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…

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…