Artist Shahid Kabir, in his ongoing 12th solo exhibition, has presented paintings featuring the lives of commoners with all their everyday joys in magnificence.
Titled ‘I Bow My Head to You in Deep Obeisance’, the exhibition includes 53 paintings, mostly in mixed media on canvas and a few etchings.
No heart-wrenching struggle or tattered slums or starving children, as often depicted in art, have shadowed the joyous depiction of life by Kabir.
It is not that Kabir shies away from portraying poverty and pains of the common people; but in the paintings of this exhibition, his aim is to bring out the warmth and bliss in the life of those we generally label and recognise as the downtrodden.
That is why, even the slum dwellers of Adabor or a helpless old man from Banaripara or even an unknown refugee have been captured in the paintings of Kabir in a manner that reeks of joviality.
Many of the paintings reveal the artist’s exploration of female beauty and body in an artistic manner. In the painting Slum Queen Adabor 2, a woman, shaking off water from her hair with a towel right after a shower, has been captured. The red canvas easily arrests the eyes, while bare body of the women, though a slum dweller, falls not a liege short to give aesthetic pleasure.
Kabir has also addressed environmental issues in his paintings such as Lets Free Nature!, Stop Killing Nature Now! and in Burning Sky.
The painting Stop Killing Nature Now demonstrates a knife recklessly chopping off a flower lying on a table representing human’s ruthless aggression towards nature. The artwork Burning Sky is more direct where Kabir has not used any symbolism: he has depicted a landscape having a sky darkening with dense cloud of black smoke rolling out from the chimneys of brick fields.
The artist has also paid homage to some great personalities in some of the paintings. For instance, in his painting titled Homage To Sukanta, Kabir has depicted a burnt bread which is a reminder of poet Sukanta Bhattacharya’s famous verse Purnimar Chand Jeno Jhalsano Ruti (The full-moon looks like a burnt bread). A tribute has also been paid by Kabir to Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore by capturing his portrait in a painting named after the great poet.
Inaugurated on March 12 at Bengal Shilpalaya, the exhibition will remain open for all from 12:00 to 8:00pm till April 1.
-With New Age input
