1. Jan-Feb 2011

ART
personal guts and attitudes towards the life in the West
where he spent a reasonable span of time. During his stay
in London, he managed to drag a reputed art gallery in
London, The Hayward Gallery, to the court of law, suing
it under the Human Rights Act on the grounds that he
had been racially discriminated when the gallery failed
to return some of his paintings. Goeffrey claimed a
whopping amount of some 65 million Sterling Pounds as
compensation for his lost paintings. In another instance,
Syed Iqbal Geoffrey- an artist with avant guarde thoughts
- came forward to defend a certain Mir Aimal Kasi - a
Pakistani national accused of shooting two CIA officials
- in a court of Law in New York, a place where no reputed
lawyer dared to take up the defence case because of
the existing public sentiments then. It does make a rare
example of an artist defending a criminal case in a court of
law – in of all the places - the United States of America !
So what Siddhartha Art Gallery offered in its gallery should
not be treated simply as a row of paintings hung up on its
walls, but rather a virtual panorama of vivid reflections of
a mind simultaneously living as an artist and a barrister,
always preoccupied with a multiple spectrum of thoughts
on issues of social injustice, to gather courage to face the
mighty and the powerful so as to defend the helpless.
www.spacesnepal.com 88
January-February 2011