O man re… man re… dhyan karile didar paowa jay (O my mind… my mind…attain the vision through meditation). — Durbin Shah
ART is a phenomenal experience in life. Many a connoisseur considers it an allegory of a pleasurable journey. The taste of art is found in an alternative way of living for those who believe that what we taste as art is a rediscovery of a tasteful mind, which warrants a question as to how art is created. And, there is another relevant question: how does creativity transform an old thing into something new? The transformed thing constitutes a conditioning to which we respond uniquely that we might call emotional and intellectual reception. And, thus, we appreciate art and its artistic value through reception.
This way, we grasp the aesthetic value of recreated things and forms. In this creative process, we see the form of art reach a stage that attains a sense of final immovability. But, this immovability ultimately does not signify the literally immobile. There is a continuous flow of re-conceptualisation within this immovability. As a result, we find dialectical equilibrium in art. Following this circulation, when go through a direct aesthetic experience, we are involved in an intellectual act of value judgement of something termed art. As John Dewey argues, ‘[…] judgement is an act of intelligence performed upon the matter of direct perception in the interest of a more adequate perception.’
This phenomenon finds resonance of same in Shakespeare’s play Love’s Labour’s Lost: ‘a critic, nay, a night watchman.’ In other words, critics do not merely analyse and give explanation but also become reawakened and alert guards. They become a legitimate authority of surveillance through their vigilant act of criticism. Yet, there is the risk of becoming a purveyor of social surveillance in disguise of that of ‘a night watchman’ shining light in the dark of the unknown. Being reminded of the tricky relationship between knowledge and power, I offer a brief outline of the signification of the 24th Young Artist Art Exhibition 2025.
The Bangladesh National Academy for Fine and Performing Arts has organised the Young Artist Art Exhibition for more than two decades. When a national institution plays the central role in a public presentation of art, we have to unavoidably consider what constitutes the underlying force of the relationship between the state apparatus and art. Louis Althusser tells us that the state, as a strategic apparatus, functions in two stages. Ideology is one of them. Art institution is such an organ, among others, wherein the state expresses its ideology. As a result, an institutional tendency is seen as the modus operandi in a state-sponsored public display of art while art is considered the ideological representation of the ruling class as opposed to the democratic mode of exhibiting the art that poses questions. Despite this devastating risk, there are some valid causes which demand the initiation of a critical intervention in the 24th Young Artist Art Exhibition.
First, the word ‘young’ does not merely signify the youthfulness in the context of biological age. The word ‘young,’ rather, signifies a metaphorical signification. As a sign, the world ‘young,’ indeed, signifies the metaphor of the youth. The word signals a human condition infused with the vitality of life. Youthfulness is, therefore, not at all immaturity. It, rather, seethes with latent potential for creation. The national exhibition of the young artists can also be considered the map of an effective sign system, enabling a semantic reading of that collective creative potential.
Second, following German philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin’s influential essay, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’ the broader scope of the exhibition can be explored to see whether the young artists question the state and politics. Nearly 200 works by young artists for were presented the first time in a changed socio-cultural context caused by the 2024 mass uprising. The exhibition, therefore, created an opportunity to seek the meaning of integrated aspirational vision engaged in the collective self-examination. New political order always produces conditions for a new aesthetic order or artistic idioms. Benjamin famously argues that fascism instrumentalises its ideology to aestheticise politics. On the contrary, he says that the anti-fascist stance of people’s political enquiry upends the exploitative structure of the state through the politicisation of aesthetics.
For instance, masterpieces of artist Zainul Abedin illustrate people’s narrative of the struggle against the colonial rule in this region. Quamrul Hassan has also outlined a political language of art against the autocratic regimes both before and after independence. Because of the manifestation of a form of aesthetic semiotics that appropriates both the people’s struggle and the political desire of collective unconscious, the language of art frees itself from the false aura caused by the exploitative system. The trend, seen in many recent exhibitions of young artists, suggests that they are now less interested in imitating reality and indulging in expressions of the personal crisis of existence. Their works have, instead, explored the diverse nature of the self wherein a person is examined as not only a being but a social being.
This year’s event was gracefully diverse by featuring various mediums. The exhibition showcased 215 artworks and 191 artists from diverse disciplines, including painting, sculpture, craft, ceramics, graphic design, photography, installation art, new media and performance art. This exhibition also maintained the continuity of the artistic course of the last couple of years by incorporating a curated showcasing of 12 artists. Multidisciplinary artist Monjur Ahmed was as the chief curator. The curatorial project, ‘Transformation,’ manifested the concept of the reciprocal relationship between time and change.
The curator calls it an ‘art project’ accomplished in four stages: searching, practising, creating and presenting. This project demonstrated that it was not running errands to what it perceived as the order of the day but the essential artistic impetus that initiates the curatorial projects to effectively present the young artists’ works, which rejects the conventional mode of presentation based on medium specific categorisation and embraces a new approach to exhibition built on critical conceptualisation and thematics. As an art-motivator, a curator can pose many questions and disperse the stimulation, at the same time, throughout the entire creative process.
This part of the exhibition proves that the curator should not limit the artist’s freedom. A curator must, rather, not forget that an artist is what Carl Gustav Jung calls an ‘autonomous complex.’ Because, an artist makes use of a universal symbolic language. The discourse about the archetypes and the collective unconscious inform us that the personal is not merely personal; it is, rather, supra-personal. It means that an individual is a supra-personal entity that belongs to an age-old collective mind that is both contextual and universal. As Jung argues: ‘The unborn work in the psyche of the artist is a force of nature that achieves its end either with tyrannical might or with the subtle cunning of nature herself quite regardless of the personal fate of the [hu]man who is its vehicle.’
Since the artist is also a supra-personal being, the spark of an unborn work of art lies dormant in the mind. An individual artist, therefore, becomes the vehicle for collective memory, imagination and repressed desire. And, this is the underlying cause for the artist under the curatorial project of ‘Transformation’ to materialise hybrid visuals based on the collective memory, delimiting the personalised, despite containing the trauma, crisis and desire, which are notable characteristics of this project.
Beyond the curatorial project, it is possible to identify some significant directions by closely reading a great number of other artists’ works showcased in this exhibition. For example, a considerable number of works by young artists still subscribe to the illusion that academic still life substantively derives its creative worth in line with traditional accreditation. Presumably, although not wholly, the colonial epistemic violence might be a cause for this attitude. Because, the dominant approach to art-pedagogy in this region accepts and follows the idea that art is just a mimetic presentation of surface reality. One of the underlying causes is the erroneous discourse of Aristotelian critical notion of ‘mimesis.’ At the same time, the other cause is the hegemonic history of art practice that has developed the idioms and the overall art language in the service of appropriating the imported style of realism as the fundamentals of art creation in favour of the statuesque of the colonial rule.
Apart from this trend, a dedicated effort and inspection have blossomed to creatively visualise the contemporary local and global ways being and seeing which might be traced in the work of a great deal of young artists. As a consequence, their works take a hybrid form. This language disintegrates the conventional boundary between the figurative and the abstract. The lineage of creating the monolithic image is thwarted when a de facto motivation becomes inevitable in the face of politico-economic collapse, spiritual crisis, fabulism and reality. This marks a point of departure for many a young artist, leading them towards creating a new, complex act of image making.
Image is at the centre of a crisis in the age of digital humanities. One can, therefore, experience the tendency of storytelling instead of simply illustrating an image. Images present the subject matter in relation to the spatial surrounding as well as lived experience by an impure blend of various mediums all into one work. These sorts of works are characterised by their narrative mode. One may assume that the conflict between the image as representation and narration as a state of being will generate questions and propositions in near future. Moreover, enthusiasm is evident in the works of many young artists to represent the body. The works reflect that body is not merely anatomy. The body became the witness to contrapuntal time, memory and ongoing struggles and the source of resistance to the detriment of lived lives. The portrayal of the suffering body, mystic body and even the transcendental body evoke potential.
This year’s exhibition generated another direction, expressing a new attitude against the dominant cultural exhibitionism of singular Bengali nationalism as Chakma and Hajong artists were showcased remarkably. In the post-independence Bangladesh, the dominant discourse of unilinear nationalism constructs a long history of separation between Bengali and ethnic minorities. This historical separation was reevaluated in the exhibition, which makes a significance through the ethical-political act that can be thought as a redemption of the guilt of the chauvinistic power.
If we continue to assimilate an agential presence of other indigenous and ethnic communities in the statal cartography of collective imagination and the horizon of beauty, in the long run, the principle of co-existence will be the semiotics of truth. The national minority artists brought to view their land-centric way of living along with their collective struggle for survival via symbols and totems, the genealogy of knowledge, rituals, myths, icons, images and motifs by employing the various ruptures, deconstruction and cross-cultural creative techniques and languages. As a triumphant reclamation of silenced voices, their works provoke the mind and stir the thoughts of the audience.
Many of them just unveiled themselves in the art scene through this exhibition. This is a phenomenon of potential coming up to speed. If the idea of ‘young’ can be taken as a metaphor for the youth and if the youth is considered a herald of new life and if the newness is a system of expressions that emerges out of the collective imagination and aesthetics, we can assume that this exhibition appeared as a fertile ground, presaging the art of the future.
Arguably, the aesthetics of the future will emerge from a critical retooling of the contradictions within monolithic nationalism, strategic encounter with globalisation, conflict with and syncretisation of local living traditions, human negotiation with the power of artificial intelligence for creating a field of visuals and a dialectical interface between physical and digital. As much as is required also to remain sensible to the intense urge for the return to metaphysical roots, to non-aristocratic peoples’ expressivity against auratic representation; some such attempts at creating heterogenous and de-centred art were exemplified in the artworks of young artists.
The exhibition of the young artists proposed a new aesthetic order for the future. This proposition means that we are essentially in need for a new sort of aesthetics. The young artists, as the metaphor for youth, have it in their power to construct this coming aesthetics as they know how to deconstruct. It is true that the tricksterial creative technique of deconstruction opens the new horizons for the creation of art from time to time.
Dr Shahman Moishan, a cultural theorist, writer, researcher and playwright, is an associate professor of theatre and performance studies in the University of Dhaka.
