editor's note
Setting the course for a new art magazine
Let’s begin with Spinoza’s contemplative question: what is the body capable of? If psychoanalysis regards the body as ‘a development union or aggregate of partial objects, organs, orifices, each with Read
writes MUSTAFA ZAMAN
newsscape
Looking through the lens starkly: Naib Uddin’s 'Amar Bangla'
Doyen Mustafa Monwar, on a slightly emotional register, proclaims, “Photographer Naib Uddin Ahmad’s documentation of our liberation war is the greatest achievement of his life.” In 1971, Naib, inspired by Bangabandhu’s Read
Noazesh Ahmed passes away
Dr Noazesh Ahmed, renowned genetic scientist, photographer and a horticultural writer, passed away on November 24, 2009 following a massive cardiac arrest. He was born in Manikganj on February 1, 1935. His portraitures of Read
The ascent of photography: Drik’s 20 year journey
To celebrate its 20th anniversary, Drik organized an exhibition of photography that began on September 6, 2009 and lasted till the 13th of the same month. While Drik Gallery, a component of the Drik Picture Agency, Read
features
Roopban revisited: A Freudian unpacking of the tales of the mother-wife
Three Bengali folktales of the mother-wife, known commonly as Roopban, Noor Banu and Malanchamala, have been popular in Bangladesh for a number of past centuries. The tale of Malanchamala, which is the earliest of the three, was published in 1896-1902 in a Read
writes SYED JAMIL AHMED
NOTHING’S A BLANK CANVAS, ANYHOW
Runa Islam unspools generously open work onto walls and screens and surfaces– which is never to be confused with blank pages. Here there are no empty signifiers that can become Read
writes NAEEM MOHAIEMEN
QUAMRUL'S FRONTIER : INHERITANCE AND MODERNITY REMAPPED
The domain of experience is often perceived as independent of the task of enquiry. The fact that the two intersect in all successful creative action bears down on all cultural Read
writes MUSTAFA ZAMAN
Art, ritual and the continuation of rural lore
According to most scholars, the earliest evidence of painting from this deltaic region dates back to not more than three thousand years. In the absence of any specimen from the Read
writes NISAR HOSSAIN
Reclaiming art history as a repository of local knowledge
Adiscussion on the history of art in Bangladesh is yet to lead to a worthwhile discourse on regional art. A sheer lack of regional art history in this country has Read
writes SHAWON AKAND
Can there be an Art History in the South?
There is no way that we can assume a pre-colonial art arena in the subcontinent1 without an extensive framework of value judgment or hierarchy of its own. But the invasion of the local epistemology by the Western categories and concepts – which Read
writes MANOSH CHOWDHURY
archeology
Man the artist
The development of civilization is not a gradual growth. On his path of experience man comes to sudden altitudes that startle his imagination with a wider view of things, claiming Read
writes RABINDRANATH TAGORE
core - relations
The aesthetics of protest and the new geo-reality
It was Matanga, the Bodhisatta from the chandal family (lowest cast in the brahmanic hierarchy) who first resorted to performances with socio-spiritual implications to hammer home the point he thought Read
artist writes
SHISHIR BHATTACHARJEE
I could draw a flower, an impressive, sentimental face, an ideal figure and also could use beautiful colours.We know, the Hero is always made by us, in a sense . Read
exposure
Intrepid visions: Kazi Monir's take on nature
Kazi Monir began his life as a hawker on Dhaka footpaths and then went on to become a painter of extraordinary visions. His work-surfaces have always been torn out of discarded calendars or cropped from found art-card pieces which he impassionedly treated Read
imprint
Artifice of Time: Atiqul’s ordering of the archaic
Md. Atiqul Islam… is he a narodnic martyr type, a Luddite? One wonders after scrutinizing his slightly derivative, semi-interesting sculptures of muffled protest and perfectly calibrated proportion.Atiqul’s gentle rage Read
writes EBADUR RAHMAN
encounter
Mind over matter
I would like to begin with a question for Dhali Al Mamoon. Your large installation piece where a series of hands moves mechanistically reminds one of the assembly line. Though Read
singled out
Art busting art
In the middle-class eye popular art has always been suspect for what has often been claimed as its unsophisticated, unsavory content. Aside from the denigration aimed at it, the dilemma Read
movie review
Avant-Garden Flower Child
Consider the following statement: 'Oh let my camera record the desperation of the small countries. Oh how I hate you, the big nations, you always think that you are the Read
book review
Appraising “Niranjan”
The Orientals, “Indians”, dark skinned-third-world-mother-worshippers have a typical tendency to ‘[r]educing prosaic to mystic,’– Pico Iyer recently reminded me of this old accusation of Jan Morris while reviewing William Read
navigator
Raghu Rai on India: the theatre of the ‘real’!
Scripted by Raghu Rai, the recent show at the Bengal Shilpalaya was a loquacious take on Indian lives and people demolishing many a narrowed-down perception of a populace to inaugurate Read
writes MUSTAFA ZAMAN
Stop-n-shop school of aesthetic martial arts
It is a commonly noted and media-worn erratum of the recent Dhakaites’ reception of Nirmalendu Goon that it unfolds under the heading of “poet’s artwork”! Goon, an iconic relic from Read
writes EBADUR RAHMAN
Bikash Bhattacharya: the realist reframed
Looking through time, society and the immediate environ to be in the swirl of things, which defines ordinary life– the mundane realities, where the extraordinary remains camouflaged and rarely gets Read
writes SOUGATA CHATTOPADHYAY
Eternal euphoria: Shahabuddin’s leap across time
The word leap seems to problamatize Shahabuddin’s recent yields. Amidst the effusion of brown, black and Indian red and the constituency of human hope and robust– almost inhuman– passion around Read
writes SHAHMAN MOISHAN
Memory of trees and tranquility: Shamim’s take on nature
Those who believe that emptying the canvas of all traces of reality, or references for that matter, is a liberating experience unmatched by any other spiritual leap possible in life, Read
Kantha Kahani: whither conceptual framework!
Fahmida Enam Kakoli’s fourth solo exhibition Kantha Kahani has adopted certain original components of our popular culture as the launching ground for her art work. Kakoli’s kantha-inspired collages are, in Read
writes SHAHMAN MOISHAN
Violated visages
Inexplicable as it seems whether "painter" Rabindranath Tagore started making art to convey his mental disquiet or the state of enlightenment, we may still resort to his oeuvre to contextualize Read
writes S M SAIFUL ISLAM
Reality plumbed and unloaded
As an exemplum of the modernist “dissent art” Atia Islam Anne’s work is about raising a voice of concern/alarm through personification of the tragic conditions brought on by misrule, abuse Read
subject / predicate
Lalon, (con)textualized
Farhad Mazhar: Fakir Lalon spoke and sang in Bangla language but to call him a “Bangalee” is highly problematic, if not wrong. Yes he is from Bangladesh and Bangla was Read
panorama
Porapara site-specific art camp
The organizers of the Porapara Site-Specific Art Camp 2009, exemplify their recently concluded programme as a search for options for a total of 25 participants to discover their ‘true selves’ through the Read
Returning to Raku: sculptural innovations at a Britto-organized workshop
Britto Arts Trust, an artists-led nonprofit organization located in Dhaka, in collaboration with the Department of Sculpture, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Dhaka, organized a workshop to introduce Raku, Read
