The Golden Thread: Episode 3, Making Meaning - YouTube

Gold is a cue.

It tells us something is special, sacred, prized, alluring.

When an object is gilded or glittered with gold, we know it probably has significance.

The presence of gold makes a big difference in our global culture, local customs,

and even in our understanding of the world.

This is the story of how gold is making meaning.

Imagine all of the things that have come and gone since civilisation began,

all of the currencies and markers of wealth that have fallen in and out of fashion,

and all the while, one thing has remained: gold.

The first gold coins originated in China and Lydia around 2000 years ago.

And ever since, whole global monetary systems have been developed on a standard of gold.

American banker JP Morgan famously said... "Money is gold, nothing else."

This symbol of wealth also came to be a symbol of worth.

We all know the value that gold possesses,

but for thousands of years before gold meant money,

it meant something else: sacred.

Gold has been connected to the cosmic and the divine since pre-history.

It's come to represent the heavenly for many civilisations

and has been used to signify the sacred in a vast range of cultural artefacts.

During the Byzantine era, gold ground paintings

used gold leaf sheets to depict figures against a heavenly sky.

And it turns out, early glass makers were even unknowingly adopters of nanotechnology,

using tiny particles of gold to colour stained glass.

Gold's use in art has endured all these centuries later.

Any time we see gold throughout art history,

we know that we are to view this person as important.

That is the role that gold is also playing in my work as well.

Being a mother has influenced my work.

The times that I would take my children to museums,

we were walking and walking and walking until we finally came across a face like ours.

So my work is my way of repositioning Black bodies and faces

into a style of work that we have been excluded from in Western culture.

My process begins with a portrait sitting.

They're usually somebody that's close to me and I will, in a way, erase the dress,

but somewhat keep the shape and form.

Gold is applied, and I use 24-carat gold leaf.

It's beautiful and it really just amplifies the work.

It takes it to a whole 'nother level.

And so I'll just put layers of gold, and then I'll do layers of acrylic paint,

and then will add more gold,

and I'll just continue to work until I feel that I'm done.

I am using gold to adorn my subjects,

to signify how important and valuable my sitters are.

I want the viewer to take away a feeling.

I want them to have a spiritual experience when they're viewing the work,

but I also want them to look further than the beauty,

and dig deeper into the messages and the issues that I'm bringing about.

Gustav Klimt, I just remember the way that I felt when I viewed his work from his golden phase.

The work gave me feelings of magnificence and regality,

and just beauty, and pretty much stopped me in my tracks.

Really just remains in my subconscious

no matter how hard I try to move away from it, it reels me back all the time.

I thought that gold would be a phase. It would be Tawny's golden phase, maybe.

But the more I try to move away from it, the more it pulls me back.

I know that I will forever be driven to create this work,

reinterpreting art history's use of gold.

It's not just Western civilisations where gold holds such history.

It's something that marks meaning all over the world.

Like at the Lakshmi Narayani, coated in up to ten layers of pure gold,

which welcomes all religious beliefs and trusts that its gilded nature

will bring good fortune to its village.

Gold is purity, gold is sanctity.

It gives a sense of well-being.

Gold is a very intrinsic part of Indian history, and heritage, and culture.

The existence of gold can be traced back to Vedic culture, the four Vedas.

And when you're looking at the archaeological sources,

we have gold being a part of our culture and heritage right from the sites of Harappa.

You also have these texts that actually speak about the presence of gold as very authentic,

and a very integral part of well-being of the country.

So gold becomes very important for Indian society

because it is a sign of economic wealth, it's a sign of prosperity.

It is also a sign of a tradition.

And as far as India goes, as far as we go, we are continuing that tradition.

All Indian weddings are exceedingly grand.

The gifting to the bride when she's getting married is largely gold.

It is called a stridhan.

Stri basically means woman, and dhan in that sense means wealth.

It's something that belongs to her,

and she could do what she wanted to do with that stridhana.

It could be starting her own business, or for her own self-actualisation process,

or for any reason of her choice.

So stridhan is a very unique setup that we have in our country

which actually talks about empowerment of woman.

A classic example of that is the temple site that I'm studying

where there is this temple called Svarga Brahma Temple,

which is in Telangana state, the site of Alampur,

where that temple has been commissioned and constructed by the queen.

And that construction of the temple

has largely come from the wealth that she actually has.

The temple was actually a centre for learning for the local population.

So in that space of a woman being very empowered,

for her to have gold is also a sign of economic prosperity,

and the fact that she's celebrating life.

The presence of gold in our country is here to stay

because the value of gold is not going to diminish.

So something which has existed for so many years, so many centuries, across civilisations,

I don't see that going away anywhere.

What we believe in and how we express it helps many of us find reason in the world.

Art and religion are two ways we make meaning.

Another is science: turning to what can be proven to help us understand the universe.

And just as gold has been used in art and religion,

it's also being used to make meaning in the scientific realm.

Quantum computing harnesses the unusual properties of the quantum realm

to try and tackle incredibly complex problems that even super computers can't crack.

Quantum computers, however, are exquisitely delicate.

And so gold is used for conductivity, but also to protect the delicate machine.

When you first look at a quantum computer, the first thing you'll see is gold.

And gold's role in quantum computing is even beyond surface-level.

Recent science has shown gold could be promising in helping us understand mysterious qubits,

or the chains that can form between them.

The hope is that all of this

could help us uncover a little bit more about how the universe works.

If we are on a quest to make meaning of the world,

then this is one of our greatest hopes.

When it comes to making meaning, gold is in a class of its own.

It helps us to find order in the world, to recognise higher powers,

to come together, and to stand on our own.

And perhaps next, it will even help us to answer questions about the universe.

And still, there is more that gold means for the world.