The Artwork Newspaper:What components within the drawing did you give attention to?
Martand Khosla: The literal studying is that there’s a blue home and a white tower. However in our discussions throughout the early levels, we have been considering, what’s the significance of blue? Is there a reference right here to the tiles from Central Asia that got here to South Asia? There’s a sailboat within the backdrop. Does this point out an area or the centuries-old commerce relationship between South and West Asia?
It’s additionally a cityscape, which may very well be a reference to Yemen, but it surely appears to be like very very like many cities of India, the place you have got incremental urbanism and need-based buildings. It has a tent. Are we taking a look at all of those cultural markers inside the drawing? How do you then derive an architectural language from that sketch? And what are the clues that it leaves that we will take into consideration by way of institutional structure?
How did you method the palette and materiality on this translation?
The floor is blue tiles, which the sketch doesn’t essentially point out. A few of the cues for us have been that Husain designed a house in New Delhi with damaged stone as a façade. After which, in fact, the Husain Doshi ni-Gufa in Ahmedabad [an underground gallery of Husain’s work, designed by the architect B.V. Doshi and now known as Amdavad ni Gufa]. That has damaged tiles, that are part of Indian architectural language: they’re typically used on the roofs of buildings to replicate the warmth. Tiles maintain in them a cultural energy and a narrative that talks concerning the broader identification of Asia and the area, which knowledgeable Husain’s artworks a lot.
What concerning the alternative of website?
Earlier than we have been appointed and lengthy earlier than the development of the museum began, a cylindrical glass constructing was constructed referred to as the Seeroo fi al Ardh. Inside it’s Husain’s final main work. It’s sculptural but in addition kinetic, and it’s a bit like a efficiency piece in a round, circus-like method. The thought is that the viewers can start their expertise of the museum from that constructing, or they’ll finish it by seeing the grand efficiency that occurs there.
The completed constructing of Lawh Wa Qalam in Doha retains the important thing components seen in M.F. Husain’s drawing Picture courtesy Qatar Basis
How does the design relate to your personal private method as an artist and architect, significantly close to the physique transferring by means of area?
If you have a look at it, the museum has a casual massing—virtually like a road in one of many cities of the World South, which is a spot the place I consider Husain would have grown up. It’s not made by architects and doesn’t maintain inside it grand cultural establishments. It’s typically ignored, however it is extremely a lot the dominant architectural and concrete panorama. That is additionally what we hope would be the journey by means of the museum for the customer: to be ambling by means of the streets of an imagined metropolis, not essentially following a prescribed trajectory or a chronology. It actually does really feel such as you’re navigating the streets of a metropolis of India, or Souq Waqif in Doha.
