March

The Spiritual Enlightenment of Guru Arjan Dev Ji 1989 29.5 x 41.5cm (11.6 x 16.4in) Poster color, gouache and gold dust on paper Artist: Amrit K.D. Kaur Singh

The Spiritual Enlightenment of Guru Arjan Dev Ji is a painting which arose out of the artists’ period of formal research into Sikh Art. It presents a visual interpretation of specific verses from the Guru Granth Sahib and is one in a series of similar paintings which offers a visual interpretation of Sikh literary tradition as a way of communicating key aspects of Sikh religious teachings to a wider (and more importantly) non-Sikh audience.

Depicting Guru Arjan Dev Ji as the central figure, it explores the Sikh concept of spiritual enlightenment and the various means of achieving this - using a mixture of visual symbols taken directly from traditional Sikh iconography and invented or new imagery inspired by Sikh literary allegories. For example, Sikh scripture likens the human battle to suppress one’s ego or selfishness (necessary for spiritual enlightenment) to the almost impossible task of trying to control five wild horses.

So in the painting, a group of five horses sits totally still and calm to the right of Guru Arjan Dev Ji (indicating his enhanced state of spirituality as one who has managed to achieve this task).

At the same time he is shown sitting on a lotus (a flower whose symbolism reoccurs in Sikh scriptures as an analogy for the pure soul or godly person who lives in the material world unaffected by its vices and sins, just as the lotus is rooted in mud but rises above the water’s surface to face the sun). The structure of the painting is also symbolic - following a hierarchical composition which denotes the different levels of human existence.

For example, the bottom register represents the state of mundane existence or the material world (symbolized by the globe) and as the process of enlightenment progresses, the composition moves to different areas of transcendence from this earthly plane, the further up the painting we go.

So the middle register depicts an intermediate state between earth and the heavens whilst the upper most register depicts the final state of spiritual awareness or union with the Divine soul which in keeping with Islamic artistic tradition is represented and iconically through abstract decoration and calligraphy - juxtaposing old with new in a way that would make an otherwise purely traditional treatment of this image more relevant to modern Sikh audiences.