An art of writing for yourself

Mirza accepted writing for art is not as popular in Pakistan as hardly one per cent of population reads art critique.

KARACHI:

Writing on art is writing what your gut tells you — what you, as an individual, perceive art from his or her eye. This was the topic of discussion, and apparently the theme, at  the ‘Art of Writing for Art’ session held on the first day of the fifth Karachi Literature Festival on Friday.

If one must be asked what Pakistan’s artists and writers are like, HM Naqvi’s leather boots, striped trousers and scarfs would come in mind. But like Quddus Mirza, co-author of the Book ‘50 years of Visual Arts in Pakistan’ said: “We do not have a tradition, we tend to imitate countries with long history of art.”

Moderating the event, Naqvi, a Karachi-based novelist, started with his story of how he was once showed elephant dung and said it was art. Using it as a metaphor, he asked if the speakers thought the role of an art critic was making sense of dung for layman.

“People work with [waste],” said Zarmeene Shah, a curator for Indus Valley, adding the materials people now use for art have changed. She then talked about a woman she knew who worked with her children’s diapers. “Your art defines you.”

Opportunities available to groom artists are severely lacking in this country. The lack of any such institutes is felt throughout the country.

In Peshawar, artists cannot exhibit their paintings. In Quetta, there is no market or gallery. At the Sindh Festival, there were no artists from the Sindh University. As a bitter truth, Marjorie Husain, a Pakistani art critique, explained how there are better artists in parts of the country you would never imagine trying to make sculptures from sticks when you discover them in Skardu, Chitral and many such places but they cannot be brought forward.

For some, like Mirza said, this creates better artists. “Artists must know how to swim against the current.”

But is there something as Pakistani art, do we have hope to see it on the horizon? “There is no Pakistani art, we have no culture,” Mirza said, putting it as simply as possible. “We are a relatively new nation of 60 so years and our tradition is constantly evolving. Heck we do not even know if Pakistan would stay for another 5 or 10 years.”

Mirza accepted writing for art is not as popular in Pakistan as hardly one per cent of the population reads art critique that too written in an English newspaper or magazine. “There is no one in this country right now that can make or break someone’s career by writing about them.”

Published in The Express Tribune, February 8^th, 2014.