Page 73 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

70 ART AND CRAFTS

people of that region is being manifested in Kanak Chanpa’s paintings with a different
implication which hopefully will diversify and enrich our art world in the future
through closer observation and representation (fig. 1.41).
Mahbubur Rahman is a leading artist among those who have created an alternate and
influential style in the art world of Bangladesh after being inspired by the
international trends during the nineties. Though he first appeared mainly as an
influential sculptor, eventually he was able to establish himself as one of the major
and talented artists of the nineties in the world of painting and installation. The
painter Mahbubur Rahman is a detached illustrator of the tormented and destructive
form of the contemporary world. Though the human figure is prominent in his
canvas, the outlines are shifting, repeated, breaking down to create beast like shapes.
Through the various agitatedly vibrating forms, scribbles and application of nervous
colors, his paintings are identifiably different in character (pl. 1.47). In recent times,
Mahbub is more engaged in installation and performance rather than painting and
sculpture, and in collective art endeavors along with younger artists. It may be said
that Mahbubur Rahman is one of the most powerful artists in the limited world of
installation in Bangladesh. In his installations, his chief concern is the representation
of the cruel social reality of contemporary times and his performances are the
symbolic representations of current circumstances.
Tayeba Begum Lipi emerged as an artist conscious of the entity of woman. Gradually
she moved towards mixed and installation art. Above and beyond the collective crisis
of woman, she has kept on representing the vulnerability of her existence as a woman
in various ways. Thus, her figure and her face keep on appearing in her work; through
fig. 1.42 Tayeba Begum these, she represents the state of the secluded woman individual in purdah within our
Lipi, My Childhood-2, society. In installation works, Lipi expands the boundaries of her contemplation and
oil, 2003
uses suggestive metaphors indicating the overall inconsistencies of society. The
artist’s movement between various media and
her skills in art are beyond question. Tayeba
Begum Lipi has become a most forceful
representative of the young generation artists
through her alternate artworks (fig. 1.42).
The main subject of the artworks of the woman
artists in Bangladesh is naturally the position
against discrimination towards woman.
Sulekha Chaudhury’s paintings express that
position in almost straightforward language.
Her painting is primarily the depiction of
suffering and loneliness of woman within
domestic life rather than in society. As a
metaphor, the equivalence of clothes hanging
from strings or on hangers to the distressed life