Dirafsh-e Kāviyānī (Kaveh's Banner) درفش کاویانی

Thu–Fri, December 16–17, 2021 | 3:00 PM | Top Floor, Academic Block, LUMS

درفش کاویانی

Dirafsh-e Kāviyānī (Kaveh's Banner) — An Exhibition of Paintings by Fazil Hussain Mousavi

The exhibition was titled Dirafsh-e Kaviyani (Kaveh’s Banner): Defiance Redefined Through Shahnameh and Later Poetry. It was curated by Nadhra Shahbaz Khan, Fatima Fayyaz and Shahabdullah Alamee and was inaugurated by the guest speaker, Professor Suroosh Irfani—author, translator and expert on Jungian Psychology.

Fazil Hussain Mousavi Exhibition Catalog.pdf

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About the Artist

Fazil Hussain Mousavi studied art at the University of Balochistan, Quetta, and started his art teaching career at the Beaconhouse School System, Quetta in 1989. In 1992, Mousavi joined the city’s Iqra Army Public School and College and served until 2008. One of his memorable contributions to the institution is the logo design for the APSACS (Army Public School and College System Secretariat) still in use. The city of Quetta proudly hosts several of his commissioned artworks. These include two large fiberglass relief panels at the National Bank of Pakistan’s head office, designed in collaboration with Ramzan Shad, ten sculptural forms for the School of Infantry and Tactics (1996), and a relief panel in terracotta tiles for the Command and Staff College (2001).

Mousavi’s first solo show was at The Gallery in 1992 (the Zwanenburg’s Quetta residence) and the first international show was in 2007 at the Museum Willem van Haren, Holland. From 2003 to 2006, he curated shows and conducted workshops for art teachers on a voluntary basis. These efforts culminated in an informal art set-up named the Sketch Club Quetta in 2008. He now divides his time between the Sketch Club and his own paintings.

Mousavi’s Shahnameh’s recital at the 2019 Sharjah Biennale made him the first-ever member of the Hazara community to perform at a such a forum. Among his other achievements is the group show that featured his own and the Sketch Club students’ artworks at the Human Rights Festival 2020, Oxford Brookes University, UK.

About the Guest Speaker

Professor Suroosh Irfani completed his higher education at the Shiraz University. In 1998 he joined the National College of Arts, Lahore as an Associate Professor of Communication and Cultural Studies where he served as the founding editor of Sohbet: Journal of Contemporary Arts and Culture. As a Visiting Fellow at the Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University, he worked on the archetypal motifs in the writings of Shahrnush Parsipur, an iconic figure of post-revolutionary literature in Iran. Professor Irfani is the author of Taza Nawa’i Mu’arek (New Songs from the Battlefields), a Persian to English translation of a 19th century text by Munshi Atta Muhammad Shikarpuri. His interests lie in the Jungian depth psychology, Sufism, literature, and the notion of the divine feminine.

FF- How and when did you start your artistic journey?

FHM- All I can remember is that I used to trace pictures; sometimes I used a tracing sheet and at other times I just followed the outlines of images I found in books and newspapers lying around in the house. This was long before I joined school. My formal training probably started during my primary education and I continued to doodle and draw until I was in high school. One day while I was immersed in my world of drawing, my elder brother ridiculed me for wasting my time and energy pursuing a useless activity. His comments hit me so badly that I gave up drawing for quite some time convinced that it was a waste of time. It was only because of a feeling of emancipation during my early college days that I dared to pick up a paper and pencil thinking I finally had the liberty to pursue my passion. After completing my intermediate studies it dawned on me that fine arts was a field of studies and there were formal educational institutions dedicated to it. Since there was no such department in Quetta, I joined the Arts Council—a space that proved to be an oasis for my long suffered thirst for exploring the world of art. Soon afterwards, my parent’s decision about my marriage foiled my plans of joining the National College of Arts in Lahore, something that still haunts me. Subsequent years brought forth children and increased responsibilities leaving no time for indulging in art practices. Once I learnt that the department of fine arts was being established at the University of Balochistan, I could not hold myself back any more. As my son started his school, I got enrolled at this institution. Thus began my journey of formal art education. I still remember how difficult those days were. As the sole bread earner, I had to work extra hours on odd jobs to make ends meet; tuitions or small commissions for artworks, whatever I could manage to supplement my meagre income. I finally graduated and started my career as an art teacher at the Beaconhouse School. A few years later I moved to the Iqra Army Public School, where I continued to work for the next seventeen years.

FF- Please tell us about the mission and vision of the Sketch Club you have established in Quetta

FHM- My urge to teach art to the youth other than the ones who could attend school led me to set up the Sketch Club many years ago. It only became possible with the help of my friends who donated money and furniture and helped me get a small rented space to start an informal studio. The club was thrown out of these rented places several times due to lack of funds but in 2009 we finally found the space where we are now in. Ever since then, almost six-hundred students have completed their training and more than twenty-five are serving as professional architects, designers, artists and art teachers in different organizations. In spite of hard times the Sketch Club has continued to offer my students an alternative space to learn artistic skills to fight their share of our battle against the malevolent forces of society.

FF- You paint in a style uniquely your own; some special themes and a peculiar repetitive use of a few motifs. Could you please share your artistic, technical and philosophical explorations that led your way and have brought you where you are today?

FHM- I started my University art education with a serious desire to improve my draftsmanship which of course was in pursuance of the realist tradition. I soon started exploring watercolors and continued to paint still life and landscapes for quite some time while rarely using oil colors. Somewhere around 1992, a Dutch lady offered to host an exhibition of my paintings at her house featuring landscapes and cityscapes of the Quetta city—my very first solo show. Around this time, the desire to explore genres other than the traditional ones urged me to explore new avenues of expression. My very first semi-abstract painting came into existence around 2001, and interestingly, it is still with me and is a part of this show. For at least two years before this I could not paint at all; neither realistic, nor conceptual. It took me a while to fathom the force of my subconscious, and ways to harness my technique to bring forth a visual narrative that effectively carried a rhythmic balance of both. On one hand I wanted to use the medium of art to express the social, cultural and political calamities Quetta and its inhabitants have contended with over the past few years, and on the other hand, I never wanted my paintings to appear as publicity material. For example, target killings compelled me to address them in my paintings but I did not want to depict them as a journalist reporting a crime scene. One major difference between a poster and a painting is that the former acts as an informer of an event or a product, and if successful, compels the viewer to take immediate action. The visual message of the latter on the other hand, does not operate on levels that are momentary and ephemeral. A painting aspires to lure the viewer into a conversation in solitude and during this one-to-one encounter, gradually yield riches of the intellectual thought that composes its soul, and the fineness of its elements, visible in its shape and form. Posters, therefore, are pasted on roadsides to attract the attention of passersby while paintings reside in serene spaces such as homes, art galleries or museums. These concerns kept tugging at my heart and I continued to tread upon this new pathway contending with failures and learning from my experiences. An important facet of these experiences and advancements into the field of art was my deep engagement with literature. I owe this to my late father who painstakingly taught me Persian at a very early age. He introduced me to the Panj-Ganj (by Nizami Ganjvi) during my primary school days and by the time I was in grade six or seven, my initiation into the poetic world of Hafiz Shirazi was under way. My explorations of Iqbal and Hafiz came a little later and matured with every passing year. I still marvel at their capacity to reveal their meanings to different age groups and different mindsets as they did to me. Such was my father’s dedication to my education that he used to sit with me for hours in the light of an oil lamp during these teaching sessions as there was with no electricity in our house. As I memorized one ghazal, he would hand over another one and make sure I articulated each word correctly no matter how long it took me to do so. By the tenth grade I had developed a taste for poetry and once I had finished Hafiz Shirazi, I was given the Nisāb al-Sibyān, a thirteenth century versified Arabic-Persian vocabulary with commentary by Farabi. Expected to memorize such texts from cover to cover and to deal with my tenth grade studies gradually became cumbersome and unmanageable and I started expressing my concerns. Paying little attention to my complaints, my father decided to send me to an ‘ālim (a scholar of Arabic and the Quran) for grammar and syntax. My father finally realized my difficulty in managing two parallel modes of studies and to my relief, stepped back. I now regret this escape and wish I had a deeper understanding of Arabic today. Another past learning and training experience is my familiarity with Persian and Arabic calligraphy in the traditional script, then known as Khat-e Mirzaī. I know very little about its historical past but according to my father, this was a script his maternal uncle used to practice. A number of these impressions and experiences gradually started to manifest themselves in my paintings. At times I realized their presence only after the painting was near completion, sometimes making me wonder how and when I had allowed them to enter my visual vocabulary. If you look carefully at the Liberal Series composed of my early paintings, you will find traces of Khat-e Mirzaī, Quranic inscriptions, and many symbols of my childhood training and learning processes. Let me give you the example of a piece of glass that only attains the capacity to reflect images once it gets a silver coating that turns it into a mirror. Similarly, the artist gets this coating by absorbing what the society has to offer before becoming a surface that is able to reflect a range of impressions as comments on the same system that created it. Sahir Ludhianvi sums it up beautifully when he says: Whether as experiences or in the shape of calamities Here I am giving back what was bequeathed on me1

FF- You have talked about the connection between your paintings and your deep interest in different forms of literature. Could you please shed some light on the Shahnameh and the frequent appearance of symbols we see in your paintings derived from this epic poem, especially Kaveh’s banner, the title of this exhibition. In what ways has the Shahnameh affected your intellect, personality and artistic expression?

FHM- Let me put it this way. A bee collects nectar from a variety of flowers before it creates something that is its very own. My interest in literature and poetry, similarly, allows me to pick pieces of inspiration and information from different sources. These impressions and influences mingle at some level in my subconscious and then surface in multiple forms whenever my experience calls them into action. Although my enthusiasm for Hafiz, Iqbal, Rumi, Amir Khusrau, Bedil or Sa’adi Shirazi is no less than what I feel for Ferdowsi, but something in the latter’s Shahnameh makes me go back to it again and again. I nevertheless consider all of these and many more like them to carry universal truths—reflections about life that never go out of currency. The battle between good and evil has been broached in countless artistic expressions and will continue till the end of time, but the way it is framed in the Shahnameh is unique.

FF- Please tell us about the special tradition of Shahnameh-khwānī or reciting the Shahnameh that has come down to you through your father.

FHM- My father could recite the Quran very well but never went to a formal school. Driven by his interest in literature, he invested great efforts in reading and understanding the Panj-Ganj, Shahnameh and several other literary treatises. He had set up a special room in the house for his male guests who usually joined him for dinner. Post dinner, in the light of an oil lamp, he would place the Shahnameh on a rĕḥl (a book stand usually used to place the Quran during recital), and recite it in his native language—Darī/Hazārgī, in his sweet and melodious voice. He used to translate some of the words or offer the gist of his chosen text for people whom he thought would have difficulty in understanding it. Now I strongly feel that it is my responsibility to continue this beautiful tradition but unfortunately, I find it hard to attract people to it. Unfamiliarity with classical Persian, even in my community, is a major issue. Over the years, people of my age and successive generations have lost interest in the vernaculars and traditional genres associated with them, be it poetry or prose. My first public performance took place at the Sharjah Biennale in March 2019, a historic moment for me as I was the first member of the Hazara Community to perform at a biennale. Today this tradition stands at the brink of extinction in Pakistan. I am doing my best to keep Shahnameh-khwānī alive but only time will tell how successful I am in reviving this tradition and pushing it into the future for posterity.