By Katharina Holstein-Sturm | photo credit: special arrangement
Katharina Holstein-Sturm, a visual artist from Germany, and Jameela Nishat, an activist-poet from Hyderabad, come from two very different cultural backgrounds. Improving the status of women through their art is a dream that binds the two.
Katharina Holstein-Sturm and Jamila Nishat | photo credit: special arrangement
Flying Embers, their creative collaboration currently on view at the Goethe Zentrum in Hyderabad portrays reality. The exhibition features an artist’s book with Katharina’s drawings and Jamila’s Hindi/Urdu poems. Translated into English. Combining art and poetry, they address conflict, female foeticide, abuse, exploitation and forced marriage of young girls. The mixed media exhibition featuring paper, fabric, cement and wire has added embellishments in the form of calligraphy by Mohammad Irfan.
Calligraphy artist Mohammad Irfan | photo credit: special arrangement
For Irfan, a signboard artist who paints banners, penning calligraphy on a work of art is a unique experience. “It is an expression of art; The job looks easy but it takes time,” he says. One of the challenges he faced when using the ink was to ensure the fineness of the stroke and that the letters retain texture. He shares, ““I learned to read and write Urdu after becoming a commercial artist to experience and understand the beauty of the language.
how it started
This Indo-German project began in April 2022 at a video meeting of artists and poets from India and Germany. The virtual conversation brought them all “on one platform to stand up for peace, humanity and stability,” says Jamila, who sent some poems to Katharina. Inspired to create some works, the German artist then came to Hyderabad – her first visit to India – in January 2023.
Katharina informs via an email from Hamburg that the creations were made at the guest house of the University of Hyderabad where she stayed for 19 days. While here he also organized a workshop on artists’ books for first year art students at the university. “I was well received, had a lot of fun and the workshop culminated in an exhibition in the Department of Fine Arts,” she says. Katharina, who studied visual communication and graphic design at FH Würzburg, and is a member of various artist groups and galleries in Germany.
By Katharina Holstein-Sturm | photo credit: special arrangement
With several exhibitions in Germany, Europe and the US, Katarina says poetry has to inspire her to translate it into art. “It was easy with these poems; They were so powerful and visual,” she adds. She works mostly with ink and paper. While she paints on all types of paper – even old book pages – she uses thin, colored tissue or wrapping paper to create the layers. “Chance is a huge element of my creative process that I embrace and incorporate. These artists’ books contain many images that I combine and collage on top of each other,” she says about her creative process. Tells
She has bought small pieces of festive fabric in Hyderabad and displayed them in contrast to the contents of the books. Katrina says, “Each part of those books has a meaning. The cover of “Give Me My Milk, Mother” is a traditional wedding dress. ‘All my veins were filled with concrete’ I sew pieces of broken cement into fabric used for young girls’ party dresses.
Founder of the Shaheen Resource Center for Women in Hyderabad, Jameela has published three collections of poetry and her work has been translated and featured in several notable anthologies, including Women’s Writing in India and Her Own Voice. One of Jamila’s poems give me milk mom, don’t kill me in coke , Give me milk mother, don’t hit me in the womb), dedicated to her mother, “is not a personal poem, but it has a political message,” says Jamila.
By Katharina Holstein-Sturm | photo credit: special arrangement
As a woman who has ‘suffered and processed the pain,’ Katrina tapped into that well to create the illustrations for this book. She says, “Yes it was painful but also liberating to find an artistic outlet for such feelings. The translation of this poem into art worked well. Recently at the Hyderabad Literary Festival (HLF) when we showcased So we had some touching experiences; some of the women started crying after seeing the book.”
Since Jamila and Katrina are from different cultural backgrounds, was it easy to find a common ground to improve the status of women? Katrina replies, “Since that fight is sadly international, it was easy to find a common ground. Jamila and I are both feminists and fighters. I wrote in my foreword to HLF: We fight with poetry and art to change the world.
Flying Ember is on at Goethe Zentrum, Hyderabad till 6 March.