The ‘meaning’ of art

I will not search the web to look up contemporary artists or the latest exhibition being held in galleries around the world to write about the scope of art in today’s world. I will not call up my artist colleagues, who just had their shows in well-known art showrooms across Pakistan to ask them what seems to be selling these days. I just won’t. Forgive me, I am not an arrogant artist-turned-writer and neither am I disrespecting the strokes of talent brushing against modern-day creativity. It’s only because I currently have other ideas in mind.

What I will do is position myself comfortably on my couch, my hot cup of tea with a teaspoon of honey in hand and tune in to Soundcloud. Currently, drifting into my ears is Andrew Bayer’s Counting the points creating a perfect blend of calm and calamity. Music evokes in me emotion, to create what I might have not without it. It seems to push just the right buttons for me to speak the unspeakable, it erupts feelings I had never known could be present. It handpicks for me just the perfect words to put my pen to paper. It enables me to be true to myself and whatever is it that I might want to create and being honest to my creation — this is what art means to me.

Having spent four years in the National College of Arts, Lahore, I realised that it was during those winter hours of darkness, when I spent hours in the hostel ground, pondering into fog-filled oblivion which helped me decide just what my next project would be. Some days, concepts dawned upon me right after a mesmerising trip to Pappu Saain’s trance. A few light-bulb moments were given birth to at three in the night, in the heat of Lahore’s load-shedding, when I could only hope that the electricity would not break up with me an hour later. The best subjects to discover through my art divulged when I missed home the most, when I was most vulnerable, extremely fragile and it had to be expressed.

Art to me is made up of the ebb and flow of my true feelings and therefore it never lies. Just like this piece of art, with its text running across your eyes, it may have you wondering what my next truth will entail. My Soundcloud playlist finds itself playing for me Pizeta by Remedios, a Roman Tapia Edit, a conclusive ending to this write-up, maybe you would like to take a cut-out and frame it?

Published in The Express Tribune, October 4^th, 2014.