KARACHI: For the artist community, being prolific usually holds them in good stead. If you are prolific, then it means your creative juices rarely stop flowing. But then there’s always time for taking a breather … for quite a few reasons, one of them is, or could be, to re-gather yourself in order to extract more from life.

An exhibition of Shireen Kamran’s paintings that can be seen at the Canvas Art Gallery is titled Hiatus. Here hiatus doesn’t connote a pause or a break. Rather, it’s an important juncture in any artist’s life.

One says this because Shireen in her statement explains, “The union between matter, soul/spirit and the human form lies at the core of my work. A quest for identity leads me on an archetypal journey that is fuelled and inspired by my constant interest in mystical poetry, sacred writings and architectural elements.”

Notice the sequence of words that the artist wants the viewer to think about: union, quest, journey and interest. Clearly, hiatus is not stoppage; it is the quest for, and the interest in, the ‘mystical’ aspect of existence that has led her to come up with these visually appealing and contextually deep artworks. Shireen is also talking about genres other than art, in the broader sense, which she finds helpful in enabling her journey worth writing home about — such as poetry.

Anyone who has even a modicum of understanding of art will find her paintings brimming with poetic sensibility. The rhythmic flow of her figures embedded in the frames, the swaying lines and the frenzied strokes that she has used in the paintings are a testimony to the observation. Take the example of the piece ‘Suluk’ (mixed media on canvas). In it, a dialogue is taking place in rhyming.

‘The Sum of All Parts’ series, in terms of subject matter, underlines the ‘re-gathering’ or ‘re-grouping’ of the self which sometimes lags behind as life moves forward in fits and starts. And all quality artists attach great importance to the self — the mind-boggling confluence of art and life.

The exhibition concludes on Feb 18.

Published in Dawn, February 18th, 2021