Sarmad Fiction Writing Club - 2021 Collective

“Image”, we hear all the time. Everybody is talking about “image”, at least in our world, which is the world of visual arts.

At some point, as humble seekers of knowledge, we too, looked a bit into the subject and into the frustratingly fundamental question, what is “image”? The more we read (not intending to say that we read a lot), the more we realized that the answer was too elusive, at least to be put into words.

This obsession with (only) the “graphic” image extends to the discipline of visual arts as well. In practising visual arts, most of the time, we seem to restrict ourselves only to what can be seen by the eye. If it cannot, it will be outside the confines of the discipline. If you make works in darkness, or if you write, you will have nothing “visual” to show in your portfolio, and if you can’t, what kind of a visual artist are you?

Questioning that exclusive understanding of visual arts practices was the basic inspiration for creating this fiction writing club. We would like to argue that creative writing, and in this case, writing fiction, is a valid practice within the discipline of visual arts, since, even though it does not work with “literal” imagery, it does actively employ dimensions of visuality such as “verbal”, “mental” and “perceptual” images.