Conference of the Birds

Imagine an installation of a tree that exemplifies The Conference of the Birds in combining ancestral knowledge and fundamentals of spatial design, to create to awaken the 5 senses and evoke the 6th- spirit.

Author, poet, thinker, artist, sculptor?and installation genius Satish Gupta’s Conference of the Birds was my piece de resistance for my sculpture show iSculpt 3 at India International Centre's Gandhi King Plaza a small garden that morphed into a sculpture court for two weeks last December. This tree with birds and branches , rose in splendour at Gandhi King Plaza, and almost melded into the landscape of ficus trees and a robust banyan.

Created in copper, steel bronze and mixed media here was a monumental tree that invited reflection. Muzaffar Ali the film director stood and recited Farsi poetry that sounded like music on a winter evening.His gentle voice brought alive the 12th century poet’s allegory. Sufi poet Farid ud-Din Attar, was commonly known as Attar of Nishapur.?

Composed in the twelfth century in north-eastern Iran, Attar's great mystical poem is among the most significant of all works of Persian literature. A marvellous, allegorical rendering of the Islamic doctrine of Sufism - an esoteric system concerned with the search for truth through God - it describes the consequences of the conference of the birds of the world when they meet to begin the search for their ideal king, the Simorgh bird as they traverse 7 valleys.?

On hearing that to find him they must undertake an arduous journey, the birds soon express their reservations to their leader, the hoopoe. With eloquence and insight, however, the hoopoe calms their fears, using a series of riddling parables to provide guidance in the search for spiritual truth. By turns witty and profound,?The Conference of the Birds?transforms deep belief into magnificent poetry.

Satish embodies and personifies the conversation between the peacock and the hoopoe. Its a story of calming fears. With eloquence and insight, in search of a King, the hoopoe calms the fears of the birds, using a series of riddling parables to provide guidance in the search for spiritual truth. By turns witty and profound,?The Conference of the Birds?transforms deep belief into magnificent poetry.

This tree has a presence?that includes all that?is specific in nature as well as reality. While casting in different kinds of metal, Satish seeks to attain a formal perfection, so that he can?smoothen the language of both casting as well as moulding to create a?symphony that creates lyrical cadences of the beauty and the dignity of life.

This majestic tree brings back into memory the words from the original poem:?

“The ocean can be yours; why should you stop??

Beguiled by dreams of evanescent dew?

The secrets of the sun are yours, but you

Content yourself with motes trapped in beams.”