Page 266 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

CONCEPTUAL ART AND NEW TRENDS 263

a visual exhibition but an experience with mixed feelings.
The outburst of anger, grief and tension prevailing in the
minds of the city dwellers will find expression in colors and
forms instead of printed alphabets.’ The sponsor of
4
Mahbub’s exhibition was Bangladesh Tobacco Company
(now British American Tobacco).
Installations could also be observed as a medium for
reacting against political misdeeds. Student artist of
Chittagong University, Sanjay was brutally murdered by
an Islamic fundamentalist group in 1998. Deeply
aggrieved and shocked by this death, his teacher Dhali Al
Mamoon created an installation.
Mamoon had been involved in painting and printmaking
since the 80s. His first installation was created by transforming and installing a sampan
(a traditional boat of Chittagong) in the university campus as part of a festival on the
occasion of convocation in 1998. But Sanjay’s death was a critical influencing factor for
him to continue his work on a regular basis in this new medium.
“The tragedy so deeply shocked him that when ‘Shilpasamannaya’, an art activity center
in Chittagong, decided to hold an exhibition in memory of the deceased, Mamoon
plunged himself in reconstructing symbolic images of Sanjay’s death in three-dimensional
formats. This experience made him aware of the communicative power of the art of
installation and aroused in him an interest in the practice of this new means of expression.
Since then, Mamoon has executed some five or six installation projects at home and
abroad which addressed such contemporary issues as fundamentalism, terrorism,
aggression and communal and racial marginalization of the minority people.” 5
Mamoon presented installation projects in Dhaka’s Jojon Art Gallery in 2000 and in a
workshop organized by Britto in 2003. In 2004, he presented a series of exhibitions in fig. 6.13 (top) Dhali Al
Dhaka and Chittagong titled Water is innocent! These exhibitions depicted, with Mamoon, Water is
mechanical technology and video projections, the conflict between the marginalized Innocenti, galvanized tin
sheet, glass, iron,
ethnic communities and the majority aluminum, wood, wire,
people (fig.6.13). bulb, electric motor,
Nisar Hossain’s exhibition that took printed transparent
place in the month of March 2002 titled sheet, painting, video
Ghatoker Protikrity (Portrait of a Killer) and water, Alliance
focused on the continued terrorism and Francaise, Chittagong
self-destruction occurring in the political and Bangladesh
and social life in Bangladesh (fig.6 14). National Museum,
Dhaka, 2004
This exhibition was organized in a
private gallery called Gallery Twenty- fig. 6.14 (bottom) Nisar
one. In this exhibition, Nisar made use of Hossain, Hungry Coffin,
different media such as installation, installation, 2002