Dr Gindi on the Fluidity of Being – Interview

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Dr Gindi is a speculative sculptor who defies easy characterization. Blurring the edges between representation and abstraction, her poignant works narrate a world that is more different than it seems – as it is in a state of flux, without linear causalities. Through her various series, Dr Gindi has been expanding the notion of sculpting to the infinity of human existence. We spoke with her about indeterminate matter, fluctuations of energy, and her new series “Fluidity of Being.“  The conversation also includes a brief imagined monologue with Albert Einstein, leaving hunches of the famous physicist alone in our souls.

Dr Gindi, in your new series Fluidity of Being you depict fragile protagonists via bronze sculptures. Contrary to the historically ambiguous connotation of the potential fluidity of our being, your vivid use of turned-to-alloy motion carries overtones of confidence. What made you create a series of works that dive into the belief of fluid existence, with all its ramifications into the essence of human beings?

Art categories and series can be soporific, don’t you think? And laconic treatises roll on without ending. But yes, I did what I needed to do, in audacious attempts to approach and understand – as I am a speculative sculptor. Always having wanted to burst the ligaments of the human condition, I orientated my description of the self in relation to time and space. An earlier series of mine was about the Integuments of Existence, a body of work created during a period of self-discovery, intercepted by flashes of inspirational transgressions where I tried to highlight human choices through the hulls of body and mind. The series Fluidity of Being goes one step further, here I am dealing with the unknown spaces of origin and destiny. Where do we come from? And where are we going? Everything is fluid as we oscillate between being and not being – a kinetic performative that emanates from indeterminate matter in motion. The apprehension of what constitutes human nature in its inherent state of transition might lighten the matrix of life, allowing us to wink at the intricacy of existence.

The world is indeed full of fuzzy boundaries, nothing is really fixed, everything is infinite. It is difficult to say where we begin and where we end. And there is certainly lots of motion in between, driving our various incarnations. I feel tempted to draw a parallel to quantum physics’ observation that flow is a continuous movement of matter depending on the observer. For me, there is no such thing as linear causality in human nature. The fluidity of being is a verity and a much-needed fillip to overcome the old paradigm of a static cosmos. By the way: I do not see my series as an alloy-turned system of all-embracing reasoning as Plato or Einstein intended to develop. In my innermost core self, I am a sculptor who sticks to the clay, the base material of my sculptures. My approach is holey and porous, similar to the fluid universe I am trying to mold.

I sympathize with you, our understanding of the why and wherefore can be porous, and motion is not just accidental in nature, it is the principle behind human existence. I also feel that with your series Fluidity of Being, the once-fixed image of the world is going to be shattered. But being always in motion, how can we revel in each and every moment of our short life, yet be there forever, sailing through unbound infinity?

Philosophical speculations rarely satisfy common sense but let me tell you that infinity is a magnificent space to sail through. Infinity is a concept I have been yearning to take on for years, but I was hesitant about how to begin. It has all just been so astounding and elevating. But I decided to give it a go after acknowledging my daily contretemps with the human diremption and incarceration. The prospect of relief in infinity emboldened me, enlightened me. My understanding of infinity is not a religious one though. I rather see the self as a dynamic synthesis of body and soul, as an ontological union of the single physical and mental activity. And with the soul being interwoven with our body we can seize every moment in all its infinity, making life meaningful. Our soul sprawls forever, forcefully and fluidly – we are infinite.

There can be no greater promise. With infinity, I saw a way to combine my previous concepts that revolved around fragility, vulnerability, and the inevitable mortality of the human form into one overarching theme. When the undertaker carries our bodies away, we seem to be gone, completely. We don’t seem to exist anymore.  Well, at a quantum level, we do. Death could be a door to an endless number of universes. Our footprints, our thoughts, our souls are all around, always, and we can look at them, even though our bodies don’t exist anymore. But until then life must be lived forward, in all its fluidity.

Indeed, with your sculptures, you apparently propose to value every moment because it contributes to the boundless infinity. Having said that, new puzzles arise, you gave me much to think and agonize over in regards to the infinity of human existence. Let’s reflect on some of the works that are parts of the series Fluidity of Being, to look for answers. To start with, tell us the narrative behind the sculpture you named Flying into Life.

Space and time and all the laws of nature are not a priori features of what we call reality. What I understand from quantum physics, space and time are emergent fluctuations of energy. Everything in the universe is infinite. Like in Flying into Life: A seemingly relaxed character sinks to the earth, elegantly flying, cruising the breeze. His aligned zest descends back to his erstwhile belonging. Reflecting on prospective – a fictional rearview mirror in hand, he is a ray projecting from the eclipse. At first glance, the character is just a humanoid flying object. But because the character continues in our imagination to erratically move whilst landing on his imaginative runway, space and time quickly shed their meanings and become complete abstractions. The flying object, that nonchalant character under discussion, is not a vessel we can touch but rather a turbulent compression of energy with whom we are invited to engage conceptually.

I used quantum physics as a jumping-off point to illustrate that we can always fly into life, notwithstanding if we are in our naïve perception momentarily chained to outside restrictions. We are rather free-wheeling astronauts as all organisms – despite their apparent fixity and solidity – are fluctuations of energy. Flying into Life presents a conundrum of scale: a sublimity of time and space that can mirror the perceived reality in its own set.

There are many interpretations of reality aren’t there? Let’s move on to the dizzying and poetic sculpture Materializing, the next work in your series. There is a cryptic message that links with the fluid simultaneity adjudged by quantum physics but in an abstract way. Could you let us know how the underlying theme of Materializing relates to the particles that make up matter and the forces with which they interact?

The more I develop my artistic practice the more I lean towards the unveiling of human simultaneity – a principle I learned from quantum physics that defies the idea of objects and notably of particles being fixed things. The same particle can be in two places at once as it is more like a wave carrying subatomic particles that behave rather chaotically. As I am touching the bronze-cast protagonists’ exposed existence I am sculpting their potential void. Simultaneity engenders qualms that might lead to the annihilation of being, in a very Einsteinian way.

Materializing shows the primordial force of inception and incarnation. A figure emerges from the essence of its indeterminate matter, not yet being formed as a human character as we commonly know it. Poured in a mold the creature’s fiery goad eventuates into its outer husk. He feels heavier, in his erstwhile diaphanous substance. Look at this figure and feel the pain, and the lust, with every fiber of his corps. And there is a great relief as he expands his fluid existence towards the infinite sphere of materialized being.

You might see my protagonists as apathetic mortal mounds of flesh and bones, falling apart under the heaviness of their own muddy, bloody existence. But I think that the representation of raw corporeal beings is entirely absorbed by the paramount energy of the soul, sentiment, and even empathetic determination. Abandoning linear narration, Materializing is my way to show simultaneous occurrence, finding infinity in life is an ongoing hence curved and fluid process.

You are a profound anatomist of the human soul! And I feel that an aura of alluring paradox attaches to your concept of infinity, and to the somehow related claim that the fluidity of being requires simultaneous worlds. Could you explain the entanglement of twirls resulting from the simultaneity of blight and being?

Good question! I pull my sculptures from the gist of life, trying to grasp the core of the human rift in each new piece I am working on. In that regard, every sculpture feels like a stepping stone onto the next. Energy gathers in Flying into Life, manifests in our body in Materializing, and accompanies us in our momentous existence – the underlying theme of She that Spreads the Winds. This sculpture shows a female character taking a run-up into unchartered winds that she is spreading with her ever-twirling wings. Quantum physically speaking, she indented the winds over millennia. What we see, however, is neither an eternal recurrence of the same nor a Sisyphean condemnation for eternity. The female character is just there; simply in existence. Airiness surrounds her. Perhaps on a lucent day, her exhilarated wings are unfolding into the melody of breath.

When sculpting She that Spreads the Winds, I wanted to illustrate a world that is in constant undulation. She that Spreads the Winds cultivates a sense of spontaneous infinity by letting time flow through her ephemeral appearance. Whilst spreading the winds, she glides with the winds. And she enjoys that timeless moment.

Let me now address your comment about “all organisms being fluctuations of energy.” Feeling that you mean this in the sense of phenomenological objectivity may I ask you if you see your work perusing reality that is involved in both our perception of the world and the grammar of that perception? I am enthralled to add a question about your views on the relationship between gravity and emptiness: so, let’s perhaps just continue by reflecting on The Last Second, the final piece we are discussing today.

At first sight, some of the characters in my sculptures seem to be empty and hollow, their gravity is gone. But empty space is not nothingness. In The Last Second, I show a forlorn character in his last moments of life. Everything vanishes, frozen up in a bed of fortuity. The grammar of perception got an appalling twist whilst delving into the shelves of decay. But does really nothing matter anymore, in that fluid moment of transition? Is there perhaps some revived fluctuation of energy, resurging desire, invincible infinity? In a last surge from the world of appearances, that perishing fellow might enter a rather serene espousal of that collective space of consciousness. His beclouding and his becoming coincide. It is the power of the infinite that transforms his abstract thingness, enabling him to surmount his own mortality, to become the celebrant of his eternal imagination. Death is not the end of life but rather the assumption of a different dimension.

In our fluidity of being, we are getting to the core of humanness beyond its physicality. Referring again to quantum physics: the more sensibly we live on in our materiality the more we get out of matter. The death of our physical existence and the associated death of consciousness do not necessarily correspond – our being may be affected by forces that do not follow our traditional definition of time and space. I think that the body dies but the quantum field continues. Life itself remains inexplicable and yes, it is a very effective time machine.

There is an undertone of introspection to what you mold, whereby your time-traveling seems to explore the peripheries of human existence.  Can I ask you how time fits into your work? Is time an errant function of our perception?

I am tempted to answer your question by referring to Albert Einstein who explained to us that time is relative – time passes more leisurely for an object moving faster than other objects. That is to say, the rate at which time passes leans on our frame of reference whilst energy and matter are interchangeable, they are different forms of the same thing. A tough nut to crack I know, so let me try to explain this perplexity by speaking with Einstein, in a very quantum way, of course, giving witness to the reality hidden from the world we see.

Dear Albert, allow me to bring you from the past into the present, perhaps via a quantum wave. You have been an ardent collector of art whilst concerning yourself with the structure of matter, space, and time. I reckon that you could have included ’She that Spreads the Winds’ in your collection, not for its craftsmanship nor its aesthetic looks but for the sculpture’s effect of slowing down time, albeit at speeds approaching that of light.  Albert, I would go all out to travel back in time to meet you to experience that eternal moment, without being whisked off in the maelstrom of history. Time is not, as we both know, a one-way street since there is no chasm between cause and effect – time is rather a twirly observation. Finally, Dear Albert, as you rightly said, reality is merely an illusion, and let me add – if I may so – that those who spread the winds can fly away infinitively, to the worlds beyond those that pitifully illustrate reality.

Wow, that’s a pretty over-the-top monologue about the essence of human beings. Dr Gindi, your sculptures are metaphors for a fluid and counter-intuitive world. What message do you want to leave to the reader? How can we, as wide-eyed individuals, live in such a world of yours that seems to be limitless but certainly has a nature of its own as it is piloted by quantum perspectives?

I think a lot about the fluidity of being and what it means for humanity, as there is a feeling of being kind of fluid myself. It is a horrific mental picture but one that buttresses me. Everything is possible, depending on our perspective in this fuzzy reality that is made of both fact and fancy, and which is triggered by the persistence of memory. Fluidity of being is an experience of reality beyond its physical imprint, whether we are actually in it, or imagining it. By accepting the flux of being we might lose the usual vanity that makes us destructive. As certainty about reality erodes, it is uncertainty that gives me liberty. I thus wholeheartedly recommend you enjoy each and every moment in this fluid world as all infinity is in the present moment. And let’s speculate with a multiple quantum perspective to surprise ourselves.

Dr Gindi’s website and Instagram