ABSTRACT
Over the past decade, Gulammohammed Sheikh has experimented simultaneously with new media and old forms of visual storytelling. This chapter focuses on two aspects of Sheikh's work in order to argue that Kaawad, Home provides a crucial opening from which to observe how the artist's long-standing engagement with the history of representation is based upon a sophisticated critique of historicist temporality. The two aspects are: its critique of secularization and its use of digital media. Sheikh begins by critiquing the Renaissance innovation of single-point perspective and the emergence of a scientific approach to nature. Sheikh's art historical writings should be read alongside his artist statements from around that time, which describe his investment in the idea of visual autobiography. Sheikh's work quite earnestly champions the civilizational flexibility that is demonstrated by Bhupen Khakhar through irony and humor. Sheikh's vision of cultural multiplicity contains a reconfirmed commitment to complexity, defined in art historical, cultural, religious, and temporal terms.
