Editorial Essay
Mapping Bangladesh's ascent to abstraction
At the macro-evolutionary scale cultural traits are transferred from parent to daughter populations through demic expansion (vertical transmission), or between neighbouring populations by copying, teaching or imposition (horizontal transmission). Cultural Read
postscript
A R T S P E A K: Aminul Islam unloaded
Shawon Akand: I consider you important for various reasons. You have been intimately associated with the institution that has been the fulcrum of the modern art movement in Bangladesh – as Read
letterbox
Sense and sensitivity in art
The emergence of an art magazine of international reckoning through the culturally motivated segment of our own society is a phenomenon to celebrate and be proud of. Such an organ Read
newsscape
The art of Bimanesh Chandra Biswas: a naturist's progress
Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts in Dhanmondi, Dhaka, recently organized a solo art exhibition, titled 'Rural Nature', featuring the works of Bimanesh Chandra Biswas. Born and raised in Narail, he Read
writes TAKIR HOSSAIN with DEPART DESK
Art exhibition in Colombo: On Chaminda Gamage's trail
An exhibition of paintings by Chaminda Gamage at Barefoot Gallery, Colombo, Sri Lanka, which intentionally drops the title, brings under one roof 30 recent works by the artist who has been Read
Egged on by stories: Ronni Ahmmed in Venice
Bangladeshi painter, sculptor and installation artist Ronni Ahmmed makes his debut in the international art scene at OPEN, where one of his large-scale installations has been staged alongside other contemporary Read
Re-seeing reality: Japanese art in Dhaka
Two back-to-back exhibitions at Zainul Gallery, Faculty of Fine Art, Dhaka University, showcasing works of two young Japanese artists provided an opportunity to glimpse at the recent reductionist tendency in Read
writes SHAHMAN MOISHAN
features
The perimeters of Abstraction: Works from the centre, periphery and other extra-terrestrial locations
Proliferating as vernacular metropolitanism, abstraction in the 1960s Dhaka was mostly about the interiorized/localized, and even to a degree, formalized strictures of a mode of non-representative art whose analogues are Read
writes GOLAM MORTUJA
History and Playful Unconcern in Kentridge's Art
I am interested in a political art, that is say an art of ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted gestures, and uncertain endings; an art (and a politics) in which optimism is kept Read
writes ROMAIN MAITRA
Six theses on Abstraction
Bangladesh's mainstream narratives on abstraction are often absolutist in stance. Anchored in the essentialist assumptions around art and life, some of them simply do not register the contextual reading of Read
writes SHAHMAN MOISHAN
Histories in visual records
‘Few modern cities have bred so many myths as Calcutta…popular beliefs and images that acquire the status of basic truths and guide our interpretations of reality. The chief Calcutta Read
writes PAROMA MAITI
archeology
Sayeed Ahmad's preface to the National Exhibition of Paintings 64-65
sIt is a matter of great consequence that the National Exhibition is being held at Dacca (now Dhaka). In the past we had the opportunity of seeing this ten years Read
writes SAYEED AHMED
artist writes
The rural spirit and (agri)cultural inheritance
Working on sculptural motifs, I am often tempted to make new forms following my encounters with new subject matters. Starting with my experimentation with implements such as dheki (corn thrasher) Read
writes AKM MAYNUL ISLAM PAUL
encounter
Post abstraction is possible! : Colloquy with Fokhrul Islam
Shahman Moishan (SM): What is the main purpose of your art? Is it just for aesthetic pleasure?Mohammad Fokhrul Islam (FI): Oh, of course! Even you look for pleasure, for Read
Re-situating Modernism : A conversation with Murtaja Baseer
Mustafa Zaman: We are accustomed to look at art and artists from within the modernist framework and often times it fails us in providing a bird's eye view, or a Read
exposure
Firoz wants to fight Tyson
Firoz Mahmud announces that these people are 'celebrities, entertainers, politicians' who are both popular and controversial. Keeping in mind his Bengal tiger expedition in Sharjah Biennial 2009, I was expecting at Read
writes NAEEM MOHAIEMEN
book review
The fine and folk arts in (and out of) focus
A book in art can never be 'the Book' in art, as is often imagined by some who are given to the forlorn belief that a book can and should Read
writes SHAKHAWAT TIPU
navigator
Ali Akbar's Pictorama and the logic of 'post-process' painting
Some consider abstraction's much vaunted method of translating accidents into potent visual anatomies a sham; as all accidents within the periphery of a canvas are nothing more than controlled phenomena, Read
writes GOLAM MORTUJA
Naimul Islam Prince and his sites of social concern
It is too simplistic an attempt to define photography as an act of play between light and shade. This very form of the 'play' is derived from our perception of Read
writes SHAKHAWAT TIPU
art space
Crossing the line of demarcation
It is a given that an exhibition following a workshop will have its own practical limits in respect to the artistic as well as logistic scope and breadth; but the Read
art addressed
The Necessity of Art
Sometime back I was interviewed for a programme in a British website called People's Archive. At the end of the interview the interlocutor (who preferred to be called a 'listener') Read
writes K G SUBRAMANYAN
