Posthumous Aminul Islam for Young Artists: A Laudable Incentive
Mainunddin Khaled
The artistic quest of Aminul Islam has always involved the pleasure of finding something new. And the focus of such search has been human beings and human relationships. With the zeal of a thrill-seeking young adventurer, he anchors in different ports of life as if to explore and examine how humans live and forge relationships, and how these bonds can be contained in art. To say that Aminul is unique in expressing his hunger for viewing life anew is probably banal. However, he never allows his creativity to take him to a secluded self-fashioned world where he is left all by himself. Aminul, after all, is a man who relishes human relationships. His political orientation as well as his commitment to life as an artist brings him closer to people.
Growing up in the 1940s in a family that upheld a liberal outlook, he found himself in a rather enlightened atmosphere. He became associated with a youth club (Progoti Shangha) and later with the Communist Party, which helped him adopt a lifestyle that shuns prejudices and superstition. The freedom and equality of man, attainable only through historical materialism, has been the mainstay of his belief base.
In 1947, he enrolled in the Kolkata Art School. After listening to his mentor Zainul Abedin, he decided to join Abedin in pursuing his dream of starting a new school in a new country created by the Partition. In the following year, Aminul Islam became one of the first students in the first batch of the Art Institute in Dhaka. Blessed by the guidance of his mentor, Aminul graduated with First Class honours and joined the Institute as a lecturer. He received a scholarship to travel to Florence, Italy where he came to know many celebrated artists of his time. His talent was noted by his peers both at home and abroad, especially in his first two exhibitions in 1951 and 1952. His works proved to be a confluence of all that he had learnt and experienced.
Aminul’s faith in young talents had been unwavering. Partly due to his progressive political outlook and enterprising personality, Aminul was known to be a champion of the youth. He made it his mission to find the sparks of talent in the youth and ignite that fire so that they reach their full potential. He knew only fire could be used to light fire and that the Promethean torch must be passed on to the next generation so that civilization will progress. His ability to mix with young artists and his desire to learn from them was an exceptional quality.
The introduction of the “Aminul Islam Young Artist Award” is a telling tribute to his association with young minds. Bengal Foundation is proud to recognize Aminul Islam’s appreciation of young talents. Even after his death, Bengal would like to both highlight and advance Aminul’s legacy of encouraging young and talented artists.
The works of ten artists from a total of 300 submissions have been nominated for the first ever “Aminul Islam Young Artist Award 2013.” These artists are not afraid of breaking norms or experimenting with new ideas. True to the spirit of Aminul, who revered Zainul yet did not shy away from his master’s style to respond to the spirit of his age, these young artists both welcomed and engaged with various changes that we see all around us. Some of the participants have yet to complete their academic training; still they have demonstrated a wide range of artistic themes and styles in their works. It is safe to say that this exhibition, albeit limited in scope and capacity, displays the artistic variety that is available in our contemporary art arena. We leave it to the audience to judge for themselves the depth and quality of the works made by these artists.
The selection committee has taken the novelty of ideas and their application into consideration in assorting the works for the exhibition. The ten artists, in their chosen mediums of ink drawings, sketches, oil paintings, acrylic or video-installations, are both alive and alert to the happenings of our time. They listened to the cries of humanity or to the distress call of our age, and expressed them in artistic languages that are sometimes abstract while at other times real. In “April 24”, for instance, Md Alomgir Hassan uses a combination of still photographs and video footage to depict the Rana Plaza tragedy. His skillful use of super-imposition and economy of expression gives an artistic touch to what appears to be a journalistic documentation of various emotional responses to the collapse of a building which claimed more than a thousand lives.
One prominent subject of study in the exhibition has been the human body and its expressions. The tracings of time and its tale can be found in human faces. Ruhul Karim Rumee studies the wrinkles of old faces as if to map human history and its limits. The imprisonment of man in the web of time has been delineated by Bishwajit Goswami, Anisuzzaman Sohel and Gopal Chandra Saha. While Bishwajit’s works depict the human struggle through the symbolic crumbling of human bodies, Anis and Gopal use drawings to expose the dark repressions to which humanity is subjected. The use of drawings by these artists once again underscore the importance of the medium.
The central figure in Ashraful Hasan’s work, which I shall call ‘Nature-Man’, presents a huge trunk of a tree that is in the process of becoming a human. The theme of metamorphosis is used to stage a protest against human encroachment and ecological devastation. The painting offers an outcry, an artistic plea for a return to the pristine state of nature.
The ‘painterly reality’ of Farzana Ahmed Urmi reveals the fragmentation of the human self focusing on flesh. With the stokes of a skillful master, she uses her canvas to literally flesh out bodily disfiguration.
Habiba Akter Papia’s novelty lies in digging deep into the earth, and envisioning the subterranean insects that are aware of the raging fire that burns at the core of our planet. Her works bring out the tension that arises from our oblivious indifference to the facts of nature including our everyday existence above a fiery oven.
Abdullah Al Bashir has used woodcut on a large scale. The print image tells the tale of an abandoned ship. The discarded state of the vessel belies all the adventures and memories with which the ship was once linked; the work thus becomes an interplay of presence and absence.
Sahid Kazi has used two canvases to depict an accident-ridden car from which human figures are trying to emerge. The lines and geometric patterns through which Sahid Kazi creates the dynamics of movement are reminders of his expressionistic endeavour.
Altogether, the exhibited works involve new ideas that merit attention.
Translated by Dr. Shamsad Mortuza