editor's note
On the edge of the new media/world
'When a photograph is authorized by the state, levels of meaning appear to merge within it, absolutely and seamlessly, to form an ideological text. However, ideology cannot exist independently within the image... Read
writes MUSTAFA ZAMAN
obituary
Shahid Qadri is not home
Shaheed Quaderi was one of the few notable poets who, besides being a unique personality, animated the literary scene during the 1950s. There are not many poets who have gained a lot of attention on the merit of such ... Read
writes SHAKHAWAT TIPU
features
Mapping signs and sites of new praxes and paradigms
Seventeen years into the new millennium, the art scene in Bangladesh is thriving with the incursion of a ubiquitous practice – new media. Artists across generations now produce new media art, though at the outset there were only a handful of enthusiasts Read
writes SHAHMAN MOISHAN with DEPART DESK
New Media: the locus of rebirth
New media still elicits considerable suspicion from the mainstream art circuit in Bangladesh. Digital art can re-inscribe the art scene with its variegated praxis but often the verdict is that it is simply a reflection of problematic 'digital overload' in the social Read
writes SHAHMAN MOISHAN with SHARMILLIE RAHMAN and MUSTAFA ZAMAN
Let lightning strike me : Charalnama's deconstruction of Tagorian haute 'culture'
The obscene cadence of lightning undoes that obscure object of bhakti/desire that is 'reified Tagore' in director Shahman Moishan's corrosive experiment, Prakriti, Chitra O Amaler Charalnama. Commissioned for the second edition of Kolkata-based platform, Happenings' Rabindra Utsab, the performance's charged reception Read
writes SEEMA AMIN
interregnum
New Media Art From here, where?
As a form of art, new media cuts across generic boundaries. Even in 2017 it is neither fashionable nor accepted among critics to try to examine the variegated landscape it covers. A settled term of acknowledgement, new media art... Read
writes PARSA SANJANA SAJID
Delving into the re-real of cyber space
Cyber space is primarily an electronically mediated ecology. The threshold through which to enter this virtual world subjects viewers to a performative engagement with the designated device – it may be a computer or currently even a mobile/cell phone. To access Read
writes SHAKHAWAT TIPU
exposure
Fictionalizing encounters: Hadi Uddin's mysterium
With the series Longing, Hadi Uddin's lens has become obsessively focused on what is microcosmic. Veering away from his former projects wherein he appeared as a nomad recording the relationships between people, places and animals in temporary communities on the fringes of Read
depart file
Chobi Mela IX voice-changed to the tune of crossmedia art
A biennale, or annual art fair for that matter, once placed on the global circuit, appears as a double-headed beast. Packed in equal measures with reality and fiction that follow from the construction or remaking of the consecrated/sacrosanct space, the remade Read
writes GOLAM MORTUJA
encounter
Emotive freights from an in-between space: an encounter with Boris Eldagsen
Mustafa Zaman: Let's begin with the idea of spectrality, which we encounter in your work – especially in the composite work that is part of Chobi Mela IX. I can see that it is one of your recurring themes, and in the Read
close look
A Personal View about a Biennale
Besides the sanctimonious arena of the museums, landmark locations of biennales are also significant sites where art is coherently presented to the public today. These sites intermittently re-appear as peripheral extension of the museums in their elements of throbbing mobility, contemporaneity and Read
writes ROMAIN MAITRA
singled out
To make out the sea that was Kochi-Muziris
Focused on creating a space for the quiet, dissenting and the introspective, the third edition of Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB 2016) was an exciting experience for unexpected reasons. As it hosted artworks by 97 artists from 31 countries, in a variety of media including live performance Read
writes KURCHI DASGUPTA
reading room
The contemplative world of Zainul Abedin
Zainul Abedin, one of the pioneers of realism in Bangladesh, is a national icon whose fame once splashed across the subcontinent when his sketches based on the Famine of 1943 had appeared in the post-famine Kolkata. With him one is... Read
writes SHAKHAWAT TIPU
artist writes
To see or not to see
In the catalogue published on the occasion of my first solo art exhibition in 2007, I wrote, 'We, human beings, dwell in the world of “concepts”. These concepts may vary depending on the dimensions of time, space, and person. Some of Read
writes SHAWON AKAND
navigator
Faced with the bold, the young and the restless
Art is anaesthetized, or simply put, loses its 'zing' the moment it enters the cloister of a gallery and gets worse if it is caught in the mousetrap of misinformed analysis (in some anomalous cases, the work can be overshadowed by the Read
writes SHARMILLIE RAHMAN
Cheragi bears its torch yet again
Cheragi Pahar in Chittagong has been the go-to place for many (well, one may be tempted to call it 'street art' in a very literal sense) since 2012. Held annually along a thoroughfare at Cheragir Mor, one has to get to it Read
writes SHARMILLIE RAHMAN
Salma Abedin Prithi's Dry Run: Poetic inflection in the alienation of object and seeing
Dry Run highlighted the relationship between the actual and the virtual in an art exhibition that saw Salma Abedin Prithi broach a thematically engaging show wavering between the periphery and the mainstream. Curated by Wakilur Rahman and Kehkasha Sabah, the exhibition was Read
writes SHAHMAN MOISHAN
panorama
The turning of the tide : Bengal's Performance Art Week at a glance
Two centuries ago Kant raised a question: who are we now? The answer led us to the meditation on 'historical presence', as Michel Foucault later observed. In the artistic realm, similar interrogation perhaps led to the investigation of 'presence' in relation to Read
writes KEHKASHA SABAH
