editor's note
Art interpreted as value
If geography is considered to be 'Earth Writing', as its Greek etymology suggests, how then would we perceive artistic productions where the map of the cultural past, present and future Read
writes MUSTAFA ZAMAN
newsscape
Art, crop-fields and formal beauty
Setsu Suzuki is a Japanese artist with an inclination to infiltrate the public space with his retina-pleasing conceptual pieces. His recent visit to Bangladesh – an agro-based, riverine topography – has been an occasion to introduce the tenth edition of his 'True Read
Naeem Mohaiemen at Frieze Art Fair
Frieze is one of the many art fairs that have proliferated in an era of hype in the art market. Perhaps in reaction to excess commerce, Frieze has, for the Read
Arts galore at the 4th Beijing Biennale
Ancient Chinese philosophers used to pursue 'unity of heaven and man,' as is described in the preface of the catalogue from the 4rth Beijing International Art Biennale, furnished jointly by Read
'The arcade of the arts'
hilper Aulinde' or 'The Arcade of the Arts' is a parallel exhibition planned by Bengal gallery of Fine Arts to coincide with the 14th Asian Biennale, organized by Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka. Inaugurated on October 6, 2010, the exhibition included 45 art works by 31 renowned painters. Read
Examining Dhaka and its environmental make-up
Goethe-Institut Bangladesh, the cultural wing of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, marked down 2010 for programmes centred on ecology under the rubric 'Culture and Environment'. Within this framework local as well as international artists and professionals from various fields were Read
features
The visual representation of developing countries by developmental agencies and the western media
I was staying with friends in Newry in Northern Ireland. Paddy and Deborah had kindly made their five year old daughter's room available for me. Corrina was friendly and curious Read
writes SHAHIDUL ALAM
Memories of the underdeveloped : Dispatch from the 14th Asian Arts Biennale, Dhaka
The vector of Kapital leading to the materialization of transnational Kapital-driven consumer states – sundered between and organized around leisure and labour endeavours to colonize and/or purchase structured leisure, ephemeral pleasure Read
writes EBADUR RAHMAN
14th Asian Art Biennale: Coursing through identity and image
Fundamentalism, Religionism, Nationality, Nationalism – the different veins of identity politics progressively inflict the politics of representation. As ill-fate befalls us, we land on the shallow grave which, in turn, becomes Read
Africa: the many-faced ancestor of Modern European Art
Few years back in London my wife Patricia told me she had two tickets for an international poetry reading session in the South Bank Centre. It was a pleasant summer Read
writes CHOYON KHAIRUL HABIB
The art that thrived through the mediation of the Kumbhakars
The most renowned genre of traditional painting in Bangladesh once thrived in the hands of the Acharya community, a people now extinct. Apart from the Acharyas, who earned their living Read
writes NISAR HOSSAIN
core-relations
Redo Pakistan: An ongoing art project by Other Asias collective
The REDO PAKISTAN project started early in 2009 as an open submission travelling project, looking for artists and writers to reform the nation geographically, politically, and intellectually. It received an overwhelming Read
writes HAMJA AHSAN
depart file
11 theses on representation plus a few more reflections
Art overburdened with the task of recording the real, or committed to presenting it as realistically as possible to be considered as true reflection of the received sense-data is often Read
writes GOLAM MORTUJA
artist writes
Unknown aesthetics and noncommunication from within an indeterminate space
This performance brings forth a sense of the absurd by excavating the otherworldly terrain of the consciousness, which is manifested through dramatic movements and the act of pushing the body Read
writes RONNI AHMMED
text-returns
Smells like India: Pablo Bartholomew's sepia moments in the history photography
Think Pablo Bartholomew, and the first image that springs up is that of the hollow empty eyes of a dead child staring into nothingness from amid layers of rubble, with Read
cross-section
Eyes on representation: disaster, the laws of attraction and other incidental phenomena
In this image-saturated world the act of looking at pictures or photographic representation is mostly bogged down in the process or perversion of savouring the spectacle. Any catastrophe – be that Read
writes MUSTAFA ZAMAN
Independence/interpolations
Nisar Hossain's 'Portrait of the Killer' was an ambitious art project that brings out in the open the murderous mindset of killers linking his theme to the atrocities committed by Read
writes SHAHMAN MOISHAN and DEPART DESK
exposure
Disambiguating the language of subversion: Shuvo's manifold Intervention
Md Rafiqul Islam Shuvo (born 1982) is a sculptor turned painter and multimedia artist. As in the new millennium, the postmodern as well as postconceptual genres of the West began to Read
encounter
Native Land Of birthplace, landscape and processes of recalling
The project Janmasthaan was completed in four phases – the first being held at the Cosmos Atelier71 with practicing Bangladeshi printmakers as participants.. It was a five-day workshop (October 10-14) under the Read
imprint
Of painting and erasing: Samir Aich's socio-esoteric Proposition
We often mask our actual concerns about this world to pose a picture of serenity, wellness and happiness, yet there comes a point when we are inadvertently thrown into the Read
writes MITHUN PRAMANIK with DEPART DESK
Turn me on
This is not a celebration of poor images. Nor is it a defense propped up in favour of one who is unable to adjust the 'idiot box' to ensure clear, Read
navigator
Clinical coolness of an abstractionist: Kazi Ghyasuddin's recent solo exhibition in Tokyo
Wassily Kandinsky, the inventor and theorist of abstract art, is also credited with creating one of the first completely abstract paintings exactly a hundred years ago. It was in 1910 that Read
writes MONZURUL HUQ
A beauty of abstract understanding: Murtaja Baseer's empirical method
The paintings featured in Murtaja Baseer's recent exhibition entitled The Wings' enters the realm of vision through the dialectics of nature vs nurture. The conceptual framework of this series of Read
writes SHAHMAN MOISHAN
Open books and the contiguity of reading: Wakilur Rahman's readable and tangible books
The exhibition entitled 'Books, You can Read!,' by expatriate artist Wakilur Rahman, was a play on written words and the architecture of book which contains them. And the intention of Read
writes GOLAM MORTUJA
Finding one's foothold in the universe : Aminul Islam Soyel's utopian vision
As painting in Bangladesh is often defined as a self-conscious means, and that too for one to explore primarily the tactile factors (the physical qualities achieved through the application of paint), what gets sacrificed are issues that cast and even recast the Read
writes MUSTAFA ZAMAN
Process as painting: Ayesha Siddiqui's subjective seeing
Ayesha Siddiqui, a Pakistani painter given to abstract tendency, delves deep into our collective psyche where lies our thirst for translating the visual world in patterns unfamiliar and forms spontaneous. Read
writes TAKIR HOSSAIN with GOLAM KIBRIA
The theatre of the non-theatrical: Jamal Ahmed's take on the mundane
Jamal Ahmed is a 'naturalist' by choice; though his art has little to do with the paradigms that the movement by that name brought to the fore in the nineteenth century. An upshot of the French novelist Emile Zola's aesthetic more, Naturalism Read
foreshortened
Art and truth in the discourse of photography: From Barthes to Baudelaire
A paradox seems to insist, indeed overwhelm, the discourse of photography in our times. There used to be a time, not too long ago, when a photograph used to be Read
writes SALIMULLAH KHAN
panorama
The whys and why nots of a residency
An artist residency is like a construction of utopia, as in these in-between-times, to summon Miro Zahra, 'dreams can change into spaces which it is worthwhile to occupy and then Read
writes ROMAIN MAITRA
