Bright colours and stories in Kilcullen Culture Night
Despite the many competing events on for Culture Night there was a very good attendance in Kilcullen Library last evening, writes Brian Byrne. All there were very taken with the exhibition of Pakistani art by Sobia Rasheed, born in Pakistan but now living in Ireland, and with a personal mission to bring together the artistic cultures of both countries.
The vibrant colours of her works were particularly attractive, and are reflective of what is known as 'truck art' in Pakistan and India, where it is the practice to paint vehicles with bright decorative images. Sobia, who has a Masters degree in printmaking and fine arts, in fact replicated this in her current home town of Portlaoise, where she decorated a Toyota car in that way, which was very much admired outside her home, and attracted significant attention from intrigued Irish media. "Eventually I had to let it go, as we had no parking space outside the apartment," she told the Diary. "But I'm available to do the same for anyone who would like their own car decorated."
One of her paintings, a monochrome print, referenced the Great Emigrations between India and Pakistan after the separation in 1947 of British India into the Muslim state of Pakistan and largely Hindu India. Gerry O'Donoghue noted the similarity to depictions of Ireland's tenant evictions after the Famine.
Along with Sobia were her husband Dr Saad Zaheer, who works in Kilkenny Hospital, and their three young children — if you were out early this morning you would have come across their own very attractive representations in 'footpath art'. There were also works in calligraphy and natural still life paintings by Sobia's friend Jaweria.
For your editor's part in the evening, I'd like to say 'thank you' for the kind words after I spoke about my career in various aspects of journalism and writing. After some 50 years of writing about the stories of other people, it was quite frankly terrifying to stand there and tell my own. Sorry I kept you all so long ...
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