Jameela Nishat, a poet from India, and Katharina Holstein-Sturm, a visual artist from Germany, combine their creative forces. The outcomes are unique: An artist-book, with Jameela´s poetry and Katharina´s artwork. Together they select the poems and the artwork and discuss how they should be combined until the outcome rings true and transcend both their work. As artists, as women, they perceive the world and their place in it. They feel the need for change, many things are worth fighting for. They fight with poetry and art. Coming from different continents, and from different cultural backgrounds, both find a common ground in the cause to improve the position of women. They point out domestic and sexual violence, oppression, and financial and emotional dependency. The viewers get drawn into the artist-book differently. The turning of the page engages them, they can set the pace of perceiving the artwork, partly reading, partly looking at the drawings. Katharina Holstein-Sturm studied visual communication and graphic design at FH Würzburg. She is a member of the artist groups S.K.A.M.E.V. in Hamburg, women producers’ gallery GEDOK Hamburg, and fine artists of Germany. She is the founder of an art school for children and teenagers, and the founder of Pop-Up Galerie Art & Cake in Hamburg. She has participated in artist residencies in Dorland, Temecula, California, USA, organized artist exchanges between Germany and the Netherlands, and conducted numerous exhibitions in Germany, Europe, and the USA. Jameela Nishat has published three collections of poetry, and her work has been translated and featured in several notable anthologies, including Women Writing in India and In Their Own Voice. In 1999, SPARROW published a booklet on her life and work as part of its oral history project. In 2000, she edited Inkeshaf, an anthology of forty women poets from the Deccan. She is committed to promoting the cause of Dakhni, the unique Telugu-infused Hyderabadi Urdu. She is a recipient of the Indian Express’ Devi Award (2015) and the Maqdoom Award (1972). She currently runs Shaheen: Resource Centre for Women in the old city of Hyderabad
