The Unseen Silk Road—Insights and thoughts from watching Gulistan’s paintings
Li Lei
Executive Director, Shanghai Art Museum
Growing desire I
Gulistan’s paintings are like the little owl she drew, taking off from the Gobi Desert in Central Asia, flying east across the Pacific Ocean and west to the Mediterranean Sea, which is the journey of most of the earth. She keeps going back and forth, scanning the earth and the ocean with elvish eyes, looking through the ancient times and the future.
When I face Gulistan’s paintings, it seems that I have been brought into her subconscious visual scene. The remains of those ancient civilizations do not seem to be buried by flying sands, but being vacantly hanged in a foot away, smiling at their own past. I see a young girl who seems to be standing by the edge of the wall two thousand years ago,staring at me with her sharp eyes. Can I go back to her?Maybe there is a sea that seeps into the long-dried Gobi, and a white cloud is steaming in the most central part of the Asian continent. The cloud falls on the girl’s chest and becomes the lace that sets off her noble head. Maybe the girl goes to farther southern Europe, and a pair of wings growing out of her hairline. These wings are a gathering of mountains, forests, rivers, flowers, birds, and beasts, and become an oasis that could take a rest during the long migration of life.
Gulistan is a magician of time and space. The memory fragments of any place can be incorporated into the picture by her hands, therefore her paintings reflect the meaning of traveling through time and space. This ability can’t be obtained by training in the academy, it is the courage from her deep inner heart. No wonder that Gulistan is able to easily throw the paintings out at her willingness. Gulistan’s owls should have been hovering over the ancient Silk Road for many centuries, and numerous of passing lives should appear as the portraits at a certain moment.
What a mysterious world!