KARACHI: It is nice to see Pakistani artists warming up to the idea of juxtaposing literary text with fine art. It works well in the local context, because historically the subcontinent has had a solid and enviable literary tradition. This is what makes an ongoing exhibition of Madiha Hyder’s artworks titled Fortuitous Collision — with critic Nafisa Rizvi’s poems in English complementing each exhibit —at the Canvas Art Gallery worthy of being visited.

According to the info provided by the gallery, Madiha has a “proclivity to fabricate images of people and places when reading fiction”. This goes to show the interrelatedness of the two forms of expression. Poetry, like fiction, is to do with words. And once you start reading something, the first thing that you do is to create your own images by interpreting what you’ve read. Now Fortuitous Collision cuts both ways. Meaning: some of the poems were penned after getting ‘stimulated’ by the artist’s painting, and others ‘inspired’ Madiha to create characters. Either way, it’s the viewer who’s the beneficiary because the paintings and the poems gel well, and in a manner of speaking, prove a mutually reinforcing creative journey.

A case in point is the piece called ‘Kiki and Kara’ (oil on paper). The almost bewildered look of the girl in the frame, as if posing a question to the viewer about something that the viewer has an inkling of, is quite a sight. But Nafisa’s poem demystifies that thought through her words, suggesting that the protagonist in the painting is faced with a dilemma of a collective nature, not a personal one. The following is the opening stanza of the poem:

The park was emptying as the sun set, there was a hush

The raucous children had gone home whining

I felt a tender nip on my ear and then a feathery brush

Two green parrots alit on my shoulders, my neck nestling Engaging stuff!

The exhibition concludes on Nov 15.

Published in Dawn, November 10th, 2018