Summer's about splashy sonnets

Colours can pump up poetry far better than calligraphy can. Starting today, a show in town gets you a ramped-up Rushdie and literature in rainbow hues

Poetry on canvas
Colours can pump up poetry far better than calligraphy can. Starting today, a show in town gets you a ramped-up Rushdie and literature in rainbow hues

William Shakespeare had theatre, Gulzar has music, and you probably have a blog as an outlet for your creativity. The important thing is, no playwright can accomplish anything without a crew, no lyricist without the chorus and no blogger without support from surfers. Art, in isolation, is futile. It is for this reason that Delhi-based art historian Nilima Sheikh decided to blend the best of literature into her painting project called Drawing Trails, which throws open its curtains today. We have more on the soulful symbiosis.

Mix fix: The exhibition of larger-than-life tempera on sanganer paper works is weaved around violence, trauma and grief of ordinary people in Kashmir and Gujarat. Prose and poetry by the likes of Salman Rushdie, MK Raina, Nund Rishi Hazrat Nuruddin and Kashmiri bard Agha Shahid Ali knit themselves into Nilima's expressions, and she has no regrets about borrowing their art. "I don't believe that creativity is individual. It's about relating yourself with the world aroundu00e2u0080u00a6 our minds are full of other people's art and writings, isn't it?"

Copyright fright, whazzat?
The writers who find a place in her surreal renditions of stark reality aren't endorsing the show, so aren't copyright issues a threat? No, Nilima explains by citing an example. "I'm not passing their work as mine, so it isn't plagiarism. It's more like quoting in a newspaper." The late Agha's family was consulted for permission, MK Raina is aware of the adaptation, and Rushdie has used her painting on the cover of the German edition of his novel Shalimar The Clown, which Nilima excerpts in one of her exhibits. Fair enough.

Pen vs paint: Asking which form inspired the other is like an egg and chicken query, feels the artist. "Sometimes, I'd sit with a poem, and at others, a verse would find its way to my brush," Nilima recalls, when we quiz her on how the lyrical union came about. Kids, too, won't mind her canvasses, for they have generous scoops of storybook stuff smeared in. Go, get picture-booked.

Drawing Trails

Where: Gallery Espace, Community Centre, New Friends Colony
When: Today to May 30
Timings: 11 am to 7 pm (Sundays closed)
Ring: 26326267