painting

Painted letters

What if calligraphy and poetry are merged to create one piece of art? You! takes a look at an exhibition of artist Shahabdullah Alamee -  ‘Inshaye tahayyur’ - who has successfully managed to achieve this task...

Art includes various forms of visual artworks that are creative and narrate the story of an artist’s perception of the world. Some artists express themselves by creating abstract or futuristic work, while others choose to put their message across by using simplicity as a tool. However, there are some works of art such as calligraphy that are appreciated just for its beauty and exquisiteness.

Even though, there are various people who do not understand paintings, you will surely find a meagre amount of people who fail to understand the beauty of calligraphy. Calligraphy is a type of visual art form that is often called the art of fancy
lettering. It is the design and execution of lettering with a broad tip instrument or brush in one stroke. A contemporary definition of calligraphic practice is “The art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious and skillful manner. Modern calligraphy however, ranges from functional hand-lettered inscriptions and designs to fine-art pieces.

The good news is that people who are interested in calligraphy can see an excellent calligraphic exhibition that is being held at the Koel art gallery, Karachi, where the artist Shahabdullah Alamee is exhibiting his exquisite work. The art presents a calligraphic interpretation of the Persian poetry of Mirza Abdul Qadir Bedil Dehlavi in ‘Siyah Mashq’. For those who don’t know, Siyah mashq is a Persian word which means “black practice”, and refers to calligraphic practice sheets covered completely with writing. These calligraphic sheets may include a number of diagonal words and letters used in combinations facing upwards and downwards. Siyah mashq was originally just a practice for the calligrapher to warm up his hand and to refine the shape of letters by repeating them over and over. This resulted in a pages filled with words and letters and when calligraphers realised how stunning some of these pieces were, it was turned into a style of its own and is now a popular genre. Read on to find out more about the exhibition in Siyah mashq.

The exhibit

The exhibition is managing to grab the attention of many art lovers as the collection includes not only poetry but also a calligraphic form of art that is rarely practiced nowadays. This is why the exhibit is a breath of fresh air from the typical exhibitions one may come across. The work that Shahabdullah Allamee picked to express was by Mirza Abdul Qadir Bidel Dehlavi (1644 - 1720), a poet known for his tremendous contribution to Persian poetry.  He is considered the most difficult and challenging poet of Safavid-Mughal poetry and is the author of 16 books of poetry, which contain nearly 147,000 verses. He is also considered as one of the prominent poets of Indian School of Poetry in Persian literature and both Mirza Ghalib and Iqbal-e Lahori were influenced by him.

Looking more in to the work that is being presented at the exhibition, the calligraphy does not just have repeated lettering as siyah mashq usually does. The artist in fact, has taken the genre a step forward by interpreting the poetry he used in each art piece and creating the same kind of feel with the use of letters. For instance, a verse which has a melancholic tone is in the form of a tear drop. Other art pieces also include images that have been constructed after interpreting the verses of the poetry used. The artist, surely has managed to outdo himself with this exhibition as it not only expresses his ability as a calligrapher but also has managed to provide art lovers with a different kind of art form.

* The exhibition is on at Koel Art gallery Clifton till 2ndApril.