Flying Embers by Jameela Nishat and Katharina Holstein at Hyderabad Literary Festival

Hyderabad: In the ongoing Hyderabad Literary Festival, Katharina Holstein-sturm from Hamburg, Germany collaborated with city-based women activist and an Urdu poet Jameela Nishat and exhibited their work in which the poetry and painting go together.

Jameela Nishat said, "This collaboration is going to add more diversity to both our individual work of art and promote cultural solidarity across the globe. Emotions have no language or territorial bounds. The artists have the ability to flow from one art space to the other. This collaboration is a humble attempt to let artwork speak for the women of the world," she added.

Concept: Flying Embers Jameela Nishat, poet from India and Katharina Holstein-Sturm, visual artist from Germany, combine their creative forces. The outcome is unique artist-books with Jameela's poetry and Katharina's artwork. "Together we select the poems and the artwork, discuss how it should be combined until the outcome rings true and transcends both our work," said Jameela. As artists, as women they perceive the world and their place in it. They feel the need for change, many things are worth fighting for. They fight with poetry and art. "Coming from different continents, from different cultural backgrounds both find a common ground in the cause to better the position for women."

They point out domestic and sexual violence, oppression, financial and emotional dependency. The visitors get drawn into the artist-book differently. The turning of the page engages them, they can set the pace of perceiving the artwork, partly reading, partly looking at the drawings. Jameela Nishat has published three collections of poetry, and her work has been translated and featured in several notable anthologies, including Women Writing in India and In Their Own Voice. In 1999, SPARROW published a booklet on her life and work as part of its oral history project. In 2000, she edited Inkeshaf, an anthology of forty women poets from the Deccan. She is committed to promoting the cause of Dakhni, the unique Telugu-infused Hyderabad Urdu. She is a recipient of the Indian Express' Devi Award (2015) and the Maqdoom Award (1972). She currently runs 'Shaheen: Resource Centre for Women' in the old city of Hyderabad.

Katharina Holstein-Sturm studies visual communication and graphic design at FH Würzburg. She is a member of the artist group S.k.a.m. e.V. in Hamburg, women producer's gallery GEDOK Hamburg, and fine artists of Germany. She is the founder of an art school for children and teenagers, and the founder of Popup Galerie Art & Cake in Hamburg. She has done artist residencies in Dorland, Temecula, California, USA, organized artist exchanges between Germany and the Netherlands, and numerous exhibitions in Germany, Europe and the USA.