Where paintings met poems

I GOT to visit an exhibition of a different kind the other day. 'Kavithai Katchi' - that's how the organisers had called it. A portrayal in prose or drawing of some vignettes from poetry? I was pleasantly surprised to find large posters with poems written on them in bold print. By the side of each poem was a painting that related to the poem. These were poems and paintings by women on women.

Thirty five women poets had contributed their poems on various women's issues. Among other things, the exhibition proved that poetry is a personal experience. It was interesting to look for views the poems evoked in the painters. Each artist brought to her picture her interpretation of the poem and in some cases, poem and picture appeared to be two angles of the same context. Twenty seven painters had participated; some using vibrant colours through which strong or gross emotions emerged tellingly, while others were more subtle and symbolic. There was, however, no doubt that the drawings were commentaries on the poems. Compatibility rather than similarity seemed to be the keynote.

Krusangini, the brain behind this experiment, is herself a writer of merit. She has to her credit a collection of short stories that won the Tamil Nadu Government's literary prize last year. The five-day exhibition has been the culmination of her two-year dream and six-month toil. She had always felt that women writers and poets were mentioned in almost all literary meetings in passing and presented merely as a list of minority writers. Even when there were 'good' reviews of their works, they were never taken seriously enough to merit some detailed discussion or even consideration. So, when Krusangini went searching for poems by women writers, she found that the numbers were not negligible and that they stressed their pains and presence quite emphatically, emphatic enough to warrant attention. She said she had tried to include as many as possible in the exhibition.

Human relationships have been an essential part of women's poetry. The basis is love - the kind of love that only a woman is capable of speaking, both as a concept and as an experience. The pressures that accompany her presentation as well as representation of this love, pressures both from an evolved inner consciousness and a conscious awareness of her surroundings, seem to be the common ground from which women artists function. It is this commonality that has been the underlying thread of all the poems presented at this exhibition.

Moreover, Krusangini visualised the poems on large canvases compelling an onlooker to read them and was willing to give the idea a try. She has been successful in the attempt, because it was heartening to find most visitors spending an hour and a half, going round reading the poems and trying to figure out their relationships with the accompanying paintings. This, she said, was her victory. She also said that the large works on the wall sort of symbolised how insignificant the writer was in comparison to her writing.

Most of the poems spoke of angry women being made 'play things' in love. There were six women from Sri Lanka who spoke of the tragedies of their conflict-ridden lives. Mothers and wives waiting for sons and daughters who went into the 'movement' and very often got 'lost' in it. There were also poems on relationships - fathers and mothers with sons and daughters - that were interesting. A few poems spoke of opportunities denied or lost. There was one on 'Rain'. The last, I was told, was by a venerable woman in her eighties and I felt that was the one that effectively spread a wave of hope among all that despair.

More than a thousand visitors, that included almost all the leading Tamil writers and critics, attended the exhibition. Readings of poetry by the writers was part of the event.

It was a co-operative effort of all the writers and it was heartening to see them happily interacting. Krusangini made special mention of the teachers and students of Stella Maris College and The College of Art, but for whose help she would not have been able to make the enterprise such a big success.

PADMA NARAYANAN

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : Punjab on a platter
Next     : Keeps the family flag flying