Stalking Emptiness

Print Edition

User Rating: / 0
PoorBest 

Weekend Independent

Friday, 28 October 2011

Author / Source : Katerina Don

“People always want more and more. And when they are unsatisfied, they carry sadness with them. I want to be different, and to be the best at what I do”.
Different he is, and undeniably one of the best. This young sculptor is taking the imagination of artoholics hostage with his intelligent, detailed works. Two birds rest on his head as Lilly pads stem from his neck, his face morphing into the mossy ground. His eyes, vigilant, stare up at the changing sky. Time flees as he is unmoved, consumed by nature. He is Ashim Halder, known as Sagor.

The above mentioned sculpture, Existence in Nature, can be seen at Interior Depot Gallery in Gulshan 1. Sagor is quickly becoming a favorite amongst collectors in Bangladesh and abroad. He is famed for using his portrait in his works, which has become his signature style. But he is by no means confined by it. “I have so many roles, so many characters. At home I am the son, at university I am a student, at work I am someone else. But they are all unique these characters. And they are all a part of me”.

In many of his works Sagor is examining himself, molding his portrait - the stoic expression, eyes looking straight ahead, generous lips relaxed, there is a sharpness to his features that speaks of discipline and direct inspiration. “I follow the maxim Know Thyself. What do you have to identify you, if not your name? Your face. Everything I have to say, all my thoughts, political views, dreams, they all come through me. I say them through myself. And in the end everything we do, we do for ourselves”

It is the evening before the opening of a workshop in the Faculty of Fine Art titled ‘Contemporary and New Trends in Art’. The overgrown campus is bustling with activity in preparation for the event. Several students are carefully working on an installation by the front entrance, laying out an alapna of black and white passport photographs of missing people. The face of an ascetic young man with piercing eyes, the artist Sabyasachi Hazra, haunts the whole piece as it swirls into the center escalating into a mountain of photographs. A bathtub half filled with water stands on the lawn.

The shadows of surrealism grow thick around Charukola in the eve. Between the Maghrib and the Isha prayers, Sagor who is also the main organizer of the workshop, talks about the dreams and concepts that give life to his works. 

He is not confined by a medium, his talent versatile and subtle. Apart from being a ceramics artist and a pioneer of the Japanese raku style in Bangladesh, he is a performer, film maker, and a gifted web designer. One critic noted that the young artist is equipped with the "right ammunition". The choice of words being very appropriate as weapons, especially guns and grenades, are a common motif in his work.

"This tea pot is filled with meaning", Sagor explains the piece Modernism - taste full, post-modern, infused with British humor. It is your classic stout teapot crossbred with the infamous revolver. A gun barrel for a spout, a gun grip for a handle. This piece is an allegory - good morning shot down. "The teapot symbolizes the good feelings that you have in the morning. Before you pick up the newspaper, full of bad news and your morning becomes a crisis".

The choice of medium is ironic - heavyweight weaponry transformed into fragile, delicate ceramics, weapons of destruction remodeled into instruments of inspiration. "I want to reinvent these objects that bring fear into our lives. By reconstructing them I am giving them new meaning, transforming the threat into beauty".

Sagor is a force of his own. He graduated First-class First in BFA from the Faculty of Fine Arts and is now completing his masters with the same honors. He is working his way onto the stage with such respected artists as Alok Roy and Mohammad Fokhrul Islam, who challenged the notion that ceramics is confined to utilitarian objects. Sagor is a powerful combination of avant-garde, surrealism, and classic form. His bird grenades are like mythical creatures of the modern "Age of Emergency". Like the Sphinx, they are mesmerizing, threatening, and juxtaposed.

Sagor, born and raised in riverine Barisal,  was the youngest Bangladeshi artist at the 14th Asian Art Biennale where he presented an installation with his short film The Dhopa - the chronicle of the traditional cloth washers of the Buriganga, tradition faced with pollution. His point of view as a director is unobtrusive, he does not barge into the situation. He is almost invisible, camouflaged like in his sculpture Existence in Nature. But his perspective is clear and bold and very humane in its simplicity. His love for flowers and birds attests for that much.

"I think that the crime is always at the root. The outcome is polluted because the root is polluted". Many of his works are political, they are a social satire on greed, corruption, diplomacy and desire. One of the most intimate works is "The Secret Talk". Two spheres nested near each other. Out of one protrude pouted lips frozen in the middle of a sentence. Out the second sphere an alert ear. An unheard secret binds them.

Ashim Halder Sagor is a name, and most importantly a face, to be remembered. "Basically this is my journey with art. I am always thinking about what will remain when I vanish from the face of this earth?"