Multidisciplinary artist and storyteller Osman Yousefzada sat with Bloomsbury Publishing executive publisher Alexandra Pringle to discuss his book at a session titled “The Go-Between – A coming-of-age memoir” on the second day of the Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) 2022 here at Alhamra on Saturday.

Introducing the book titled “The Go-Between: A Portrait of Growing Up Between Different Worlds”, moderator Ms Pringle said the memoir of Yousefzada dealt with his boyhood years in the United Kingdom. Born [to the migrant parents] and bred in Birmingham, she said, Yousefzada had written about working class women. She said the social milieu presented by the writer in Birmingham of 1980’s was almost similar to that portrayed by Charles Dickens in his novels around a century ago.

Mr Yousefzada said: “My parents belong to Swabi (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) and I am inspired by my mother who was a seamstress.” He said his father was sort of a control ‘freak’. He said he had tried to narrate the conditions of working class women in a Birmingham locality which is a sort of ‘red light area’ where courtesans had their set-up.

Yousefzada said having a Muslim identity had been an issue in Birmingham. Speaking of mosques, he said the clerics had declared television ‘boxes of evil.’ He also spoke of racism and similarities in Birmingham neighbourhood and Swabi.

SAVAGE BEAUTY: Celebrated contemporary artist Imran Qureshi conversed with painter and art educationist Salima Hashmi on his corpus of miniature painting and installations at an #LLF-2022 session titled “Savage Beauty.”

A number of slides displaying Qureshi’s miniature work were shown to the audience.

Mr Qureshi shared with the audience fond memories of his admission to the National College of Arts in 1990 when he came from Hyderabad and studied landscape and miniature painting. The artist explained his body of works to the audience. Some of the subjects he laid his hands on included Mughal courts, violence, contemporary political conditions [post-9/11] and global warming.

Qureshi explained some of his art pieces depicting the lynching of two brothers in Sialkot by an unruly mob in 2010 and when Pakistan detonated its nuclear devices 1998.

Speaking about Imran Qureshi’s works, former NCA principal Salima Hashmi said he is an observer, communicator and a commenter. “There is an element of amusement and humour in his pieces.”

About his portrayal of violence, she said the depiction showed an artist’s role as a healer.

Published in Dawn, March 20th, 2022