photos: courtesy of the Bangladesh national museum and mizanur rahman khoka When Rashid Choudhury decided to pursue tapestry as his preferred medium to ‘flittingly depict [the] men and nature’ of his motherland -and later, in 1964, set up a tapestry loom factory – he was doing something new in Bangladesh. The closest to tapestry was…
A handmade craft object is closely associated with its maker and its culture. But in an age of mass-produced consumer goods, handicrafts have lost their authenticity and individuality. Syed Manzoorul Islam discusses the implications of the movement that is taking crafts away from humble artisans to factories and retail outlets. Writing in 1936, when the…
The sixth solo exhibition of Rafiqun Nabi’s paintings (Bengal Gallery, Dhaka, 20 November-3 December 2006), was aptly titled Down Memory Lane—as all but a couple of the 76 works done in watercolour, acrylic, oil, mixed media, pastel, pen and ink and lithography are reminiscences of a time spent in the midst of nature, in a…
Alak Roy (born 1950) belongs to a generation of artists whose sensibilities have been shaped by momentous political events and social upheavals, both leading up to, and deriving from, Bangladesh’s war of independence. The war itself was a cataclysmic event — a nine-month-long bloodbath that, on the one hand, showed the flint and the steel…
Farida Zaman, perhaps our best known woman artist has had an important show in Dhaka. Syed Manzoorul Islam has been to this significant event Even before she was exposed to the narrative tradition pursued by the Baroda school of artists in India (where she went for an MFA degree in early 1980s), Farida Zaman had…
During Bangladesh’s war of liberation in 1971, Swapan Choudhury toured the fronts and the refugee camps, drawing pictures that depicted both the heroism of freedom fighters and the sufferings of refugees. The traumatic experience of the war left its mark in Swapan’s subsequent work, accounting for its expressionistic bent. His close encounter with death and…
The 12th Asian Art Biennale, Bangladesh 2006, held from 5 to 31 March, is undoubtedly the biggest art event of the year in Dhaka (the exhibition doesn’t travel outside Dhaka). In a country where art and culture is usually a low priority item in the government budget allocation, the Biennale is given generous funding and…
The 12th Asian Art Biennale, Bangladesh 2006, held from 5 to 31 March, is undoubtedly the biggest art event of the year in Dhaka (the exhibition doesn’t travel outside Dhaka). In a country where art and culture is usually a low priority item in the government budget allocation, the Biennale is given generous funding and…
The focus of Syed Jahangir’s 34th solo exhibition, which was held in Saju Art Gallery in Dhaka from 24 September to 4 October 2005, appears to be the land and its people. In the absence of an exhibition theme, this focus strings the works together into a loose series. Displaying a common passion for the…
Over the years, Kalidas Karmakar’s work has added a modernist metaphysical dimension to his art. The influence of the Tantric tradition had something to do with this shift, as a series of exhibitions titled Holy Image and Holy Symbol, beginning in the 1990s testify, but equally important have been his environmental concerns and his search…
