Bangladeshi artist’s exhibition ‘Rokeya Sultana’ postponed indefinitely in India
The exhibition was scheduled to be inaugurated by BJP leader and External Affairs Minister (MoS) Meenakshi Lekhi start in New Delhi on Oct 23, followed by shows in RTC, ICCR Kolkata, and Dhaka.
NEW DELHI: Widespread violence against the Hindu minority community and incidents of burning of temples and Durga Pooja Pandals in Bangladesh seems to have cast their shadow on the art exhibition by a Bangladeshi woman artist Rokeya Sultana.
Earlier scheduled to be organized by Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) in India this Saturday (Oct 23) at Lalit Kala Akademi in New Delhi, the retrospective traveling exhibition ‘Rokeya Sultana’ has been postponed indefinitely. Meenakshi Lekhi, who is the Minister of State for External Affairs and Culture in the BJP ruled Indian government was scheduled to inaugurate the exhibition.
On Thursday, a mail from the office of Amit Sahai Mathur, Programme Director, Media, ICCR, said, “We would like to bring your kind attention that the exhibition has been postponed due to unavoidable circumstances. We apologize for the inconvenience and will keep you informed about new dates.”
Recently, over two dozen Hindu homes were set on fire in Bangladesh amid protests over Durga Puja violence. The arson attack happened in the Rangpur district amid rising communal tension over an alleged blasphemy incident at a Durga Puja venue in Bangladesh’s Cumilla.
To commemorate the establishment of India- Bangladesh 50 years of diplomatic relations coinciding with the yearlong celebration of Bangladesh ‘Mujibborsho’, Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) had announced to organise various cultural activities in Indian and Bangladesh.
In a series of its’ activities, ICCR in collaboration with Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi was to organize a retrospective traveling exhibition ‘Rokeya Sultana’ at three cities New Delhi-Kolkata- Dhaka.
Ms. Rokeya Sultana is an established artist from Bangladesh. She studied visual arts at Shantiniketan with an ICCR scholarship in the year 1983. She is an established printmaker and painter from Bangladesh, and faced atrocities of the 1971 War. The Bengal Foundation, Bangladesh had partnered the event from the Bangladesh side to organize the exhibition in India and Dhaka. Indian High Commission at Dhaka was coordinating for the exhibition.
Rokeya Sultana exhibition was to be followed by shows in RTC, ICCR Kolkata, and Dhaka.
The landmark exhibition traces the artist’s fascinating trajectory from when she worked in Santiniketan with ICCR’s scholarship as a student under the guidance of Somnath Hore, Sanat Kar, and Lalu Prasad Shaw; to her artistic career subsequently in Bangladesh with Safiuddin Ahmed and Mohammad Kibria as mentors. Under their tutelage, she straddled diverse mediums and experimented with different narratives that were a unique expression of her own moods, emotions, and intuitions.
Rokeya, an award-winning Bangladeshi printmaker and painter, Rokeya Sultana received recognitions in the 9th Asian Biennale and the National Art Exhibition, Dhaka; the 3rd Bharat Bhavan Biennale, India; and a residency scholarship to L’AtelierLacouriere et Frelaut, Paris. Her works have been widely exhibited. She is a Fulbright Fellow and has studios in Dhaka and Sydney. The exhibition planned to showcase the poetic qualities of Rokeya Sultana’s artistic compositions residing in the mythical figures embedded amidst harmony, equally perhaps, in their transience in life or in her depiction of the eternity of womanhood.
