The group art exhibition titled Death Cry at the Border protesting the border killings ended on Sunday at Chhobir Haat, a venue opposite to the Faculty of Fine Arts at Dhaka University.
Both local and Indian artists condemned killings on the Bangladesh-India borders by the security forces through their artistic endeavours.
The exhibition featured arts in different forms like photographs, performance arts, theatre and graffiti.
Felani, the Bangladeshi teenager who was shot by Indian Border Security Force on January 7, 2011, however was the main theme of many displayed works at the show.
The performance art titled ‘Humanity is a Fake Word’ by a local artist Kamruzzaman Swadhin depicts the brutality inflicted on the innocent by the forces in the name of protecting the country’s sovereignty.
Swadhin has played a butcher slashing off meat pieces and throwing them to the wall with graffiti of barbed wires and soldiers. The piece of meats symbolises people being killed at the borders of Bangladesh and India.
The exhibition also featured small theatre plays staged every evening of the exhibition. Performed by regular theatre artistes, the plays also demonstrated how the so-called border security guards shoot innocent people to death.
Besides, the exhibition also shows photographs of posters, banner, graffiti, and other visual arts that the artists of Kolkata and Agortala have made in protesting border killing and also the futile trail of Fenali murder where the accused was acquitted of all charges by the BSF court.
Kamruzzaman Swadhin, who was also the mouthpiece of the exhibition, told New Age that numerous local and Indian artists have taken part in the exhibition. ‘In India, the border killing issue is case sensitive so the Indian artists haven’t revealed their name,’ Swadhin said.
-With New Age input
