Haseeb Ali Chishti
My journey with The Missing Slate has taken me from an intern in the Fiction department to Assistant Art Editor to Art Editor. I have found my creative energy renewed by the quality of submissions we receive and the care and dedication that each member of our team puts in creating this unique platform for writers, poets, and artists to share their stories with the world. In the cacophony of digital platforms and click-bait sites/blogs/magazines, TMS is a refuge for those seeking more than momentary thrills.
I am on the lookout for artists that deserve a wider audience, for art movements that are on the fringe, and for visual images that have the power to elicit powerful emotions in viewers. I still remember the day I saw my first Van Gogh. It was a balmy July afternoon in Amsterdam and being highly regarded on Tripadvisor I figured why not give the Van Gogh museum a try. Before that, you see, I was one of those pretentious people who said they “understood” art but had never “experienced” an artwork. When I stood in front of Women on the Peat Moor, I cried. I couldn’t help it; in those brush strokes, I saw Van Gogh’s deep concern for humanity, in the hunched backs of those women I sensed the despair, drudgery and defiance of peasants and working class everywhere. In a world where the written word is so often twisted, coaxed and cajoled by those in power for their own ends (case in point being the shoddy interpretations of Quranic laws in Pakistan’s Constitution), art was a refuge of silence, of immediate transcendent experience over intellectual understanding, a form of telepathy between the artist and the viewer.
Contact Haseeb if you are an artist looking for a wider audience, an art gallery requesting reviews, or a like-minded bohemian wanting to talk about conspiracy theories, esoteric texts, and the mechanics of lighting a cigarette in a hurricane.