning nor end?

I. S.: Where does your inspiration come from? What do you prepare before starting working on a new artwork? How do you choose the material? Please tell us about the workflow, from the point of the idea to the final outcome.

Dr. Gindi: I consider inspiration comes from everywhere; we just need to heed the time. By doing so, there is no real need to prepare anything; I just ask myself if we can escape that never-ending time. Being interested in that rather existential inquiry, I wish to draw things into a solid sense of history and approach a given Contempo occurrence as a confined present.
Original figures created by clay with my own hands and fingers, my work flourishes in the caprice of the past to dissect its memory and recast its spatial reality. Refuting the tenacity of passed-on collective and personal myths, I mold the clay and, therefore, the future. Although somehow melancholic in tone, my sculptures are not cenotaphs – there is a strain between a veneration for commemorated records and a somewhat cathartic acumen. Once cast in bronze, my sculptures reverberate with their own fomented juxtapositions. One thing is clear, I do not want to reproduce a dead-end past. We can turn to trials and tribulations for inspiration, but, after all, what prevails is up to us. The future is sculpted with all its implicit potentialities.

I. S.: Could you reveal to us your plans and upcoming exhibitions?

Dr. Gindi: I am on my journey to the center of infinity. My sculptural work is not obliged to hideaway. It ought to be about the simple life, so I am working on several shows this fall, starting with an exhibition at the European Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona presenting a life-size figure called ‘The Fateful Choice.’
A young girl holds a knife behind her back. We don’t know what is happening next – we have to make choices when the moment of decision arrives. At such a crossroads, infinity will ultimately prevail as we hold all the options in our own hands. And we can co-evolve with other tempering motivations through conversions of time. So you see, my exhibitions shall be about experiencing the beauty of perception, touching human nature, the sensual appeal of profound exuberance. They shall be about returning life to bare sparkle – accepting that there is never anything like an end.

I. S.: In one of the interviews, you said: “I ultimately want to offer a sense of purpose in an increasingly callous world.” Which are the most essential human values for you, and how do you see mankind in half a century?

Dr. Gindi: I truly believe that Art shall deal with the eternal questions of mankind, with our purpose, our destiny, our contentment – and not just sorting out the mess of the daily ordeal. I am reasoning about the basic urge to seek meaning for our lives in something infinitely greater than us with my own sculptures. My characters have the wisdom to realize the essence of their life, breathing in perfect harmony with the universe’s rhythm and existing from the infinite past to the eternal future. And I hope that mankind in half a century – or earlier – is assuredly able to figure out how to quit the fizz of our bafflement.

See the full article on Art Market Magazine Issue #62