Page 389 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

386 ART AND CRAFTS

After the murals commissioned jointly for the then Central Public Library and the joint
exhibition of Novera and Hamidur Rahman in 1957, they were commissioned to design
and execute the Central Shaheed Minar on the recommendation of Shilpacharya Zainul
Abedin. Work on the mural painting at the base of the Shaheed Minar began. In 1958
military rule was declared, therefore the work had to be discontinued. With her sculpture
exhibition in 1960 we see the end of Novera’s working days in Dhaka. Her
unconventional lifestyle possibly made it difficult for her to stay in Dhaka. Perhaps the
dearth of patronage made her leave for West Pakistan at the invitation of the poet Faiz
Ahmed Faiz. She probably thought she would find greener pastures there yet to be
disappointed yet again. Nonetheless, in 1962 she won the best prize in sculpture with
the portrait bust of a boy that she entered in the National Exhibition of Paintings,
Sculpture and Graphic Arts in Lahore.
In the Pakistan Art Quarterly D.S. Watson gives us rather a sarcastic view of Novera’s
exhibits, ‘...with three fine pieces on view, two of which I liked, although the third and
the most ambitious left me completely cold. It is a large and dramatic representation of
a woman strangling a vulture, and is intended to show the victory of woman, as bearer
of life over the forces of death and evil. It is full of angles, awkward and aggressive, as
it is intended to be. I find it two direct and demanding, and would never live with it. 39
This perhaps is another phase of her work or more likely, a continuation of the more
personal style of her work that we have seen emerging in Dhaka. The subject too is the
woman struggling against adversity. Watson, however, had to admit that no discussion
of Pakistani art would be complete without reference to Novera. 40
From Pakistan Novera went to Mumbai to learn Bharat Natyam, reviving her childhood
interest in dancing. Apparently, she wanted to master the movements, mudras and rasa
of Bharata Natyam to incorporate into her work. She was taken ill there and went to
England for treatment. From England, she went to Paris in the hopes of finding an
environment conducive to her work. In 1970, she went to Bangkok and had an outdoor
sculpture exhibition. The exhibits were dramatically different from her earlier works.
The medium was welded metal and in some pieces, she used parts of airplanes destroyed
during the Vietnam War to create assemblages. After her show, she returned to Paris
where she had another exhibition in 1973 with further changes in media and form.
Novera has not once returned to Bangladesh since the 60s and has not maintained
contact with her friends or relatives. Her silence has been reciprocated with her name
being allowed to sink into oblivion, her oeuvre disappearing for lack of preservation.
Zainul Abedin wrote for Novera’s exhibition catalogue of 1960, ‘In East Pakistan’s art
world, it was a minor revolution, when Novera Ahmed gave the city the first frieze on
the wall of the Central Public Library in 1957 and then the first open air sculpture in
1958. We, the citizens of Dacca, have been living with this [sic.] two magnificent work
[sic] for [the] past few years. But I still think, we shall take generations to assess the
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impact of these two work [sic] in our art life.’ In 1997, the Bangladesh Government
awarded Novera the Ekushey Padak in recognition of her contribution to sculpture.