Between the two realms

Listen to article

Dear Muhammad Ali Talpur,

Thank you for having us in your studio. It was lovely to remember Lala Rukh and other mutual inspirations. What was most refreshing was the insightful discussion on art and creativity. I have been thinking about the word dhiyan, as you used it to describe what you do while making art. There are various expressions in English for the word: observation, attention or devotion, maybe. You said painting is not a meditative act for you.

If not meditation, then perhaps mindfulness. But what's the difference between the two? In the South Asian cultural context, meditation typically involves remembrance and concentration. It focuses on the purification of mind and soul that further promisess some reward — Jannah, Moksha or Nirvana (Paradise, Eternal Salvation and Enlightenment). It entails disciplined practice and leaves no room for negotiating the ultimate truth rather it facilitates finding one.

Mindfulness, on the other hand, is about being aware of one's self and surroundings and being sensible and considerate about little things. This awareness supports the idea that there is some fundamental reality that needs probing. In this way, mindfulness is a cognitive skill, a technique employed for meditation.

It is also a state that can be developed through meditation. One meditates to become mindful or one is mindful so one meditates i.e. what comes first depends on which stage of the journey one is at. Understandably, meditation must reinforce tranquility. What you experience is tension.

There is always an ongoing negotiation between you and the work turning the little creative interventions into small battles that you fight repeatedly in each new work. The paper and canvas become the battlefield where the calculated, precise and decisive surgical strike takes place leaving marks that only you can decipher fully. In this process, you become the front-line soldier who clears the ground for the followers, onlookers in this case, for whom it is a meditative ritual.

Your works give you freedom from the constraints of past and future, present and absent or material and immaterial. They are devoid of any relatable form or colour, engulfing the viewer in the vastness of possibilities. Such abstractions essentially serve as the point of initiation of all quests.

"Emptying the mind" is the first step. This hollowness ignites an immediate impulse to fill the void. Filling the gaping white abyss of your surfaces is what you do. The repetitive lines, trivial marks, obscure signs and unclear dialogue manifest the absolute reality.

Borrowing Foucault's "archeological analysis" and his expression: "It may not be a pipe, but it's less not a pipe than a lawnmower or an airplane. It's a gestalt, to which the sane response — that is, the one we would all agree on — is that it is not a pipe ... but it sure reminds us of one". Abstraction in your art doesn't depict "Reality" directly, but it hints at something absent or intangible.

This is what you do in your works — try to equalise the two jurisdictions, physical and metaphysical. And it is where you reside, in between the two realms.

I also noticed the minute irregularities in otherwise rhythmic repetitions of line drawings. I am not sure if you deliberately make these "human errors". To me, they are the little distractions infested upon the seeker of the truth. After all, the devil is also a reality. You may call it Shaitan or Mara who disrupts the seeker's concentration with various temptations including fear, doubt and the promise of worldly pleasures.

This temptation, attachment and illusion often oppose the path to enlightenment. It happens with the seers, sibyls and even the messengers alike which we do not claim to be after all we are just the "poor" artists. By this, I mean that as artists, we're ordinary people without claims to any divine or mundane status.

Lastly, I agree and support your stance on pricing your artwork "a little high". Practising and believing in art, as you do, is like a social service. It is a noble cause but artists too have to sustain a decent living.

Bano, May 2025