May 04, 2008

                           Reviewed by Marjorie Husain

The Dreamer Awakes is a book containing 37 poems and 51 art images put together by Beo Zafar and Tabinda Chinoy and lauded by such icons as Khushwant Singh and Bapsi Sidhwa, both of whom wrote congratulatory pieces for the book. The verse and images coordinate as if composed intentionally for the volume, but this was not the case. It is an extraordinary coincidence that the friends, close from schooldays, had expressed thoughts and philosophies in verse and paintings so similar in sentiment. Beo had been writing for years and as she explained, after expressing her thoughts and feelings, she would stuff them in to a drawer. These were her very private thoughts and feelings because she was known as ‘a comic, as someone remarked: a ‘clown’ but throughout history clowns and comics have used humour to disguise their angst, the melancholy of very sensitive people.

In a similar vein, one remembers Tabinda’s first solo exhibition at the Indus Gallery, some years ago, when her disarmingly open aesthetic viewpoint was often quite achingly vulnerable in its boldness of expression. There was nothing going on at the time quite like it. The painted images described emotions, often depicted in a symbolic setting, the work spontaneous and richly textured adding diversity to the mood portrayed on the canvas.

As the authors of the book described the partnership, it seemed that, busy in their lives, they had not discussed their work until quite recently when sitting together. Beo literally ‘opened the drawer’ and took out some poems to read to Tabinda. The two women it seemed had many experiences of life in common. Tabinda sped home to bring photographs of her work and with growing excitement the two artists matched the images to the verses.

Reading the book is an absorbing experience as the poems and images portray intimate feelings. A piece titled ‘Self-Pity’ evoked a Dorothy Par-ker brand of ironic humour. It begins:
 

‘Tears must fall if they must
Noses swell just as much
A terrible congestion
In the mind and the heart
An awful concession
To the sinuses past...’

The poem is appropriately illustrated with the painting of a forlorn figure, sitting with an elbow on a table while everything in the picture is slightly distorted: there is a cup with a spoon, a window, squares of floor tiles and the view from the window that goes awry. The picture evokes a similar reaction in the reader.

Beo literally ‘opened the drawer’ and took out some poems to read to Tabinda. The two women it seemed had many experiences of life in common. Tabinda sped home to bring photographs of her work and with growing excitement the two artists matched the images to the verses.

The way Beo has put words together creates a rhythm that is very enjoyable. For example, ‘Patches and Pockets of my mind’; the alliteration increases the mood of contemplative introspective musing. The intimacy of the poems is very much a quality of the Tabinda’s paintings, and each discipline gives a deeper understanding of the other.

Undercurrents of much of the work of both artistes are an emotion that is universal; the deep thoughts are often linked with regret.

‘Would that I could with my new found clarity do it all again’: who hasn’t shared similar sentiments some time in their lives. Two paintings from Tabinda’s collection accompany the poem in which two female figures are seen against a checkered background, the focal point of the painting is a white bird with folded wings. Ultimately, the bird soars free, and the subject smiles on a moon-lit night.

The artist Lucien Freud once said: ‘Artists who use life itself as a subject matter do so in order to translate life into art. In the poems the experience of self is compared with the sensations that it contains elements discernable in the images. Where the poems are enriched by words put together, in the paintings the sensations are enhanced by the luscious quality of the paint.

For all artists there is a struggle; that of finding authenticity and a language or imagery essentially one’s own. In Tabinda Chinoy’s work the identity is very firmly established as is the case with Beo Zafar. It would be very hard to again find two individuals who share such a creative affinity as they very clearly do.

The Dreamer Awakes: Poems and paintings

By Beo Zafar and Tabinda Chinoy

Oxford University Press, Karachi

Also available with Liberty Books, Karachi

ISBN 9788185002859

108pp. RS 1,495