On Ferdousi Priyabhashini’s exhibition
[....Something from my previous blog...I love the idea that this piece is still up. I am an admirer of Ferdousi Priyabhashini’s work..... ]
After having seen the exhibition Amono Ghono Ghor Barishay and after having the opportunity to talk to the self-made-sculptor Ferdousi Priyabhashini even when the exhibition was at its fag end I have no doubt in my mind that this is a show that Dhaka residents will remember for years… not so much because of any inherent merit of ‘art’ or ‘art work’ as such but because of the way Priyabhashini redefines her definition of work…In fact Priyabhashini is least bothered about how to define her work involving wood wares, bamboo structures, dead wood and plant life, which is to me and to many others I assume happened to be the main attraction of her exhibitions.
This is one exhibition where (it may be coincidental, I have visited the place just once, so one can say this not enough as a way of justification from a statistical point of view, but then who cares for statistics!) I found a vibrant audience coming to the exhibition hall [Ferdousi Priyabhashini’s exhibition was held at Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts from July 10th to 26th 2004, was later extended for another two days] and what is more everyone were talking, sharing and communicating ideas to friends and partners in uncharacteristically louder voice, a scene we hardly encounter in these days of ‘high art’ and ‘culture’. It seemed as if people talked not more about her work but how they related to these works of ‘art’ [I am not sure whether Ferdousi Priyabhashini is interested in this categorization –‘art’]
I asked her about how she views her work. Her approach to greenery in particular was an enchanting experience in this exhibition…some of her earlier sculptural works on wood were also available for viewing, but this time she was focusing on green. So I asked whether this was a ‘conscious attempt’ that she was trying to work from within a different ‘paradigm’ where art work didn’t have to have a name and where ordinary people could also relate to the pieces of work without having to do with any technicalities [found in the literature of art history and theory]… Ferdousi Priyabhashini politely replied in the negative. ‘No, not a conscious attempt.’ She avoids this term. In her vocabulary this is a motivation/ inspiration, which has no nothing to do with her work.
She explains why she dissociates from this, elaborating that most of her life has been spent in household work. She had to look after her kids, had to cook and wash and do all the household chores…but during all this time she continued to pursue her interest as an artist. Why she emphasizes on this? She is a valiant freedom fighter of this country. She is a spirited soul, progressive yet she refers to her personal/family obligations.. …perhaps by doing so she tries to diverge attention from the derivative Western/ Euro-centric discourse of developmentalism and progressivism.
Priyabhashini elaborates on her inspiration. In this journey of hers a number of people gave her inspiration. The great S.M. Sultan is one who acknowledged her as a sculptor, inspired her. Poet Sufia Kamal is another with whom she had a long-term relationship. And of course many more friends in this journey.
Now in this exhibition she emphasized on green. She labels them ‘misra gach’[mixed trees]as she did not know all the names of these trees that she found and collected from different places. Collecting twigs, and dead roots or fallen branches of trees were not easy for her. In fact she says, these days she gets hardly any thing for free! ‘People will charge you for any thing, however insignificant it is, the moment they understand that you want to take it to home… says a laughing Ferdousi Priyabhashini.
…Her little twigs/ trees/ leaves at the top of differently cut dilapidated bamboo structures, curved wood plates reminds us of the older days when there were at least some attempt by our former generation to have greenery at home gardens and verandas. But homes, for the most of this previous generation were at the mufussil areas…. from where Priyabhashini herself comes from …but then a transformation has taken place when it comes to home décor. Greenery among the middle and upper middle class has lost its appeal …greenery which used to be at home, in the balcony or on the window grills have been replaced by new objects. For the rich this has been often a more abstract object such as an ‘original’ painting on the wall or artifact of some kind at the drawing room corner or on the center table, the middle class on the other hand were served with color posters of Leonardo de Vinci’s Mona Lisa! In fact Mona Lisa catered for a long time to the need of the middle class people’s ‘artistic sense’.
Priyabhashini envisages to bring back these scenes all together…. nostalgic…some would say but she gives a modern [in a temporal sense] touch in bringing back this nostalgia. Nostalgia is not essentially the quality of her works. Though she would occasionally recount her school days at Khulna, a southwestern district where her father worked as a teacher, in explaining one or two of her works. But she is not submerged into it. Her works are more contemporaneous than that or that is what I assume. [I am not suggesting that it is self evident] …her works are attuned to the needs of a new time, and in this respect she is frank about her pragmatic approach [when she talks about the durability and usability of her work] yet she is very cautious about not giving it a very conventional or rather ‘typical’ look, thus transgressing this time of ours…. she often refrains from giving any polish to her works of wood and bamboo in order to let it go with its natural color and texture. Here she is simple.
By the time you see all this, you are simply intimidated by the aesthetics and the redundancy of aesthetics of her work. For one moment you tend to believe that this is aesthetically sound, this is beauty or even you find it comfortable to say this is art..eternal!
Salute to Ferdousi apa…
After having seen the exhibition Amono Ghono Ghor Barishay and after having the opportunity to talk to the self-made-sculptor Ferdousi Priyabhashini even when the exhibition was at its fag end I have no doubt in my mind that this is a show that Dhaka residents will remember for years… not so much because of any inherent merit of ‘art’ or ‘art work’ as such but because of the way Priyabhashini redefines her definition of work…In fact Priyabhashini is least bothered about how to define her work involving wood wares, bamboo structures, dead wood and plant life, which is to me and to many others I assume happened to be the main attraction of her exhibitions.
This is one exhibition where (it may be coincidental, I have visited the place just once, so one can say this not enough as a way of justification from a statistical point of view, but then who cares for statistics!) I found a vibrant audience coming to the exhibition hall [Ferdousi Priyabhashini’s exhibition was held at Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts from July 10th to 26th 2004, was later extended for another two days] and what is more everyone were talking, sharing and communicating ideas to friends and partners in uncharacteristically louder voice, a scene we hardly encounter in these days of ‘high art’ and ‘culture’. It seemed as if people talked not more about her work but how they related to these works of ‘art’ [I am not sure whether Ferdousi Priyabhashini is interested in this categorization –‘art’]
I asked her about how she views her work. Her approach to greenery in particular was an enchanting experience in this exhibition…some of her earlier sculptural works on wood were also available for viewing, but this time she was focusing on green. So I asked whether this was a ‘conscious attempt’ that she was trying to work from within a different ‘paradigm’ where art work didn’t have to have a name and where ordinary people could also relate to the pieces of work without having to do with any technicalities [found in the literature of art history and theory]… Ferdousi Priyabhashini politely replied in the negative. ‘No, not a conscious attempt.’ She avoids this term. In her vocabulary this is a motivation/ inspiration, which has no nothing to do with her work.
She explains why she dissociates from this, elaborating that most of her life has been spent in household work. She had to look after her kids, had to cook and wash and do all the household chores…but during all this time she continued to pursue her interest as an artist. Why she emphasizes on this? She is a valiant freedom fighter of this country. She is a spirited soul, progressive yet she refers to her personal/family obligations.. …perhaps by doing so she tries to diverge attention from the derivative Western/ Euro-centric discourse of developmentalism and progressivism.
Priyabhashini elaborates on her inspiration. In this journey of hers a number of people gave her inspiration. The great S.M. Sultan is one who acknowledged her as a sculptor, inspired her. Poet Sufia Kamal is another with whom she had a long-term relationship. And of course many more friends in this journey.
Now in this exhibition she emphasized on green. She labels them ‘misra gach’[mixed trees]as she did not know all the names of these trees that she found and collected from different places. Collecting twigs, and dead roots or fallen branches of trees were not easy for her. In fact she says, these days she gets hardly any thing for free! ‘People will charge you for any thing, however insignificant it is, the moment they understand that you want to take it to home… says a laughing Ferdousi Priyabhashini.
…Her little twigs/ trees/ leaves at the top of differently cut dilapidated bamboo structures, curved wood plates reminds us of the older days when there were at least some attempt by our former generation to have greenery at home gardens and verandas. But homes, for the most of this previous generation were at the mufussil areas…. from where Priyabhashini herself comes from …but then a transformation has taken place when it comes to home décor. Greenery among the middle and upper middle class has lost its appeal …greenery which used to be at home, in the balcony or on the window grills have been replaced by new objects. For the rich this has been often a more abstract object such as an ‘original’ painting on the wall or artifact of some kind at the drawing room corner or on the center table, the middle class on the other hand were served with color posters of Leonardo de Vinci’s Mona Lisa! In fact Mona Lisa catered for a long time to the need of the middle class people’s ‘artistic sense’.
Priyabhashini envisages to bring back these scenes all together…. nostalgic…some would say but she gives a modern [in a temporal sense] touch in bringing back this nostalgia. Nostalgia is not essentially the quality of her works. Though she would occasionally recount her school days at Khulna, a southwestern district where her father worked as a teacher, in explaining one or two of her works. But she is not submerged into it. Her works are more contemporaneous than that or that is what I assume. [I am not suggesting that it is self evident] …her works are attuned to the needs of a new time, and in this respect she is frank about her pragmatic approach [when she talks about the durability and usability of her work] yet she is very cautious about not giving it a very conventional or rather ‘typical’ look, thus transgressing this time of ours…. she often refrains from giving any polish to her works of wood and bamboo in order to let it go with its natural color and texture. Here she is simple.
By the time you see all this, you are simply intimidated by the aesthetics and the redundancy of aesthetics of her work. For one moment you tend to believe that this is aesthetically sound, this is beauty or even you find it comfortable to say this is art..eternal!
Salute to Ferdousi apa…
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