Salima Hashmi
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Salima Hashmi
Courageous women’s palette
By Asif Noorani
Salima Hashmi wears many hats. She was an art educator for 30 years at her alma mater, the National College of Art, her long and illustrious career culminated in her holding the office of the Principal. She is now the Dean of the Visual Arts School in a private university in Lahore. Hashmi has also curated the works of artists belonging to her gender and her country both at home and abroad and she was recently invited to speak on the subject at the Aga Khan University in Karachi.
She is one artist who has put her own art on the backburner to project and catalogue the contribution of women artists in Pakistan, a subject which is close to her heart. It inspired her to write an invaluable book on the lives and works of women artists in Pakistan Unveiling the Visible.
Despite the strike that had gripped the city, the auditorium was half full and the audience riveted to her talk. Earlier, Shamsh-Kasim Lakha, the outgoing president of the university, highlighted the role that she is playing with distinction as an art educator and historian. Her talk, he said, was a part of a series of special lectures that the university arranged from time to time. Hashmi seemed to be in good company for her predecessors included the likes of Stanley Wolpert, Prince Hasan of Jordan and Carl Amrehein, Vice President, Academics at the University of Alberta.
She embarked on a journey that started with a brief introduction to Amrita Shergill, whose recent biography published by Penguin in India, is creating waves. The speaker recounted the laudable contributions made by women artists in different periods of the countrys history. She showed a couple of horrifying photographs where women were at the receiving end of a lathi charge when they protested against the draconian Law of Evidence during the days of General Ziaul Haq. She recalled the Generals directive when women at workplaces and educational institutions were ordered to cover themselves with chadars. In NCA, as in some other places, the directive was defied. How could girls in the sculpture department, using mechanical saw and drilling and lathe machines, wear chadars? It was a safety hazard, the flowing garment could have got entangled in a machine, recalled Hashmi, later adding, Some of our men are obsessed with womens sexuality and their dress code, she said later while answering a question.
Courage in the face of adversity was the theme of her talk. A case in point was Mukhtaran Mais determination to have her powerful tormentors punished. Benazir Bhuttos presence in the Prime Minister House didnt mean that women had gained power. Even Ms Bhutto had her limitations. Her visibility did not imply that women in the country had become less invisible, said Hashmi before returning to her theme.
I shall include those artists who fit into the scope of my subject and will not necessarily follow a chronological sequence, she said, as she moved from Shergill and Anna Molka Ahmed, endowed with a richly coloured palette, to Esmet Rahim, whose presence went unnoticed, though her art remained highly individualistic and invaluable. She displayed the representative works of many a woman artist through slides, ranging from Zubeida Agha to Risham Syed. Youve come a long way babe, the slogan of Virginia Slims, she felt, aptly summarised the journey of women artistes in over half a century of this countrys history.
Salima Hashmis lecture stimulated the faculty members and students of the university to ask some pertinent questions. Replying to a question how would one determine, on seeing a painting, whether it was done by a man or a woman, her somewhat evasive answer was that one has to be an expert to come to a conclusion. Another questioner asked if no male artist had ever highlighted the plight of the women in this country she said that the foremost name that came to her mind was Nagoris.
The question-answer session continued well after the speaker and the listeners went out for refreshments. If what you have shown today is topical then is there any guarantee that these works will continue to appeal to art enthusiasts once the theme becomes a thing of the past? someone queried. I think they will because the works of art that I showed you this afternoon stand on their artistic merit also, pat came the reply.
