Jahanara Tariq

There is a sense of inexorable catharsis, and dare I say— spirituality—when the protagonists begin their journey into one another since they alone embody the ideas and predicaments of the text. 

The fact of the matter was this: the poem had been written, the call had been answered, and as lofty as it sounds—at that moment there I was, as Frank O'Hara put aptly—"the center of all beauty! / writing these poems!/ Imagine!".

I wonder at how these frugal, accessible pleasures define her daily existence and get elated with the fact that reading takes up a significant space on the shelf

A dream of me in a sea of green.

Maybe I loved her so because we were daughters of the same soil, to some extent, at least. It made me smile. But I also sneered at myself a little bit, because her soil had also ripped apart mine for over 200 years.

The personal space is the same as the political sphere, the individual on the same strand as the collective. 

As the white hot sun pierced through the soufflé clouds on an afternoon a lifetime ago, my aunt and I leaned back a little too precariously on our rattan armchairs while talking about the allure of academe.

In a particularly American but artsy, cinematic production depicting the friendship between David Lipsky and David Foster Wallace,

The epic antedates even the depiction of the famous Trojan war; it is, in effect, the oldest epic found till date.

After more than a year into the coronavirus pandemic, we are still largely confined to the four walls of our homes. But for painters, by and large, this has always been the case.

With spiralling Covid-19 cases, the government of Bangladesh announced a seven-day countrywide lockdown, starting from April 5. Art galleries and event spaces are monitoring the situation strictly. While most of them have postponed their public programmes, others have chosen to operate cautiously.

“Chaa Porbo (Tea Time)”, an exhibition by noted artist Shehzad Chowdhury, is taking place at The Flourist, in Dhaka’s Gulshan 2. Curated by Saria Saguaro, the show features a striking collection of artworks, which were brought to life using tea and the process of cyanotype, during the months of isolation induced by the pandemic.

“Dui”, a successor to the exhibition, “Ek”, is the second chapter of the series of exhibitions curated by Taiara Farhana Tareque. Taking place simultaneously over two places in the city— Studio 6/6 and Dwip Gallery, “Dui” portrays two alternative visions of a singular artist, but draws up a merged conversation by bringing in the concept of a particular space and tying it together within the artwork. “The point of synchronicity is actually at in minds of the audience,” Taiara explains.

Yet, her plethora of meditative sketches on tragic happenings are imbued with a certain sense of surreal sublimity. Though she started out as a traditional painter, Jolly went on to experiment with different areas, including filmmaking, photography and even the postmodernist terrains of performance art.

Arcadia Arts Gallery, located at the heart of Banani, opened with an important group show recently. The exhibition, which began on February 16, is showcasing artworks of some of the most eminent artists of the country and beyond, such as Zainul Abedin, Quamrul Hasan, SM Sultan, Alakesh Ghosh, Ivy Zaman, Kanak Chanpa Chakma, and Kalidas Karmakar among others. The co-founders of this hub, Khan Rezaul Hoq and Arneeb Chaudhury, are distinguished art collectors.

Similar to the mimicry of life by art, sometimes a book in our hands can acutely imitate the arcs of the love story we are in, ourselves—like the time a ghost lover stole a paperback Frankenstein from the neighborhood café as a last minute birthday gift for me, while our alliance reeked of haunted loneliness and painful assertions, or when one of my friends, a doctor by day and an avid reader by night, spoke about his first encounter with Harry Potter and the “cute, sweet girl across the hall.”

“Art That Moves’, a vibrant exhibition by artist Tahmid Islam, is currently underway at 138 East in Gulshan 1. Tahmid shares his artworks from his social media page, Crazy Creative. This exhibition intrinsically focuses on combining the aesthetic of Studio Ghibli, a Japanese animation film company by Hayao Miyazaki, and internalising it within different moments that are woven in our culture.

The books which are closest to my heart and which evoke a certain sense of otherworldly glee are the ones that are themselves odes to literature, reading, and writing.

Are e-cigarettes the route to diminish the tobacco epidemic? Or is it just choosing the lesser of two evils? Let us look into the details, and shatter the myths relating to the various smoking and vaping trends circulating around our concrete jungle Dhaka.

Even though many claim global warming and the entire concept of climate change to be a hoax, it is very evident how global warming is causing various disrupting changes around us.