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3rd Issue

editor’s note

Of trend and culture-specificity

We live in an exceedingly self-conscious age; yet there are 'unknowing demonstrations' of social relations in many an aspect of today's cultural productions and the narratives that give them their Read

newsscape

Gonochitro: the aesthetics of indictment

With the all-out cooperation from Dhaka Art Center (DAC), Bangladesh Sammilito Sangskritic Jote, a cultural platform of the progressives, devised an aesthetic intervention tapping the talents of four mainstream artists.  Read

Raza: a contemporary artist with a sense of Indianness

To determine a new position to express Indianness, a band of young painters founded The Progressive Artist's Group in Mumbai, just after the independence in 1947. It survived only near about  Read

writes SOUGATA CHATTOPADHYAY

Workshop on sandtoning at Dhaka Art Center

The five-day workshop on 'Sandtoning', a technique that achieves light and shadow using blackened sand,  conducted by artist Azyz Sharafy, an associate professor of Washburn University's art department, was a  Read

Bengal gallery kick-starts: 10th anniversary Celebration

Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts (BGFA) celebrates 10 years in operation,  launches a year-long programme with a series of exhibitions entitled 'Srijoney o Shikorey', or 'Rooted Creativity', to showcase works of Read

Shovon Shome: through the prism of art history

​Shovon Shome has passed away in June 8 at the age of 78 (1932- 2010), leaving behind a singularly riveting wealth of art criticism which is impersonal and influential in the context of both Bangladesh and West Bengal, the former his birth place and the  Read

writes SYED AZIZUL HAQUE

Visions remapped: Homage to Ramlal Dhar

Ramlal Dhar's last body of work comprises visions which are at once filled to the brim with life and only too conscious of death: the traditional and the contemporary are  Read

writes ANIRUDH CHARI
features

Examining Interventionist Theatre in a Multi-Axial World of Transience: An Essay in Refusal

Intervention', a highly charged term, is not unproblematic and readily intelligible. Consider the semantic field – the three 'meanings' that Oxford English Dictionary (OED) offers to the term. Firstly, intervention is Read

writes SYED JAMIL AHMED

New flashpoints in the continuous drama of brief encounters with the Homo Incognitus

My work is about provisionality of the moment, artist William Kentrige had once said to have remarked. Though this pronouncement surely may perturb many a mind with an artistic bend, especially in this region, as most hold complacently on to the notion  Read

writes MUSTAFA ZAMAN

Beyond Modernism– En Route to Postmodernism in Kolkata

The years immediately preceding independence and the impending partition of Bengal, were years of great turmoil, not just for the world at large, but for the city of Calcutta in  Read

17th Young Artist's Exhibition at a glance: The Hole in the Structure of Praxis

The bud wishes to bloom but shrinks back,' – I have no choice but to draw on the lyrics of Rabindranath Tagore to define the artworks presented in this show. The  Read

writes SAKHAWAT TIPU

Focusing on Location Specific Realities : Writing art history from below

Till now, the written history of Bangladeshi art has been quite simple – linear and primarily institutionalized. Following the partition of 1947, several Muslim artists including Zainul Abedin who had been schooled Read

artist writes

TAYEBA BEGUM LIPI: Catacomb of life

We have been passing through our lives like the waves of water. We come to this earth and become a part of the play, on a huge podium; we pass  Read

exposure

The Eclectic art of Amirul Momenin Chowdhury

It was in the early 1990s that Amirul Momenin Chowdhury shifted his gaze to the sociopolitical realities of this region, and in effect, coded his ambitiously large woodcut prints with  Read

encounter

Negotiating Modernism in Bengal

Ebadur Rahman: In the beginning, right off, I am going to take issue with something you said yesterday. You were saying something to the extent that, Zainul Abedin is to Read

close look

fusion of archetypal image and archaic form: The art of Rabin Mondal

Even though the 'simplicity' of primitive African art is a myth as it is led by stern aesthetic conventions, it served as an effective cannonball to strike at the established Read

Gain at Guimet

Regardless of his medium, material, message, manner or movement, an artist of any worth is always an avant-garde, since he can foresee the future and transcribe it into his work.   Read

imprint

The unbearable lightness of the delirious 'Near Documentary'

Recent exhibitions in Dhaka showcased works from photographers – Raghu Rai, Salgado, Shahidul Alam, Anwar Hossain etc – held in colossal esteem by Dhakaite shutterbugs and, at the risk of sounding too  Read

writes EBADUR RAHAMAN
navigator

Decoding the contours and colours of Anukul's retro-figuration

Anukul's figuration precludes the social from the visual. His personalized figures are constructed in a manner as if they are drawn from some forgotten glyphs which still hold some potentials  Read

writes SHAHMAN MOISHAN with DEPART DESK

Shades without 'First Being': Object of mediation in Hamiduzzaman's recent works

In his seminal books 'A Treatise of Human Nature' and 'An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding' David Hume looks into how human mind perceives reality; accordingly he formulates: 'all perceptions of  Read

writes SHAHMAN MOISHAN

Material authenticity: Niamul Bari's way of working through negation

When art veers towards artistry, it does so to please the crowd. But, when it stays clear out of such known and easy-to-reach destination, it goes beyond the location of  Read

writes GOLAM MORTUJA

Medium to medium, style to style: A glimpse into Sigmar Polke's plucky sensibility

One might be tempted to say that Sigmar Polke's work will inevitably always be judged in the shadow of Gerhard Richter's post-modern Germany – one where the Wall existed not simply Read

writes NADER RAHMAN

Roots into the recent modernist past: Bengal gallery's 10th anniversary celebration of Bangladeshi artists

Ameditation on mainstream art scene and the scene-stars: Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts' (BGFA) haphazard cluster of exhibitions under the rubric 'Rooted Creativity', organized mostly to celebrate their 10th anniversary,   Read

panorama

2nd Porapara Performance Art Workshop

Conducted by the Japanese artist, Seiji Shimoda, also Director of NIPAF, an organization out to promote performance art across the globe, 2nd Porapara Performance Art Workshop 2010, March 4 to 7, at Shilpakala  Read

Consecutive Britto workshops among adibaashi people

Under the rubric 'Prantiker Prakritajan', which translates as The Archaic Man from the Margins, Britto Art Trust instituted a series of art workshops centered on the theme of collaboration between   Read

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