Any impartial assessment of our country must bring into light the vital significance of its industrious destitute people and the rivers.
Eminent artist Syed Jahangir has tried to give vent to this assessment in his ongoing 39th solo exhibition titled Ink Drawing, Drawing and Color held at
Shilpangan Gallery in Dhanmondi.
The exhibition includes 45 drawings and sketches, predominantly using pen and ink as the medium. Most of the entries illustrate the water-dominated landscape and tell the tale of common people of this delta land.
Jahagir’s series titled ‘Harvesting, Homeward and Preparing for Fishing’ depicts people who always toil from dawn to dusk as the real working hands. One can easily notice the postures of the hard-working people- calm and disinterested.
‘I grew up as a child in Satkhira. The lifestyle and activities of the people there, boatmen, fishermen, the rivers, the landscape make me nostalgic; these elements became part of my artwork,’ Jahangir shares with New Age.
Another series on display ‘After the Flood’ is also a true account of the delta land’s miseries in aftermath of the calamity.
Jahangir also has drawings on display that have not been categorised into any series. They are similarly powerful to catch the visitors’ eyes and evoke emotions.
One such redolent drawing is ‘Towards Destination’ where the artist has ink-drawn a vertical queue of men and women on a pure white paper. The men and women on the way to their destination, therefore, look like a bridge; a bridge connecting the ends of the world.
Jahangir has a number of drawings done in ink and colour. Through his impressive manipulation of colours, the artist has mainly tried to depict nature and its elements, in this case, mostly rivers, surrounding landscape and boats of our country.
His coloured drawing ‘After the Cyclone’ depicts a cyclone-hit field and ‘Reclining Woman’ illustrates a reclined figure of a woman positioned horizontally.
The drawing titled ‘Necessity of Life?’ shows a line of brick-making chimneys. ‘May be it is a necessity of life, but the deliberate inclusion of a question mark is to question the validity of such necessity that clearly goes against life of humans by destroying nature,’ the artist remarks.
Dedicated to Jahangir’s friend well-known journalist, the late Fayez Ahmed, the exhibition was inaugurated on May 1 and will end today.
-with New Age input
