For multidisciplinary artist Sarah Jabin, moving through memory is much like travelling through time: her latest exhibition, CHOWKATH, is currently on display at Alliance Française de Dhaka.
This exhibition unfolds four bodies of artwork. CHOWKATH is a series of linocut prints, soap sculptures, textile works, and delicate copper-wire drawings.
BIYOG SOMOY.
Through installations of soap sculptures named BIYOG SOMOY portrays the architectural heritage of old Dhaka.
These sculptures hold onto the remnants of old houses and buildings of the city that the Dhakaites once witnessed. The installation tries to preserve their memories, stories, and architectural spirit.
The artist also tried to reflect the relationship between the building and the owner whose whole life is attached to every step of that building.
SHARSHI.
Embroidery work on moslin fabric SHARSHI, named after the glass held within a window frame.
The style of this artwork is distinctive. The artwork elicits a sense of visibility. It narrates how women in the late 1980s and 90s made every household object live with emotion, yet remained only partially visible.
The exhibition also explored how communities and their cultural memories are being forgotten.
UNFORGOTTEN.
Copper-wire drawings on fabric work UNFORGOTTEN reflected artists embedded memories of customs and rituals once sustained within domestic life.
This body of work is a gentle tribute to an era when neighbours were an extension of family, and shared moments naturally brought everyone together.
Rather than recreating the past, it celebrates the warmth, closeness, and enduring sense of community that made those times so deeply cherished.
Through linocut prints, 'BON VOID' chronicles the life of the artist's mother, from her early years to married life, reflecting on the gradual transformation of confidence, identity, and personal freedom within a woman's experience.
The Cultural Attaché of the Embassy of France in Bangladesh and renowned artist and writer, Mustafa Zaman, inaugurated the exhibition.
He says, "For Sarah Jabin, moving through memory is much like travelling through time. Born on the cusp of two generations, she stands between two versions of everyday life: one inherited through stories, homes, and rituals; the other shaped by rapid urbanisation and modernity. It is a way of asking how identities transform within only a few decades, and what quietly disappears in the process." Sarah Jabin's work brings nostalgia to reality. The exhibition is currently underway at Alliance Française de Dhaka until August 8.
