(UQDA) UNPUZZLED Ghulam Mohammad

In my work, I have tried to explore the relationship between language and identity, in a cultural, historical and contemporary context. As a Pakistani citizen, having to experience the decline of our national language in almost every sphere of life, has led me to revisit the relationship of this language with my own identity. The fractures that result within one’s own being, after one feel that he is slowly being dispossessed of a language, fragments the relationship that one has with one’s own self. This fragmentation, confusion and disorder that seem inescapable and overpowering are what have informed my work.

This led me towards another aspect of language; its paradoxical nature as both the conveyer as well as the limiter of meaning. I see language as essential to communication but also feel that there is so much that it seems to leave behind in its construction; the mass of abstract emotions, feelings and sensations that inform identity and communication seem to be lost in the structure and system of language. The range and limitation of language, experienced by me on an everyday basis, is also one of the concerns that I try to engage with.

Carving out words and recomposing them is also a cathartic act, in which I try to break language down into its most basic constituents and attempt a reconstruction of language and identity, trying to arrive at something more than just itself. The rediscovery of language by freeing it from the page where it is composed in a particular fashion and then recomposing it, changing its meaning, its character as language, is an act of plasticizing language to see what it has the potential to lead to.

- Ghulam Mohammad

Ghulam Mohammad Biography

Ghulam Mohammad is a Visual Artist, born in Kachi Baluchistan, Pakistan lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan. He graduated with distinction in Fine Arts from Beaconhouse National University Lahore 2013. During his student days, he was selected for Inspire Trip to University of Central Lancashire (student exchange program under British Council). He did his Masters In Art Education form Beaconhouse National University in 2017. Currently he is teaching as an Assistant professor in Fine Arts department at Beaconhouse National University.

Mohammad uses language and script as a medium of expression of both his own identity and cultural, historical and contemporary context. His works are intricate collages of paper cuttings of Urdu text and other local scripts pasted on Wasli-paper, sometimes embellished with gold and silver leaf and Iranian ink.

Mohammad was awarded the Beaconhouse Emerging Talent Award for Art, Lahore Literary Festival in 2015.

In 2016 he was awarded the Jameel Art Prize 4 from Victoria & Albert Museum London.

He has participated as a judge for Bahrain Annual Fine Art Exhibition in January 2017.