Masood Hussain Masood Hussain has been painting Kashmir for over two decades now, but the Srinagar-based artist is astounded, especially by the recent violence and civilian injuries. The first line of collateral damage, he observed, were the children. “When I visited the state hospital, I noticed there were so many children who were victims of pellet attacks. They haven’t seen anything yet and now, with the injuries, they never will,” says the 52-year-old artist. His work, available on social media and titled ‘Silent Images’, draws from this suffering and shows a disturbing reality — a young boy covering his face, his eyes gone, or another covering his face with palms as pellets race towards him. Hussain intends to paint these visuals on canvases in the coming months. Mir Suhail Cartoonist Mir Suhail has used recognisable protagonists in art painted by the masters to draw attention to the scale of injuries caused by pellet guns. In his depictions, Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine wears a patch in an eye, as does his Mona Lisa, and James Abbott McNeill’s black-clad lady in Whistler’s Mother. “I want to address an international audience,” says the 27-year-old. “The situation and action is not normal like we have been told by the chief minister.” Suhail also released an altered version of the poster of the 1964 iconic Hindi film, Kashmir Ki Kali, with Sharmila Tagore injured in one eye by pellets. “There is no romance left about the place or the people,” says Suhail. Rollie Mukherjee Baroda-based Rollie Mukherjee’s The Design is a stark visual — armed men stand on skeletons, buried under floral patterns. An alumna of Santiniketan and MS University, Mukherjee presents her work, one of the many on Kashmir, with an irony of causing injury to the very people that are to be protected. Her work depicts the Kashmir conflict and focusses on issues related to militancy, secessionist sentiments and the agony women experience. “This work is about the traces of the beloved who are gone, disappeared or killed,” she writes. “It tries to evoke a certain sense of loss and confusion, and the intermingling of the reality of the present and memories of the past. These are about marks and wounds which are not external but internal.” BlackSheep.Works Arguably the first creative agency in the Valley, established just last month, Blacksheep.Works has launched an online campaign, #SelectiveOutrage. “Terror knows no boundaries, so why do we respond differently when there is an attack in Paris and in Istanbul?” says Asif Amin Tibet Baqual, founder. Another campaign was launched after he failed to win support from international agencies such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Their posters comprise altered logos with a tagline, “In the interests of human rights everywhere but #Kashmir”, and Braille sheets with messages such as “Oppressive state apparatus sees to it that dissent doesn’t see the light of day”.
