Exhibition
Snails, caterpillers and butterflies
Asma Sultana Mita's solo at Zainul Gallery
Fayza Haq
Asma Sultana Mita has tried to deal with the process of human life, which to her is like an epic, in her recent solo exhibit at the Zainul Gallery. In it she has attempted to project the sense of depression and loss along with the feeling of success, hope and dreams. She has used mixed media, oil and water colour in her 35 pieces.In "Alone", a mixed media, we found a woman holding a bird. She was done in orange, red and brown while the background was different shades of gray, blue and black with little dots of red. "The waiting" brought a bare bosomed woman, holding on to a telephone. There were insects crawling all over her and leaves had dropped on her to denote the slow passage of time. "Hymn of life" had a woman covered with butterflies and caterpillers and behind her were constellations. The painting was in green, brown and beige. The background was like leaves taken from an old diary. "Harmony of life", oil on canvas, brought a nude covered by a butterfly, moth, caterpillers. The caterpillers had been included to denote that through pain something positive could be gained. Behind the figure were lines from poems, which were in green, brown and red. "Moon in the mug" brought in a seated woman with a mug of water before her on which the moon had been reflected. Mita said, " There is not much reality of nature around us and even the moon is seen by us in the form of a reflection. Even the flowers in her life are potted and reduced in size." Snails had been brought in to show that the woman's life was creeping at a snail's speed and that she tended to hide herself like some snail. "I have worked in monochrome, with variations of brown, beige and yellow to depict the dullness in the woman's life." The oil in canvas "My world" had a woman in a sari holding on to a water lily while one was falling from her hand. Behind her were constellations and writings of words which were meaningful to the artist like "pain" and "colour". There was a self portrait in which the figure was depicted as slowly being covered by moss, with creepy, crawly caterpillers and snails. A twining necklace of dried leaf was wound around the neck. Under her eyes, on her lips , neck and cheek were blobs of green. "The person is waiting and withering," Mita commented. In "Flowers of ecstasy" there was the same young women, seen bare-breasted, with rounded blossoms of "kodom" flowers and an ikebana arrangement before her . At the back were words written on autumn leaves. "Moonlight night in Dhaka" brought in houses with bright blue and red windows and trees in the vicinity with tops of circular heads with dots in them. There was the moon in the dark blue sky. The colours in the windows spoke of happiness or desolation. "Letter to Vincent" was an abstract piece with electric blue and bright yellow to depict Mita's devotion for the legendary Impressionist artist of the past. "Green bottle , red table on a moonlight night" was another oil on canvas, again brought in the artificiality of life. The red brought in the importance of Mars to the present generation and the fact that we are slowly growing away from nature. "Summer in Dhaka city" brought in the colours of "krishnachura", "ashok" and "jarul" to show that if we want to find nature we can do so even if we live in cement jungles. These colours were used to paint the treetops to depict the search for beauty in modern civilization. "True colours of joy" had the bright greens and reds of capsicum which were presented in an enlarged manner and provided tremendous beauty with the array of colours, although the subject was just ordinary everyday vegetable. "Nightmare" had two floating women with a black moon and some snails and cacti. "If you are not enjoying life everything becomes slow and ugly," comments Mita. In "Pain of life" and "Burning life", done in mixed media, with the effect of collage, and with burning of paper to get the soft sepia effect. The artist had , again, rubbed "nain-tara" flower on the paper to get the blue colour. The bits of red and gold were taken from caste off cigarette packets. The artists who have influenced her greatly are Shishir Bahattacharya, Farida Zaman and Rafiqun Nabi. The European artists that she admires are Van Gogh and Chagall.
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Moon in the Mug Oil on Canvas |