Soul, soils and symbols

Batch-mates at Faridpur High School, Kalidas Karmakar and Enam Ul Haque reunites in a joint exhibition at Singapore.

Enam Ul Haque says, "The photographs comprise of the Bangladeshi landscapes with village people, street children and mainly shows the simple and basic life in our country. They show the children climbing on trees and playing on the sea side. They include children running about in front of the National Assembly and little ones hidden among the crowd of the adults. The paintings will show the complexities of life coming in today. Thus, in our country, we see how simplicity of traditional Bengali life collides with modernism and upheaval in the society. Simple life persists but the complexity of modern life through TV and other vehicles of progress try to take over."

Kalidas Karmakar says, "This time we are trying to make a different type of art work taking it first to Singapore, Indonesia and Jakarta, and then bringing it to Bangladesh and exhibiting on August 28 at the Shilpakala Academy. We do our art with the digital system in the mixed media process. These prints from New York from Step Media in Bangladesh."

Enam Ul Haque says, "No one from Bangladesh has tried to combine photography and painting before in this manner. It is not easy to put photographs and paintings side by side. We just don't want two exhibitions sitting side by side in one gallery. We want one exhibition telling a single story of photographs and paintings. The arrangement of this itself is a creative work. The Manyang Fine Arts Academy where it will be shown is a seat of art. We want to see how the students and teachers overseas will react to whatever we are doing. This will provide us a feedback. If it works and is well accepted we would like to do more like this. For the first time we are doing this abroad."

Here Kalidas adds, "In a couple of years ago in one of the Asian Biennale one person submitted art work in the photographic process but it was rejected by the selecting committee. In 1982 the same Shilpakala Academy had an exhibition with the USIS, a collection of art from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, was pure photography but was treated as fine art. If you can reproduce the essence of your feeling, the media does not matter. Photocopies have been accepted as art work in Poland and Sao Paolo. We are trying to change the backdated thinking that photograph is a secondary art."

Enam continues, "From Singapore we'll carry the exhibition to Bali, Jakarta, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur between 2003 and 2004. We will be enriched by the comments of artists and those who deal in art. A new element that we are doing is presenting photographs in a very large format, three feet by five feet. This is done by electronic method where the colour is slightly different from the original and we can deliberately play with the colours. We want to see what effect this creates on the minds of viewers specially those who are trained to appreciate art.

"Another new element in the exhibition is when he has used soil instead of paint. By mixing colour in it he has created a totally new colour and put it on paper. Kalidas has taken photographs of his paintings and printed it through electronic media. He will be painting on the prints. He is also taking his original paintings. We will also be doing installation work on the floor with earth, objects and photographs."

Asked how Kalidas and Enam had got together, Enam explained that they knew each other from high school in Faridpur. After school they had split but reunited in 1993. "This is the first time that we have put two hands to make one work," Enam says.

About Kalidas Karmakar, Chintamony Kar, the famed Indian sculptor wrote in 1997, "He had his tutelage in painting and graphic art at GCAC, Calcutta almost three decades ago and from then he has enriched his creative faculties enormously and made valuable contributions for which he received many accolades."

About Enam Ul Haque, the Bangladeshi poet, Shamsur Rahman wrote in 1997," He not only wields his hours to the iridescent world of birds but fills his soul with nature itself. The artist in him has captured in celluloid an amazing array of images to share with us."