Saturday, May 11, 2024

Whimsy

Double-channel video with twelve pieces of laser prints on paper, 2023
Duration of video: One minute five second
Solo Exhibition: Of Fragments
Curated by Sharmillie Rahman
Kalakendra, Lalmatia, Dhaka

 

‘Whimsy, a double channel video installation with prints to accompany, dramatizes the dismemberment of the human body recompensed by surfeit of concessional information disseminated by the mechanics of marketing and consumerism. Axing its primordial contacts with the world, the body is denuded of its vitality of movements and intentionality of actions, and eventually is reduced to the repetitive moves emulating that of a stringed puppet.’

- Sharmillie Rahman 
  
                                                                           



Whimsy, double-channel video with laser prints on paper, each print size:11 X 8 in, solo exhibition 'Of Fragments'', Kalakendra, Dhaka, 2023, 
Photo courtesy: Sheik Nafi Hassan





Whimsy, laser prints on paper, each print size:11 X 8 in





















Whimsy, video still

Friday, May 10, 2024

Closed Door

Double-channel video with LED neon text and six pieces of laser prints on paper, 2023
Duration of video: Three minute thirty four second
Solo Exhibition: Of Fragments
Curated by Sharmillie Rahman
Kalakendra, Lalmatia, Dhaka

‘Palash watches from within the protective bounds of the walls the tumultuous storm raging outside, reminiscent of lives being whisked away, displaced by the wind of change. In contrast, the interior reverberates with images and sounds emanating from a screen, part of an odiously calculated performance gaslighting a populace into squeamish submission. Counteracting which is another irreverent act of scratching and deflating a balloon, echoing the futility of any subversive act under the regime of control and surveillance, thus ‘exposing’ our ‘edges’ of vulnerability.’

- Sharmillie Rahman 
  
















Closed Door, double-channel video with LED neon text 




 







Closed Door six pieces of laser prints (counter gaze of the video), laser print on paper, each print size: 10 X 6.5 in on paper, solo exhibition 'Of Fragments', Kalakendra, Dhaka, 2023 





Closed Door, double-channel video with LED neon text 
 Photo courtesy: Sheik Nafi Hassan
















Closed Door, video still

Insomni - lucid sleep

Mixed-media installation, 2023
Bangla and English texts in LED neon, photograph (18 pieces),  single-channel video
Duration of video: One minute twenty  five second
Solo Exhibition: Of Fragments
Curated by Sharmillie Rahman
Kalakendra, Lalmatia, Dhaka

'The vast arsenal of embodied experientiality Palash calls into action emerge ‘re-materialized’ on photographic surfaces/screens in the form digitally encoded simulation. The virtual corporeality thus constructed becomes the stuff of a parallel reality which is based more on transposition or replacement of identity than on similarity or representation. In a spirit of suspension of disbelief, the audience is trans(tele)ported to the claustrophobic world of a series of digital photographs entitled “Insomni-Lucid Sleep” where the ‘characters’, partially defamiliarized with the help of props, stage a performative ‘re-enactment’ of straddling a threshold between light and dark, metaphorically indicating knowing without seeing, as the Bangla title roughly translates, “ I can see with eyes shut during sleeplessness”. Or, where the video projection of a night bulb turns into a lodestar, eternally failing to show any path of resolution to the meaningless absurdities of life.'

 - Sharmillie Rahman

















Insomni - lucid sleep, LED neon installation, 6.5 X 35 in, 2023
Insomni - lucid sleep, LED neon installation,18 X 30 in, 2023




























Insomni - lucid sleep, photograph (18 pieces), 12 X 9.5 in, 2023


Insomni - lucid sleep, props, 2023
Photo courtesy: Sheik Nafi Hassan

















Insomni - lucid sleep, video still single-channel video, 2023