Vinita Karim tilts her head to get a better look at the canvas. We’re in her art studio in Dhaka, Bangladesh, dwarfed by the huge canvases that fill the space. Karim is dressed in loose-fitted white linen pants and a kurti with minimal embroidery. She pours yellow pigment onto the canvas, disrupting the previous harmony of blue and earthy brown. If I look carefully, I can see traces of an emerging city: rooftops and ports.
I ask Karim how she sees herself. “As an artist,” she replies, “a mother and a global citizen”. While these seem like three distinct identities, they are very intertwined. I know this because in the hour we spend talking to each other, she probably learns as much about me as I do about her. She speaks with the vision of a painter, maintaining the delicate balance between intuition and expertise. Her face lights up with a smile as I ask her to meet Anaya, my fourteen-year-old sister. Excited and embarrassed, Anaya rushes to my side to greet her favorite artist.
From our conversation, it is abundantly clear that there is a connection between Karim’s cosmopolitanism and her art. Her passion and vocation align as she travels the world, getting to know “so many people and experiencing so many cultures”. Born to a diplomat father in Burma, Vinita Karim was uprooted as a young girl and sent to school in Kuwait. It was not an easy transition. Then from Kuwait to Khartoum and then Islamabad. Every time, she started from scratch: making friends, navigating schools, seeking solace and a secure connection to the culture. Later came Stockholm, Manila, Cairo, and many more. By the time she was an adult she was fluent in six languages and, she says, “conversational in another two.” Today, travelling with her paintbrushes, colors and palette knife, she’s learned to create a home wherever she goes. Her solace now is capturing the architecture, history and vitality of cities real and imagined. I wonder if her travels are motivated by her desire to be seen as a global artist? Or is she following her heart wherever it takes her?
She has lived in over 15 cities and held over 23 solo shows across the globe. Her specialty is oil on canvas, accentuated with other mediums including gold leaf and embroidery. A unique blend of bold colors and distinctive shapes, her artworks seek to bring to life what she calls the “chaos amidst the structure” of cities. No painting represents a specific geography. Instead, she superimposes elements of different places as her imagination dictates to produce a set of highly distinctive cityscapes. “I am a fan of all things layered”, she tells me with a twinkle in her eyes.
The one constant in her adventures across the globe has been art. Turning her biggest challenge into her biggest strength, she started looking at “travel as a sort of education”. Karim’s love for cities shines through her contemporary renditions of landscapes. She refers to the cities she creates on her canvas as the confluence of “concrete jungles and cultural heritage”. Each element signifies a different story. Yet, they all tie in together into a union that “no camera can capture.”
Confined now to our houses, deprived of travel to other countries, we are reduced to the truth of our shared experience as humans. Vinita Karim packs up and brings along everything she needs when she’s able to travel. But her suitcase full of art supplies will likely be gathering dust in her basement for the foreseeable future. For her, and for us, the memory and imagination of the artist will have to do for now.