Most people divide their time into public and private lives, with one often fiercely guarded from the other. The public self is how people act in the presence of others. The private self is how a person sees himself or herself. Public lives are open to observation by society at large, whereas information about private lives is controlled by the person, who can choose what to share and what to consider an invasion of privacy.

People who are in public office are legally obligated to act in the interests of the people they represent, while a person enhancing their own interests are said to be acting privately. Scandals erupt when those holding public office use privileges for private gain.

Totalitarian governments achieve public control by reducing private space. Today, electronic surveillance and the use of algorithms to gather information about the habits of people are so extensive that many have given up control over their privacy. Ironically, the current restrictions imposed on social media in Pakistan may control internet freedom, but they also deprive the government of data collection of users. Many monetise their own private lives by sharing podcasts, or through reporters who follow the lives of famous or infamous personalities.

Private lives can also be propelled into the public sphere with newsworthy events, such as heroic rescues by ordinary citizens, the discovery of a secret serial killer, or the revealing of very personal details during divorce or custody court cases.

Most people try to keep their public and private lives separate from one another but, for some, their private passions come to define their public identity

People may choose to reveal their private lives by writing autobiographies or painting self-portraits. Art, by its nature of tapping into personal emotion and communicating it through creative expression, makes a natural bridge between the private self and the public sphere.

While today many creative professionals have formally trained in art, theatre or music — or, as in the past, by apprenticing to a master — there have been many artists who kept their creative work a secret.

Marcel Duchamp had been secretly working on an artwork Étant Donnés for 20 years, while the public believed he had given up art and was focused on chess. The artist’s legacy was to make the work public after his death. Ron Gittins painted and sculpted every surface, wall and ceiling of his flat in England for over 33 years, discovered only after his death at 80 years of age.

The American prisoner Jesse Krimes secretly created epic works of art using materials available to him in prison, smuggling the pieces out one by one through the prison mail room. Apokaluptein:16389067 is a mural made up of 39 prison bed sheets, constructed over three years. It was his way of disconnecting from imprisonment.

James Hampton worked as a janitor and, over 14 years, secretly built a large assemblage of religious art from scavenged materials in a rented garage. Retired Australian mathematics teacher Robert Martiensen created 7,000 artworks in secret over 20 years.

Craft is generally a private activity, taking place within the home and in the context of other domestic chores and responsibilities. The postal project Feministo began a movement for women to exchange artworks through the post across the UK.

Art curators are increasingly taking an interest in what they call ‘Secret Artists.’ These may be ordinary people or mean discoveries of art works by public figures, such as Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler and General Franciso Franco.

Art produced secretly creates a space to make bad paintings without fear of judgement and to leave projects half-finished without a sense of failure. Society is filled with people with beautiful voices, poets, people with calligraphic handwriting, an eye for decorating their homes, or making exquisite embroidery — people who let art enrich their lives.

Sometimes, the private passion replaces the public identity. Novelists Franz Kafka and Charles Dickens both worked as legal clerks. T S Eliot was a banker. Writer Qudratullah Shahab, poets Mustafa Zaidi and Parveen Shakir, and artist Hanif Ramay were civil servants. Poet William Carlos Williams worked as a paediatrician. Novelist Kurt Vonnegut managed a Saab dealership. Composer Philip Glass drove a cab and did odd jobs as a plumber or electrician. Writers Syed Zameer Jafri and Brigadier Siddique Salik are more likely to be discussed in literary circles than in armed forces gatherings.

Leading double lives usually has a negative connotation, with snoopers looking to dismantle the reputation of people. However, leading a double life can be self-fulfilling, avoiding the trap of being defined solely by a day job. In the film Shall we Dance, Richard Gere‘s character, a lawyer, secretly joins ballroom dancing classes. When his wife discovers his passion, she says, “Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness.”

Durriya Kazi is a Karachi-based artist.
She may be reached at
durriyakazi1918@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, September 1st, 2024