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Amin Gulgee defies easy categorisation: he’s a metal sculptor, a curator, and one of Pakistan’s most innovative and cherished artists, the beating heart of his home city of Karachi’s creative scene. His metalwork is as dramatic and eccentric as Amin is. He’s in your face, uncompromising, a living and breathing performance piece.

Amin also comes from a prestigious family. His father, Ismail Gulgee, was one of Pakistan’s most famous modernists, creating abstract paintings that have been exhibited across the globe, and even sketching heads of state like Reagan and Gaddafi. In 2007, both Ismail and Amin’s mother Zaro were tragically murdered by their driver. It was Amin who found their bodies, in their house which adjoins his own studio and gallery. Much of Amin’s work since has been an attempt to come to terms with and heal from this most tragic of events.

Harry Stott meets Amin on location in his Karachi studio-cum-gallery-cum-home, as he prepares to open a new museum of his father’s work – the ‘most momentous’ thing he has ever attempted. We listen in as Amin shows us the calligraphy adorned doors which he has created for the museum’s entrance. We go inside his studio to hear about his creative process more widely. And we hear Amin come to terms with the tragedy of his parents’ death and the solace that he finds in his workshop.

Amid the tumult of this momentous museum opening in the already tumultuous city of Karachi, this episode of In the Studio attempts to understand how Amin’s two-year process of creation, curation and healing will change his creative process for the years to come.

Presenter and producer: Harry Stott
Co-producer and fixer: Adam Fahy-Majeed
Executive producer: Sandra Ferrari
Sound design and engineering: Alan Leer, Lizzy Andrews

A Message Heard production

Image: Amin Gulgee (Credit: Humayun Memon)