The recent Indus Valley School Gallery event in Karachi, a book launch and art exhibition, spotlighted Akhtar Hilal Zuberi’s twin attributes of creative writing and artistic expression.

Recognised as a textile artist Zuberi’s canvas is the woven fabric — instead of wielding the brush, he tears, plucks and snips and fluffs the fabric to build his compositions. True to form, the exhibition of paintings articulates his fidelity to abstraction. A Modernist he began deconstructing long before the younger generation made this activity fashionable. With emphasis on redefinition of method and material he manipulates the warp and the weft on a stretcher instead of the customary easel to produce tapestries rich in tactile and visual textures as well as engaging visceral content.

“My work is off the loom but the creative experience is the same as painting,” he says and points out that unlike the West where tapestry has been a collective art, combining the talents of the painter or designer with those of the weaver, “There is no craftsman between me and my work.”

Akhtar Hilal Zuberi’s canvas is a woven fabric that produces rich visual tapestries

Akhtar Hilal Zuberi.

His work is an original, independent production based largely on the reductive and additive process, somewhat similar to the technique of making collages and relief works. With no preconceived ideas or prior rough sketches to guide him, his manner of working is entirely instinctive. The language develops as it goes along with the mood of the moment.

The presentation of his volume of short stories, Gaali, in Urdu, reveals a hitherto hidden dimension of his personality — as author — and that too, of the considerable merit. Noted progressive Urdu writer, poet and feminist Fehmida Riaz penned the introductory comments in the hardback and distinguished artist Mehr Afroz who curated the exhibition of tapestry paintings also conducted a dialogue with the artist at the inaugural session. Unlike this abstract intuitive sensibility in art he brings a very observant eye to his writing which is steeped in Realism. Instead of an abstruse, romanticised or similarly stylised presentation he opts for depictions of life and society as it was or is.

The published 20 odd short stories written in the decade of 1975-85 during his tenure as art educator at Benghazi University, Libya revolve around the ordinary lives of ordinary people mainly in towns of rural Sindh.

A bird in flight.

Born in New Delhi, he received his early education at Naz High School, Khairpur, Sindh. A childhood familiarity with the locales and its inhabitants enables him to produce delightful characterisations of the social and cultural environment of the region. Be it the jostle and shove in a local carrier or the ambience around the Matiari bus stop enroute to Hala and Hyderabad, a busy samosa dhaba, pan khoka or traditional lower middle-class household he renders reality closely and in comprehensive detail with an emphasis on credibility.

The descriptive, pictorially rich content of his stories is a strong component of his writing style. It grabs the reader’s attention immediately and compels extended reading. His characters appear in their real complexity of temperament and motive. Peppered with comic humour, wit and pathos their characterisation is realistic and endearing.

As an artist and author Zuberi Sahib traverses two opposing trajectories — both genres are invested with a distinct level of maturity and creative ability but they need to be appraised independently within their respective parameters.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, November 23rd, 2014