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18th Issue

editor's note

Of pedagogical fault lines and recognition of the emergent 'new' art

Though proliferated as an unofficial dictum, the most problematic component in the teaching method once employed at Santiniketan (the Kala Bhabana of Visva Bharati) hinged on an essential frame of  Read

obituary

A Sudden Departure: Looking back at life and art with Qayyum Chowdhury

Shawon Akand: You are associated with the arts for almost fifty years, filling in different roles at different times – the roles of student, art-apprentice, designer and teacher of the Art  Read

writes Qayyum Chowdhury speaks to Depart's Shawon Akand
newsscape

Performing the issue/body: Chhobir Haat stages its very own festival

Following Kali Das Karamaker's early spectacular appearances as a semi-ritualistic performer in the 1980s, Mahbubur Rahman's episodic corporeal acts of transgression since the late 1990s, and the recent visits of Read

Depart at Art Dubai

For the third time in a row, Depart is a media partner of Art Dubai, a leading inter­national art fair focused on the current artistic élan of the Middle  Read

An 'Aesthetico-political Reawakening' in Dhaka: Salimullah Khan's lectures on theories of image and gaze

Professor Dr Salimullah Khan, the public intellectual and one of the country's most revered academics besides being an expert in psychoanalysis as philosophy, gave five lectures on Image, Gaze and Read

An 'Aesthetic Spring' in Dhaka: Marek Bartelik's seminars on art and exhibition making

Internationally acclaimed art critic, President of AICA (International Association of Art Critics), Dr Marek Bartelik, was in Dhaka on a two-week visit. The three consecutive lectures that Marek presented at  Read

Kalamkari at Monobhumi Art Space

Monobhumi's maiden attempt at introducing an age-old south Indian traditional method of image-making transposed the world of popular textile painting into art fit for gallery space. Kalamkari, has been the  Read

Highest French title for Shahabuddin

Bangladeshi painter of international repute, Shahabuddin Ahmed has been conferred with France's highest civilian title in 2014 for his contribution to art. The Paris-based 64 year old artist received, last September, the Read

WAR OR PEACE ? : Commemorating 100 years of First World War

Curated by Mrinal Ghosh, War or Peace?, at Kolkata Art Gallery, Kolkata, India, was a tribute to history – the 1st World War and its implications in our modern civilization that Read

features

From within an aesthetic nowhere: Dissecting 19th Young Artists Exhibition

Looking from within the interlocking domains of art and art criticism, the 19th Young Artist Art Exhibition 2014, the official title of the art show of emerging artists of below 35 age Read

writes GOLAM MORTUJA

Elastic borders of changeful cultural sites: Remapping contemporary art in Bangladesh

A nation is a construction– a site where a sustained geopolitical position usually determines the nationalist narrative, which is often erroneously conceived as a given. The idea of a 'sovereign  Read

writes MUSTAFA ZAMAN

Visual Dispatches from Unfinished Wars

With the world impatient to move on after the 'end' of the 21st Century Afghan War and erase old histories to write new versions, closure can never be a tidy  Read

writes NIILOFUR FARRUKH

Women Artists of South Asia: Working from within and outside the known registers

Over the past three months, I have had the occasion to visit or to be present at a number of art exhibitions and art events in Kathmandu, Nepal's capital city.  Read

writes KURCHI DASGUPTA

People, places, things tracing trauma

For contemporary artists who search out new ways of coming to terms with the continuing cycles of wars, armed conflicts, and systematic tactics of violence that mark our era, many Read

writes DEBORAH FRIZZELL

Yokohama Triennale 2014: The Ultimate Book or the Inferno of History

Whatever the intention behind the whimsical behaviour of nature or that of a despotic regime, burning does not always ensure the ultimate demolition of an undesired written or printed work Read

writes MOYNUL SHAON
close look

Dave Hickey departs for the second time

The news that Dave Hickey ‘quit’ writing about contemporary art reached me through his Facebook page several weeks Read

writes MAREK BARTELIK
subject/predicate

Dealing with spaces: Art intervention in architecture

The dovetailing of the conceptual with the visual, the spatial with the experiential, seemed to have served as the basis for this show. What inspired you to have embarked on Read

exposure

An armoury of deconstructive visuals: Razib Datta’s Digital Montages

When image creation and image collapsing is made interchangeable what becomes of the end result – the artwork that we are allowed to look at and except as the finally found  Read

encounter

Documents, images, and memory: An encounter with Naeem Mohaiemen

Renuka: Jalal Toufic writes in, The Withdrawal of a Tradition Past a Surpassing Disaster1, 'If the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively, are a surpassing disaster Read

interregnum

Thirteen theses on art-making and meaning construction

Artists are not the masters of meaning. Meaning is generated by way of retrospective reading. Meaning follows after a particularly unique encounter with an artwork is measured/evaluated in the context Read

writes MUSTAFA ZAMAN
movie-review

Chills from the periphery

Manipuri film-maker Sunzu Bachaspatimayum's critically acclaimed documentary Sagolgi Eigi Wari (Pony and Me) released in Dhaka (DAC) a day before its release in New Delhi un-nerves with its quality of Read

writes SEEMA NUSRAT AMIN
imprint

Reading a catastrophe set against causality/casualty by number

The disaster récits that appear from within the social body – when it has already endured multiple injuries in both political and industrial registers – serves as an obvious sign of Read

writes GOLAM MORTUJA
navigator

MURTAJA BASEER: Straddling the line between war and peace

Murtaja Baseer, one of the moderns who veered towards abstraction in the 1960s, and, in retrospect, can now also be considered an artist who revised his scheme of operation many Read

writes TAKIR HOSSAIN with DEPART DESK

Existential Explorations as a point of departure: A threshold to myriad possibilities

The summer months in India may not be the best time to initiate gallery business, but exceptions can be fruitful and worth mentioning for. Jugnu and Ramjit Ray decided to  Read

writes RITENDRA ROY
panorama

A Tapestry of Stories

The 8th edition of the CRACK International Art Camp CIAC (CIAC) 2014, was inaugurated at Smaran Matshya beej Khamar in Kushtia, on 25 December 2014. Curated by Nilanjana Nandy (India), this edition of Read

URONTO at Lakhotia Zamindar House in Barisal

In the 4th episode of the URONTO residential art exchange program, artists from varied disciplines and nations came together in a common space to interpret, re-construct, re-imagine, and resurrect the  Read

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