The Curtain Rises: In conversation with Noorain Inam and Zarina Muhammad 

It is a special sight to see friendship transform into creative collaboration – even more meaningful to get to observe it. It is arguably the rarest for it to be materialised in a timeless, single-edition artist book. Pakistani artist Noorain Inam’s display of her artist book in collaboration with her good friend, art critic and writer Zarina Muhammad (famously, The White Pube), arrived at Indigo+Madder Gallery in London on the 14th of November. 

“The Curtain Rises” is an over 180-page artist book, made on handmade paper, featuring the titled story written by Zarina (as a response to Noorain’s world of art), and a set of 150 paintings that present Noorain’s response to Zarina’s story. 

We spoke with the incredible duo to better understand how their friendship blossomed and how this project came to be.

Amun Chaudhary: I know that you guys are good friends, and the genesis of this project has come out of your practices interacting and your friendship.

Noorain Inam: When I first moved here, I had heard about the White Pube. I knew of them as a critic duo, and I had stalked Zarina online – I felt like I knew her. It just so happened by coincidence, my show last year was on. It was called “Go Back to Sleep, it’s the Wind”, and it was at Indigo+Madder, and Zarina was there to see it. She had come to see my first show, and she wrote a really sweet post about it on Instagram because she loved horses. I love horses. My paintings have a lot of horses. And I approached her like a fan, she gave me a big hug, and she was so sweet. And we spent the whole time just talking. And, we started messaging. 

Zarina Muhammad: I wandered in and didn’t expect to see the artist there. Which can always be like quite an excruciating thing, watching a critic look at your paintings. Like – what a terrifying thing… And for a critic, it’s quite terrifying as well to be looking at an artist’s work in front of them. How long do you spend looking at each painting? But we spent a really long time actually just chatting about anything but the work when we met, and it was kind of fun. It was great.

AC: That’s lovely. 

ZM: Yeah, sometimes you meet people and you’re like, oh, okay, we’re friends now. This isn’t colleagues, we’re not peers. Like we are mates. It was that with Noor, and yeah, we also share an affinity for horror. We keep going to watch horror films and scream in the cinema, which apparently isn’t the done thing. 

AC: Is it not? I didn’t know that.

ZM: When you’re watching a horror film, everyone frowns upon it.

NI: Yes, we both share this affinity for horror. We talk about a lot of spooky things. And so then this idea came about. Through my gallery, we were in conversation about this for over a year, about an artist book. But I’ve always wanted to collaborate with a writer. And again, very nervously asked, would you want to do this together?

AC: So, Zarina, you based the story on Noorain’s previous works, and then the paintings came out in conversation or in response to the story. What was the process like to create a new piece of literature in response to something that was entirely visual? Did you incorporate things that you knew to be true or–?

ZM: When Noor asked me about this project, I was very excited to think of this as a kind of ekphrastic exercise. Because I think her paintings contain so much within them. They are these portals where there’s a suspended state on the other side, very few figures, but always this open window in. I always feel like I’m falling into them, right? There’s always something going on, but it’s always on the other side of, like, a curtain or a window. Or there’s an empty bed. Someone has always left or is on the other end of something. It didn’t actually feel that hard to come up with a story that spoke to the world of her images. It felt really natural. I could take them and run away with them.

AC: It’s so fascinating to me, the back and forth of this – viewing the project as a whole feels so conversational.

NI: My first response was, well, reading something, you see a lot of yourself in it. And this time I wasn’t projecting that! I felt like, oh, she saw something that I’m trying to describe. Because, as an artist, your ultimate desire is the feeling of wanting to be seen. It takes precedence over any other sort of accolade that you might get. We’re built into that system, where you’re constantly chasing after something. But there are very few moments, and I’ve been told this by a lot of other senior artists, there are the rare moments where you feel like you’ve been seen. That sticks with you for a very long time. And I feel like I had that, and it feels nice to get that in your 20s. That felt like a gift that a friend gave me.

ZM: I’ve not actually said this to you, but – it’s a huge honour to be invited into your practice in this way because I’m aware that it is a hugely intimate thing. It’s vulnerable, and I feel very honoured by that. And it is also an honour to throw the text back at you and have you respond to it in that way, because that is normally a side of the conversation that a critic never gets to experience. So, yeah, the back and forth of this has been really, truly thrilling and singular. 

AC: The process of turning that feeling into an image must’ve been deeply emotional.

NI: You know, when I read it, sitting on my flat’s balcony, there was one image stuck in my mind: an endless sunset on loop. It’s like the feeling of not being able to escape a moment that otherwise would be comforting, but if it goes on forever, it’s terrifying. Whatever is being described is beautiful on its own, but if that were your reality forever, it would be quite haunting. 

It comes to the idea of “what is stability?”, “what is discomfort?” You know, I think for people like us, and I’d imagine for yourself as well, we sort of thrive on instability. That’s something I’ve learned to trust more. I imagine that’s where the affinity for horror comes from, as well; you sort of trust it in a way that you know what to expect. I think stillness or something that’s very calm, that scares me a bit.

The older I’ve gotten, the more horror feels like my companion. It will stay with you throughout your life, and it teaches you so much about yourself. And to me, painting is very inward-looking, but writers have a perspective on the world; it feels like there’s more empathy in writing, I don’t know..

ZM: No, no, I know what you’re saying. And I do agree. At the beginning of my twenties, writing was a practice that felt like I was digging out my insides over and over again, regurgitating my insides. I think that really quickly became unsustainable.

Writing is a practice that my collaborator describes well: it is a process of engaging with the world around you, pushing it into yourself, and, through writing, moving yourself forward. It’s the way Gab describes that she moves through time. And I agree, but it is a different process.

NI: I think what we can agree on is that directors are the ones who are monsters. That’s what I’ve been told. Directors are also so successful…

ZM: We’ve both got issues with authority. Apparently.

NI: Also, sometimes I feel like painters hide a lot. And I do that, I hide behind a lot of the paintings and that world in between. And there was something so real about all of the words that Zarina was saying. And so, these images started to come out one by one.

AC: It’s almost as if you cannot just be your own vehicle, but you guys have provided each other with vehicles with which this process can keep going. Even if it’s looking inward or thinking– she saw something in me, and that made me realize this– you felt seen and then recreated this. It’s like you’re both wheels moving forward.

As creatives, we often have to be our own vehicles or absorb something and then translate it. To do it with someone you connect with on multiple levels, I think, can only produce something quite deeply evocative.

ZM: I really like that, what you said, Amun, about us feeling like we’re throwing something backwards and forwards and then moving forward together.

I think that feels like a version of a creative practice that I’m always actually looking for. That’s why I work in a collaboration with Gabrielle — we can kind of throw this thing forth between us and keep a conversation going. It’s what I’m always looking for in artworks, something that makes me want to say something back.

AC: I’m also deeply interested in the tangible process of working on this together, the handmade paper, the calligraphic writing. 

NI: And, you know, because my process is very deeply linked to materiality, the surface, to the choice of medium, I give that a lot of thought, especially because those decisions will inform what your image or what you’re creating will look like. So the process began with choosing the spaces– the way that you want the reader to have it in their hands. 

This object that I was thinking about, this book, I imagined it in someone’s hand, and I want them to flip through every page in a very delicate way so that it forces them to look at each word, look at each image, the same kind of tenderness that we do. 

I keep saying the word object because I know it’s a story that exists for a very long period of time, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like a book. It feels like a part of both of us in a way.

ZM: I think object feels like a really apt word. I’m a writer who spends most of her time writing on the Internet — none of it exists, it’s all ephemera. It was very bizarre publishing a novel that would end up in real life and being read by people on the tube. That’s nuts.

But this is one step further nuts, where this is an edition of one. It exists as a very pristine, beautiful object. I think there is an air of reverence around it because it is an edition of one and because it’s so labored — there is a real sense of craft and labor going into it.

It’s handmade, in conversation with illuminated manuscripts — medieval illuminated manuscripts. Miniatures in books, Mughal miniatures — of course, that’s the context you’re bringing into it.

NI: It’s so funny. It’s exactly what I was thinking of when you said it.

AC: It is so wonderfully obvious that both of you worked on this together; your fondness is so evident in the work.

NI:  This is honestly one of the most exciting things I’ve had to work on in quite some time. And I was told by a few friends that you only ever do this once, and you’d better do it well. I think we really gave it our all. And it wouldn’t exist without Zarina. And, yeah, it’s really exciting getting to share it with everyone. I didn’t know people would be that excited about it. How do you feel about that, Zarina?

ZM: No, I mean, same, I think. Yeah. We were saying this the other week. We’re both doing that thing where we’re like, no, it’s you.

But I disagree that this wouldn’t exist without me. Jerry Saltz said something interesting years ago about how criticism should plumb the work for context — set up a system of pipes to make meaning or energy flow around it. I agree with that.

I think I’m often in this scenario where, if I were left to my own devices, I don’t know what I’d write about.

AC: I think about the preciousness of it, the materials, and, as a viewer, I don’t even know if you can call yourself just a viewer when it’s a book. But, as an interactor, I think there’s something very deeply personal about interacting with something like that, and to know that this has evolved through some sort of personal exchange. I mean, it’s only a gift to be able to absorb two kinds of art at once and watch them interact with each other and then become something.

ZM: I haven’t seen it yet either!

NI:  Oh, God, I didn’t even think about the fact that you haven’t seen it. Now I’ve got one more stress on my mind. You saw the cover.

ZM: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s beyond taste. And now, it’s gone through that process of disavowal where I thrust it away from myself, and I’m ready to encounter it anew.

It’s been through the filter of another person. Noor has conditioned it for my viewing and everyone else’s viewing as a separate, discrete thing. So encountering it, it’s not just mine. It never started as just mine. And when I encounter it, it won’t be just mine alone. So it’s a lot nicer. I can be a lot more generous with it, knowing that it’s had someone else’s hands on it. 

NI: Yeah, I think we both have that feeling. I’m kind of like that, too, where I feel like I could have fixed this painting. It always hits me, a couple of weeks, sometimes months later, and I’m like – I don’t know Zarina, if you go through this, where you’re like:

“I should have added this.”

I’m like, oh, I could have put a tiny horse in somewhere. That’s my biggest regret. I didn’t add a horse, and I should have.

AC: It really speaks to collaboration, though, the fact that you guys are so much more generous or loving towards this particular piece.

Not to say that you are loving towards your other pieces of your art, but there’s such an innate care for this because it’s through your love for another person or your appreciation for their contribution.

NI: Oh, yeah, no. I’ll be standing nearby if anyone has any unkind words for it. Zarina and I make so many empty threats to everyone. I think in our head we’re like 6’4 and quite threatening.

ZM: I’m spiritually 6 foot 8. 

*laughs*

NI: But it did. It felt so close to love because love is a window into someone else’s world. Fear and anger – that’s a mirror, showing you something about yourself. But love is experiencing another person’s world. 

And that’s what this felt like.