May 03, 2008

Viewing the recent Canvas Gallery, Karachi exhibition ‘A step forward’ by Attiya Shaukat was a humbling experience. A stirring package of art and angst, the show was as much about the amazing versatility now found in the contemporary miniature as it was about the artists enhanced working skills and poignant recount of personal tragedy.

In 2003, while working on her mini thesis, Attiya Shaukat sustained serious injuries in the lower part of her body as she fell from a height of eight feet. This staircase fall fatally damaged four vertebras in her spinal column. A grueling regimen of physiotherapy and exercise restored feeling and sensation in most of the injured areas except her lower limbs. Rendered immobile she confronted the most traumatic chapter of her life with the heroic decision to turn disability into a positive force.

Drowning her distress in the creative energies of art making, Shaukat successfully concluded her thesis ‘Flick of a second’ in 2004. Two subsequent solos ‘Free fall’ at Anant Gallery, New Delhi in 2007 and ‘Bones and steel’ at Rhotas 2, Lahore reaffirmed her brave stance.

Shaukat’s current exhibition is indeed ‘a step forward’ when viewed in the context of her previous showings. Her rendering skills, as a miniature artist, have refined and her composition sense has matured. The clutter and disarray in her earlier work has given way to a more meaningful juxtaposition of elements defining her predicament though there is still room for considerable improvement in the ‘Bits and pieces’ series. The few paintings that stand out are the ones where she has utilised empty space to advantage as in most works of the ‘Step by step’ series.

“The most prominent elements in my paintings are my feet,” the artist rightfully points out and they appear in various stages of dress and undress to articulate her plight. To define her ordeal she makes creative use of medical aids like forceps, stretchers, binders, fixators and wheelchairs to strengthen her narrative. The ceiling fan form appears frequently as it is the image she had to live with the most during her extended supine stretches on the hospital bed.

The crucial vertebras are painted with exquisite perfection and artistry and the cord image is also well modulated to create movement and suggest injury. Its most delightful formation is its undulation around and through a jumpsuit clad body in a yogic posture. As the only comprehensive figure in the entire series this could be an indicator of the artist’s future move towards figuration to enlarge her vocabulary.

Like the rest of her repertoire her colour palette also relates to her physical trauma and suffering. The red tonalities spell states of alarm, fright and panic while blue is a relatively warm calming tone.

Disability motivated art is not a new phenomenon. Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s oeuvre is a prime example of captivating aesthetics provoked by pain and injury. The turn towards the creative in life has a healing and transformative effect on people, particularly those with a disability. So not only do such exhibitions help others see and value the creative in those with disabilities but they also encourage the disabled to turn towards the creative in life whether as a ‘formal’ art or a life lived to its fullest.

Dorothea Lange was a famous photographer during the Depression years and beyond, known particularly for her photographs of migrant workers during the Depression. Her best known photograph  is ‘Migrant mother.’ Lange contracted polio at the age of seven which left her with a limp. Commenting on this in later life she said, “I think it was perhaps the most important thing that happened to me. It formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me, and humiliated me, all those things at once. I’ve never gotten over it, and I am aware of the force and power of it.”

The poet and playwright Neil Marcus once wrote, “Disability is not a ‘brave struggle’ or ‘courage in the face of adversity’...disability is an art. It’s an ingenious way to live.” This purports the concept, that living with a disability, as with all living, is an art with its own aesthetic, grace and mastery. By turning towards creativity or living life as an art Attiya Shaukat is coming to terms with her illness, she is improving what she can and will hopefully find ways of going beyond what cannot be changed.



Left: Bits & pieces II, tea wash

& Gouache on vasli

Below: Step by step VIII, Gouache on vasli