ART BOOK CLUB is a segment where a guest suggests a book which was not written with visual arts in mind and yet is a source of inspiration, guidance and / or creativity for their work. Hosted by Joana P. R. Neves, this episode welcomes visual artist Laisul Hoque.
- How can a work of fiction influence the work of an artist?
- Can a visual arts practice be illuminated by storytelling? How can art practices she light on the value and limitations of archives and photographic documentation of the past?
- To what extent do images convey the truth?
- Is visual arts the territory where we reckon with our ties with the past, and our emotional needs?
Laisul chose: Babu Bangladesh!, written by Numair Atif Choudhury.
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What you get from this episode: Curating revelations, unexpected curating methods, lessons in community, art philosophies, ethical art questions.
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0:00 Intro
04:19 Choosing an artistic career
11:13 Autobiography in visual arts
18:26 Book: Babu Bangladesh! By NUmair Atif Choudhury
20:14 How a book intersects with personal life
22:15 The personal, the politics, the art, the book
28:20 What is Babu Bangladesh! about?
35:14 Family photo archive and visual arts
39:26 Break and call for action
41:43 Speculative fiction as device for truth telling
45:58 Why is Babu Bangladesh! In English?
48:32 Taking ownership of the historical archive?
56:18 StorytellingThe Ground Beneath Me: An artistic exploration of care
01:03:34 Displaced spaces of art
01:10:16 Does art provide answers?
01:21:14 Outro
#visualarts #visualartist #bangladeshiartist #bangladeshart #arteducation #artbookclub #bookclub #bangladeshfiction #numairatifchoudhury #joanaprneves #exhibitionistas #exhibitionistaspodcast #arttalk #art #visualartsepisode #visualartspodcast #contemporaryart #talkart #youngartist #bowarts #nunnerygallery #londonexhibitions #londongallery #londonmuseum #bestlondonart
00:00:00
My name is Lysol Hawk, I'm an artist.
00:00:02
I was born in Bangladesh and I came to London in 2020.
00:00:06
I have a new show in Nunnery Gallery which is part of Bo
00:00:11
Arts. So what book touched Lysol
00:00:13
Hawk's creative work, despite not having been written with
00:00:19
contemporary visual arts in mind?
00:00:21
But. The book that I want to share
00:00:23
with you, it's Babu Bangladesh by Numeratov Chaudhary.
00:00:28
We're like just starting our A levels.
00:00:30
We tried picking it up, we read it.
00:00:32
Everything went over my head, nothing stuck doing.
00:00:35
And I read it throughout my trip in Bangladesh, throughout the
00:00:41
experience of taking care of my father as I experienced the
00:00:44
politics. Maybe it formed the show that I
00:00:48
have right now, but hard to tell he.
00:00:51
Writes about Bangladesh. Bangladesh is in the name of the
00:00:53
book. He's the cover, but he wrote in
00:00:55
English. Indeed, Numair Atif Shaduri
00:00:58
wrote in English and you will find out much more about this
00:01:03
iconic book that should be read worldwide.
00:01:07
It is a fantastic read, a meandering labyrinth in the
00:01:14
Bangladeshi politics, but also in the mind of whoever tries to
00:01:19
find the truth about society, economy, politics and their
00:01:25
entanglements with personal life.
00:01:26
Stick around because you will also find out about the
00:01:30
exhibition that Lysol Hawk hinted about The Ground Beneath
00:01:36
Me, taking place currently in Beau Arts Nunnery Gallery.
00:01:43
And this exhibition has a lot to do with the book.
00:01:47
And don't forget, sign up to our Sub Stack Exhibitionist as
00:01:51
files, which is part of art Think Asaurus on Sub Stack.
00:01:56
You will not get a newsletter, I promise.
00:01:59
I always write about the artists.
00:02:03
I always share a few thoughts post editing, so the link is in
00:02:09
the show's notes. And now the ball's in your
00:02:12
court. It's your time to play.
00:02:17
Exhibition Nesters is an independent podcast created and
00:02:21
hosted by me, Joanna Pierre Nevers.
00:02:23
Because we're all both actors and spectators of art and life.
00:02:33
Hello exhibitionist. Thank you so much for tuning
00:02:36
into another episode. This episode is an art book
00:02:40
club. And just to remind you, I invite
00:02:42
artists, curators, anyone involved in contemporary art and
00:02:46
ask them if there's a book, a very special book in their
00:02:50
Canon, their personal Canon that is not particularly connected to
00:02:55
contemporary art or art in general, but that had an
00:02:58
influence in their creative work nonetheless.
00:03:02
And today I have a very special guest.
00:03:03
I'm really chuffed to have a conversation with him.
00:03:07
Hello, Lysul. Do you want to introduce
00:03:10
yourself? But first of all, thank you so
00:03:12
much. Welcome to the podcast.
00:03:13
Thank you so much, Jonah, for having me.
00:03:15
My name is Lysul Hawk. I'm an artist based in London.
00:03:21
I was born in Bangladesh and I came to London in 2020 and since
00:03:27
then I've been practicing here. I have a new show that has just
00:03:35
opened in Nunnery Gallery which is part of Go Arts and it's
00:03:40
running till the 12th of April. You said that you are from
00:03:44
Bangladesh and you arrived in London at a very specific moment
00:03:49
in time, I would even say in history actually, which was the
00:03:53
beginning of the pandemic. So you studied at Chelsea School
00:03:55
of Art. How was it, you know, making
00:03:58
that move? Oh, sorry, I did.
00:04:00
I said something wrong. I said that's understand,
00:04:03
Martins. I wish I still got Chelsea.
00:04:06
Why did I say Chelsea? I don't know.
00:04:08
Anyway, Chelsea is pretty cool. Chelsea is pretty cool.
00:04:14
Now that I think of it, I should have applied to Chelsea School
00:04:17
as I do. Well, listen, regrets.
00:04:25
Let's talk about them. So you arrived during the
00:04:27
pandemic from Bangladesh. And can you tell us a little bit
00:04:32
about that decision to come here?
00:04:35
Because you have a very interesting background.
00:04:39
So you started by being nudged towards engineering, and then
00:04:44
you started thinking that might not be for me.
00:04:47
Do you want to tell us a little bit about that context?
00:04:49
Because I think it's always interesting to see how people
00:04:52
kind of come into contemporary art and we all arrive in this
00:04:56
weird space from very different walks of life.
00:05:00
The education structure in Bangladesh is very much geared
00:05:05
towards STEM subjects. It's either you be a doctor or
00:05:09
an engineer. The other option would be law or
00:05:12
like then also go into finance or accounting and the structure,
00:05:18
the national education board, everything is geared in a manner
00:05:22
where you have these national exams and you sit for them and
00:05:27
it's score based and it's tiered based on how much you score in
00:05:32
these exams. And the top tiers obviously goes
00:05:36
to STEM focus subjects. And then the middle tier would
00:05:40
go into commerce and finance and the rest would go into
00:05:44
humanities and whatnot. And students or young people
00:05:51
often get very little autonomy in selecting or like choosing
00:05:57
their pathway. And it's also a society, it's
00:06:02
what society values. After I finished my O levels and
00:06:06
A levels, which is secondary exam examination, I was
00:06:11
naturally geared towards studying engineering and
00:06:16
because. You were a good student.
00:06:18
I don't know. I I bunked a lot of classes and
00:06:23
I had AI had a very difficult. If I have to describe my
00:06:28
teenager it would be I found it quite difficult and.
00:06:33
Even even academically, because I, I presumed you were a pretty
00:06:38
good student and that's why you were kind of driven to, to that
00:06:44
particular kind of studies engineering.
00:06:47
In my perspective, I was a nuisance.
00:06:50
I was a headache for everybody. I I had a really, I had a real
00:06:56
difficult time. I gave my parents a hard time, I
00:06:58
gave my teachers a hard time. And during that time I was, I
00:07:03
knew that I always wanted to be an artist.
00:07:05
I had a knack for like image making in terms of photography,
00:07:11
but also drawing, but quite elementary level of
00:07:15
understanding of what art is. What I found really interesting
00:07:19
was during that period, which I found quite tumultuous, I found
00:07:24
myself hiding a lot behind books.
00:07:27
I found myself like losing myself in the world of fiction,
00:07:32
non fiction literature and that resulted me in being like, OK, I
00:07:41
do enjoy reading. I don't enjoy studying
00:07:44
engineering though. There is a right now as an
00:07:47
artist, there are a lot of transferable skills.
00:07:50
It's so great as a curator to work with artists who come from
00:07:53
science. But so you were saying that you
00:07:56
kind of were you chose otherwise, right?
00:08:00
Yes, my university had a very good literature program that
00:08:05
people who engage with arts and culture kind of respected.
00:08:09
But outside, everybody hated anything creative.
00:08:14
And so I switched without telling my parents.
00:08:18
I thought this would be a gateway into me ending up doing
00:08:22
the things that I want to do or getting education closer to the
00:08:26
things that I wanted to do. And soon after I finished my
00:08:31
literature degree, I applied from my then dream school, which
00:08:36
was central St. Martin's.
00:08:38
Things have changed a lot. Now I know a little bit about
00:08:41
the UK art scene and maybe I wouldn't call it that.
00:08:45
Maybe Chelsea, Probably not. None of the UL schools, I'm
00:08:52
sorry would. You still consider coming from
00:08:56
abroad and not having a network here or someone who would be,
00:09:01
you know, come straight from, I don't know, Nottingham or
00:09:04
whatever outside of London. Do you still think it's a good
00:09:07
idea to enroll in a school and to have that experience if you
00:09:13
want to go towards an artistic practice?
00:09:15
Or would you now think differently?
00:09:18
I think it's important to get an arts education.
00:09:22
It helped me a lot in understanding how I see the
00:09:26
world and I would have been a very different artist if I did
00:09:32
not have any form of training regarding art.
00:09:35
But given that most of the London schools, most of the UK
00:09:43
that like the ones that people geared towards going, are often
00:09:48
structured in a way that will inevitably lead to
00:09:52
disappointment because of capitalism, because of how much
00:09:57
students are cramped into these spaces.
00:10:00
And most of the tutors facilitating these spaces are
00:10:04
often overworked and they do not have the capacity to cater to
00:10:09
all these students. And it's eventually leads to a
00:10:14
very disappointing experience, particularly when there are
00:10:19
international students fighting the entire world, crossing all
00:10:22
the oceans just to be here. It's, it's a, it's a high
00:10:27
expectation and it's a very tough expectation to live up to.
00:10:32
I'm glad that you had a kind word for tutors and teachers
00:10:35
because I think it can be very frustrating for, for them, for,
00:10:42
you know, my, my friends who are teaching at university at the
00:10:45
moment are incredibly frustrated.
00:10:48
But at the same time, I'm quite drawn to going back to these
00:10:51
spaces and trying or attempting to do the things or provide the
00:10:58
things that I did not have or I would have found helpful as a
00:11:02
student. And I guess that's the weird
00:11:06
Sisyphus complex that we have where we're like, we keep being
00:11:10
optimistic. So you left your family behind.
00:11:13
Do you want to tell us a little bit about that context?
00:11:15
So your family obviously had expectations from your studies
00:11:20
and your role in society, and you somehow include your family
00:11:25
in your work as well a little bit sometimes.
00:11:30
How how have you? Because I'm thinking of that
00:11:33
piece where you were focused on the favorite snack of your
00:11:39
father and people actually got to taste it.
00:11:43
So you activated different relationships with work and with
00:11:48
the material that makes up the work and kind of expanded that
00:11:52
notion. And at the same time you were
00:11:55
providing or you were exploring something that is more inward
00:12:01
looking, let's say, or that encompasses a sort of an
00:12:04
intimate or private realm of the artists and kind of
00:12:08
autobiographicals. Well, I have this work which you
00:12:13
just briefly mentioned. It's called an OTOL, the
00:12:15
flavours. And it's the work is about my
00:12:20
it's the expansive storytelling work where I try to explore this
00:12:26
earliest memory of my father helping me discover his favorite
00:12:31
javel snack in Bangladesh, obviously.
00:12:34
And it's something unconventional.
00:12:38
It's it's vegan. It's it's chickpea flour balls,
00:12:44
fried balls soaked in sugar syrup.
00:12:48
And the other thing is gram flour flakes with spice
00:12:52
seasoning. So it's like they're two
00:12:55
separate things. One is dry, one is soggy sugar
00:12:59
syrupy. You don't mix them together.
00:13:02
Because you were saying unconventional.
00:13:04
It's kind of an. Unconventional.
00:13:05
Yes, OK, go ahead. Yes.
00:13:07
So it's like dipping fries, McDonald's fries in like
00:13:11
milkshake kind of situation. That's the equivalent.
00:13:15
That's the equivalent I can think of.
00:13:18
And there was this period of time when I did not have that
00:13:23
much contact with my parents and I was really craving that.
00:13:26
And there is a very, very significant prominent Bengali
00:13:31
population in in London, which is, and many of them share a
00:13:38
similar story as mine. And all these communities, all
00:13:41
these places where these Bengali communities have settled, they
00:13:45
all have these three shops. And all these sweet shops sell
00:13:50
the components to make my father's favorite salad snack.
00:13:54
And when I was commissioned in 2023 during Salvation Heritage
00:13:59
Month by Tower Hamlets Council to make a work, I was craving
00:14:05
the sweet. And I was going into these sweet
00:14:07
shops and I was buying them separately and I was trying
00:14:10
them. I was starting these
00:14:12
conversations with the shopkeepers and I was trying it
00:14:15
with them. And in return I was telling them
00:14:18
the story of how I discovered this and how I don't have, I
00:14:21
have very minimal contact with my dad and we don't engage with
00:14:25
emotive conversation. And they would share similar
00:14:28
things about how they have a similar relationship with their
00:14:31
father. And it became this collective
00:14:35
Kaparsis moment where like I would go buy sweets, but we
00:14:40
would end up giving therapy to each other.
00:14:43
And when the Commission period came and I had to exhibit
00:14:47
something, I went up to these sweet shops and I was like, hey,
00:14:51
this is a week long thing I'm doing.
00:14:54
I'm going to set up this display cabinet inside the gallery space
00:14:58
that's going to look like a sweet shop.
00:15:00
Will you give me these things for a week so that I can make
00:15:04
other people try it? And it kind of worked out and
00:15:08
then it went to White Chapel Gallery for a day long
00:15:11
exhibition. And during that period I was
00:15:14
like, oh, I can't keep getting free sweets from these sweet
00:15:16
shops. They're a business and they have
00:15:18
to run. And during that time, during
00:15:22
that time, I was already involved with this organization
00:15:26
called Oitija, which is this British Bengali organization
00:15:32
that helps promote Bengali culture in London.
00:15:36
And they have this social enterprise wing called Oetija
00:15:39
Kitchen, where they try to engage women who Bengali women
00:15:46
who are often growing up or being brought from Bangladesh
00:15:51
in, in aspirations of better life through marriage.
00:15:57
And they're kind of subjected to this patriarchal environment
00:16:01
where they grew up in this council housings.
00:16:03
And they don't because they don't speak English, they're not
00:16:07
often trusted to be outside. And often times these women get
00:16:12
frustrated with their life or like try to take charges, try to
00:16:17
take initiative of their life and they come out and they seek
00:16:21
forms of employment because finance like independence, like
00:16:27
monetary independence is the first step to like to autonomy.
00:16:33
And that is when Otija Kitchen decided that oh, they all have
00:16:39
this pre-existing skill which is cooking.
00:16:41
So maybe we can start this catering service.
00:16:43
And they have this other wing where which is Otija, where they
00:16:48
promote Bengali arts and culture, where they involve
00:16:51
artists, Bengali artists like me based in London.
00:16:54
We run workshops, we run community engagement programs.
00:16:57
We interact with, we try to engage with them so that they
00:17:02
build a sense of encouragement to like, engage with the outside
00:17:05
world, engage with London. And it worked out quite
00:17:09
poetically because oh, the work, the work is trying to critique
00:17:15
patriarchy and the lack of emotive language between a
00:17:19
father and a son. But then this group of
00:17:23
individuals who are entrenched or like subjected to confinement
00:17:28
through patriarchy or patriarchal systems and trying
00:17:32
to break free from it, trying to break free from it, ends up
00:17:36
learning how to make these suites to present it so that
00:17:40
they can start this, so that people can come and start this
00:17:43
conversation about how it is a problem.
00:17:48
Yeah, that's wonderful. Yeah.
00:17:50
It's such a strange thing because I think you pointed out
00:17:54
something that is that we're kind of struggling with at the
00:17:57
moment internationally, which is, I mean, internationally at
00:18:00
least in a kind of international, global 1% realm
00:18:08
that rules us, which is that the patriarchy obviously effects
00:18:11
women and also effects men, you know.
00:18:14
And there's a a very strange entanglement there, whereby then
00:18:19
of course the way it affects each of the genders and all the
00:18:22
genders in. Between.
00:18:23
Is going to be very specific to each gender.
00:18:27
Actually, this connection that you have with the culture you
00:18:34
came from and the country and the politics that you came from
00:18:37
on the personal, you know, in some ways transmitted on the
00:18:41
personal level is also contained I think probably in the book
00:18:46
that you chose to bring today. So can you tell us what book
00:18:51
that is? First, so the book that I want
00:18:55
to share with you is this book. It's Babu Bangladesh by
00:19:00
Numerative Choudhury, and it's published by Harper Collins.
00:19:05
The book came out in 2019. The writer passed away in an
00:19:12
accident in 2018. The events of the accidents are
00:19:16
unaware. We're not sure what happened.
00:19:18
He was working on this book and then he was published
00:19:21
posthumously. But I have a strange connection
00:19:25
to this book. The school that I went to, the
00:19:29
writer Niemer, is the son of the principal of that school.
00:19:34
The principal is no more. She passed away as well.
00:19:37
When the book first came out, I was in a literary festival with
00:19:41
a friend of mine and I saw my late principal weeping on a
00:19:47
stage and talking about the book.
00:19:49
And it compelled us to pick up the book and read it.
00:19:52
And during that time, like we were like just starting our A
00:19:58
levels, like we tried picking it up, we read it.
00:20:01
Nothing. Everything went over my head,
00:20:04
nothing stuck doing it. And I was like, this is
00:20:11
terrible. I'm going to put it back.
00:20:13
Never picked it up I. Feel for my principal but I
00:20:16
don't want to read it anymore. But when I when I did move to
00:20:23
London, I did pack up everything that I had and my books
00:20:29
included. It was more of a running away
00:20:32
from home moment given that I did not study the subject or the
00:20:37
program that my parents enrolled me in.
00:20:40
And I studied literature. And then when I graduated, I
00:20:43
told them I did not study this, but I studied this literature
00:20:47
program and I got into my dream art school.
00:20:50
I'm going to go be an artist. Will you help me buy a plane
00:20:54
ticket? If not, it's OK, I'll sort it
00:20:56
out kind of situation. Wait, did they pay for the?
00:21:00
Ticket. Yeah.
00:21:01
Were they so mad? They were really mad and they
00:21:04
stopped talking to me, but like, they paid for my plane ticket.
00:21:07
But it's also the kind of structure that we have to
00:21:10
understand in the sense that I can't really rely on money for
00:21:13
from them because of the currency difference, the income
00:21:17
they're both retired, but the income that they have wouldn't
00:21:20
even sustain a month for me here, right?
00:21:25
So. So you have to make your own
00:21:29
life. You have to build your own life
00:21:31
economically. Yeah.
00:21:33
So I like it was a quite stressful period, I mean.
00:21:39
Especially during the pandemic when you arrived.
00:21:42
Yes, especially during the pandemic.
00:21:44
But I did manage to bring all my books only last year in 2024.
00:21:49
The country that I'm from, Bangladesh, went through this
00:21:54
period of change, but it was quite tumultuous and it was a
00:21:58
roller coaster. And the remnants of that is
00:22:01
still being felt where a government, a political party
00:22:06
that was in power for the last 15 years since 2009, got
00:22:13
overthrown by a mass uprising. The Prime Minister then fled to
00:22:18
India and then an interim government was set up and that
00:22:22
income interim government work towards building, creating a re
00:22:27
election program. And as we speak right now, the
00:22:32
election is beginning to happen in Bangladesh. 2020, at the very
00:22:37
beginning during July when this was all happening, it happened.
00:22:43
All of a sudden I woke up 1 morning and I opened, I went on
00:22:46
social media. I opened, I went to social media
00:22:50
and I realized that there was the sentiment of like protest
00:22:55
that was going on. Students were asking for
00:22:59
reforming the education system and reforming the job
00:23:02
structures, how the job market works and kind of relates to the
00:23:08
similarly kind of relates to the problem that we were Speaking of
00:23:11
earlier. And that led to a very bad
00:23:16
mishandling by the government. And next thing I know, I'm on
00:23:19
social media, the university that I went to, police are
00:23:23
throwing grenade like smoke. Like what do you call the
00:23:27
smokes? Oh, gosh, There's a there's a
00:23:30
name for the gas. Gas.
00:23:33
Yeah. Gas bombs.
00:23:35
Gas bombs maybe? I don't know.
00:23:37
Do you know what? I can't remember well, I'm not
00:23:38
well versed on protest lingo, clearly I will.
00:23:42
Know about that kind of thing? Yeah, how would we?
00:23:45
Heavier like social media is full of the university went to
00:23:49
heavy artillery, like helicopters swirling around like
00:23:52
shooting inside with rubber bullets and like we don't know
00:23:55
what's going on. I tried to contact my parents,
00:23:57
they're not picking up and absolute chaos, right.
00:24:02
Two days later, Internet shut down right?
00:24:04
Like communication blackout can't even reach my parents.
00:24:08
My mental health was left the chat.
00:24:12
My mental health was gone during that period.
00:24:18
Yeah. During that period, like, we
00:24:20
like there, there were like a lot of us scattered, like my
00:24:24
friends who are like, also abroad trying to do the same
00:24:26
thing. We started communicating and we
00:24:29
downloaded these apps to like, make calls internationally.
00:24:33
But then my parents did pick up and they said that yes, this is
00:24:36
happening, but we're trying to be safe and whatnot.
00:24:41
Yes. And that rolled out for almost 3
00:24:44
months. July, August, late August is
00:24:48
when the incident led to the Prime Minister going to India.
00:24:54
During that time, I won the East London Art Prize, which is run
00:24:59
by which is organized by Boarts. And a part of that prize is the
00:25:03
fellow Commission that I have a show now.
00:25:06
And it felt quite charged in the sense that, OK, we are a British
00:25:13
river, British colony. And also during after the
00:25:18
Partition, it's India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
00:25:22
And Bangladesh came out a lot later because there was a chunk
00:25:25
of Pakistan. But we have colonial remnants.
00:25:29
And because of the colonial remnants, I can speak in
00:25:34
English. What do I do, given that I have
00:25:37
an opportunity to present something at the heart of the
00:25:40
Empire and it felt quite overwhelming.
00:25:45
Yeah, I was going to ask you, how did you feel?
00:25:48
Because it's the weight of the responsibility.
00:25:52
I always think of this sentence by James Joyce.
00:25:55
Well, not James Joyce, but one of his characters.
00:25:58
I think it's in your leases, but I'm not sure where.
00:26:01
He says history is a nightmare that I want to wake up from.
00:26:05
And for me, it's that the weight of the conflicts that you feel
00:26:12
as an individual and at the same time that you want to kind of
00:26:16
step away from, to have a free life, but in there you felt that
00:26:20
you had to take on that, that sort of, I wouldn't say
00:26:24
responsibility, but that inheritance, I guess.
00:26:28
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I managed to do any of that.
00:26:33
I, I feel like that that thought process itself is also a trap.
00:26:39
It's the, it's, it's this. You can never win.
00:26:45
You can never, you can never come out of it victorious.
00:26:51
But during that time, I, my father got diagnosed with a
00:26:56
critical illness and I was called back home.
00:26:58
My mom was like, I don't know if like I can handle this.
00:27:02
This is too much. And I was like, OK, this is the
00:27:05
first time ever. I'm a full time artist and I'm
00:27:08
not bounded by a contract to support myself through a job.
00:27:11
This is the only opportunity I will get to be fully available
00:27:15
to you. So I I dropped everything and I
00:27:17
went back home. I took this out of my room and I
00:27:21
was like, OK, I'm going to this feels this feels like it's
00:27:25
relevant right now to read it and and I read it throughout my
00:27:32
trip in Bangladesh throughout the experience of taking care of
00:27:37
my father as I experienced the politics.
00:27:42
Maybe it formed the show that I have right now, but hard to
00:27:47
tell. But what I realized while
00:27:50
working on the show and reading this book is what Numer tried to
00:27:53
do through this book was very difficult.
00:27:58
And and I felt I felt like I was in a shoe and I felt like I was
00:28:05
trying to do the same thing. And I guess the book taught me
00:28:11
or gave me clues into not making the same mistakes, if I'm to say
00:28:16
that they're mistakes. OK, that's really fascinating
00:28:20
because so I downloaded the audio book because it was going
00:28:25
to be delivered too late and we kind of decided to do this
00:28:28
recording very quickly. And we were very, we were so
00:28:30
efficient that I didn't have time to order the book and read
00:28:33
it, but I did download the audio, the audio book and I
00:28:37
started listening to it and I, it's very different from what I
00:28:41
expected. It has for me, it's kind of like
00:28:45
a Juno WG Zebald, you know, the German writer who was based here
00:28:50
in the UK, he wrote these books that are they're, they're
00:28:55
fiction, but they're also there's, there was sort of
00:28:58
dramatization of inherited trauma because German, as you
00:29:02
can imagine, died recently. He, he inherited the, a very
00:29:07
heavy history where, you know, they were the, the guilty
00:29:12
parties, so that it's a very specific and, and a kind of
00:29:16
inheritance. And the books he wrote were very
00:29:20
much linked to real facts. But at the same time, there was
00:29:27
this kind of flow of consciousness.
00:29:30
For example, the rings of Saturn is a walk in the beach.
00:29:32
And so he describes what he's seeing and suddenly, you know,
00:29:37
when he's describing, you know, fish caught in a net all
00:29:42
together cramped up suddenly. And there's photos sometimes in
00:29:45
the books. You think, oh, we.
00:29:49
So he makes the the reader work a lot.
00:29:52
And I remember getting to that point and thinking, he cannot
00:29:56
say it. I'm the one who has to think the
00:29:58
connection he's making between those cramped up bodies and
00:30:02
recent European history. So I kind of have the same
00:30:06
feeling because this is someone who is a sort of a double of the
00:30:11
author of Naimah Atif Shudhuri, because the, the main Numa,
00:30:19
sorry, Numa Atif Shuduri, because he is an, he's a
00:30:25
researcher, right? So the, the, the narrator is a
00:30:29
researcher. And so there's this situation
00:30:32
where Numa Atif Shuduri was also he was an academic.
00:30:39
So there's this kind of thing that Zebald actually also works
00:30:43
into his writings sometimes, but sometimes didn't.
00:30:47
But there's always this component of research, but
00:30:50
there's humor in it. There is, yeah.
00:30:53
It's quite funny. It's a very poignant form of
00:30:57
humor because it's a humor that involves very serious
00:31:01
situations. So tell us a little bit about is
00:31:06
it? So where?
00:31:07
Where do do you find yourself in the book?
00:31:10
Is it in the documentary part of it?
00:31:15
Is it in this kind of doubling of the researcher as a character
00:31:21
in the book? Yes, the book, the premise of
00:31:24
the book is basically it's this researcher, archivist, writer is
00:31:32
looking back into the archive to piece together the story of this
00:31:38
political luminary figure, which is on the cover of the book,
00:31:41
which is Babu, the cover of the book.
00:31:44
Is that this entire thing I need?
00:31:46
Like a manga cover, it's an entire different for.
00:31:49
Those an entire thing. Lucky you.
00:31:52
It's. When you showed it to me, we had
00:31:56
a meeting beforehand and Lysu, I said, oh, do you have the book?
00:32:00
Yes. And or I looked it up on Google
00:32:03
and I thought, oh, so you mean it's a graphic novel?
00:32:06
And no, no, no, not at all. The the cover is quite
00:32:09
something. Is the Bangladeshi cover the
00:32:12
same? Yes, the Bangladeshi cover is
00:32:14
the same, but I personally, from my perspective, find it quite
00:32:18
controversial because it's published by Harper Collins
00:32:22
India. The figure that they're trying
00:32:25
to depict as Babu is wearing a traditional Indian clothing.
00:32:31
And it's, yeah, it's quite misleading.
00:32:34
So they're wearing a dhuti, which is often associated with
00:32:39
Indian clothing. We don't, we wear a lungi, which
00:32:42
has check patterns in it. It's it's, it's depicting, it's
00:32:50
again, projecting an identity onto US that's somewhat not
00:32:56
representational in my personal opinion.
00:32:59
And again, it's quite quiche. It was, it's quite like it's
00:33:04
quite a lot. There's a tiger and then just
00:33:07
like there's a blockbuster. But then again, it's also, if
00:33:12
I'm to critically analyze this, is also looking at the lens of
00:33:16
how political elections happen in Bangladesh, but through a
00:33:20
very exaggerated lens, or perhaps from the lens of someone
00:33:27
who often looks down on it. If you say if you know what.
00:33:31
I see, I see it's a very distance.
00:33:34
So for those who are listening, it's a very it's sort of a
00:33:37
green, very light, luminous green the book.
00:33:42
And then it has kind of these fire explosions, these kind of
00:33:46
like flames all around it. There's the title in in white
00:33:51
letters Babu Bangladesh. And then in the middle and then
00:33:54
you have the name of the author, same color, same type of
00:33:57
letters. And then the letters are connote
00:34:00
a little bit comic books. And then in the middle it you
00:34:03
have a very comical book style character with no face and he's
00:34:08
just kind of emerging and jumping towards us while running
00:34:11
dressed in Indian attire. And behind behind him, there's
00:34:17
this face of a tiger, but you can't see the feature.
00:34:20
You can't see the eyes and the the nose.
00:34:22
And you just have this kind of very orange, brown, very bright
00:34:28
colours. And so everything feels quite,
00:34:32
as you say, almost a caricature of what you would associate with
00:34:37
that side of the world, although that side of the world is
00:34:40
clearly not represented as being as Bangladeshi or, you know,
00:34:43
Bengali. So it's it's quite peculiar.
00:34:47
So the cover was also in a sense a lead or a clue to me to like
00:34:52
shape my exhibition is because when I went back home, I found a
00:34:56
lot of these family archives of my father.
00:34:59
He took the photograph that he took during his student years
00:35:03
and during his like early like young adult life.
00:35:07
And they present an image of him that is so foreign to me, an
00:35:12
idea of him that I'm not really, I've never really encountered.
00:35:16
It's quite mirroring of like how I am right now, but of obviously
00:35:21
of a different generation. Obviously it's sepia toned and
00:35:24
black and white and I was like if I am to put the cover of my
00:35:31
show it would be just that image or just those images.
00:35:37
I would use them the images like.
00:35:38
Those photographs? Of my father's family archive.
00:35:43
Yeah. And it wouldn't be.
00:35:46
I wouldn't try to ornate it with anything.
00:35:49
I would. It would just be that, you know,
00:35:52
like it would. I would try to stick as real
00:35:54
clothes, stay as close to what was real then or what felt real
00:36:00
then. So in the beginning of the book,
00:36:03
you have a sense of how this person comes across the archive,
00:36:07
which is in a very almost the scene in itself.
00:36:13
And the person who delivers the archive wouldn't be the person
00:36:16
you'd imagine having an archive, which I found really funny and
00:36:21
fascinating at the same time. And I think the situation of you
00:36:25
going into your own father's archive and, and looking at
00:36:29
those pictures and this kind of uncanniness of seeing a
00:36:34
completely different person and also a past that you could never
00:36:37
have experienced. Is this something that you
00:36:40
connect? I mean, there's in terms of the
00:36:44
political history of Bangladesh, there's a lot of things that
00:36:49
it's hush hush growing a little bit like, no, we can't speak
00:36:51
about this. Let's not speak about this.
00:36:53
Our neighbors will hear it and whatnot.
00:36:56
We need to keep it among ourselves.
00:36:58
But there's a lot of insinuation.
00:36:59
But that seeps into societal behaviors in the sense that, you
00:37:04
know, you have to keep your thoughts to yourself.
00:37:06
You can't be like you can't be out there as well as they use
00:37:14
parental figures often use this as a mechanism to be
00:37:18
controlling. It's a it's a segue from this
00:37:23
thought process of worrying in a country that where Social
00:37:27
Security can can often differ or change.
00:37:33
I want to speak mindfully of it because obviously it's I'm, I'm,
00:37:38
I'm aware that I might be presenting Bangladesh with this
00:37:40
unsafe space, but no, I've spent my entire 20 years there and
00:37:47
I've had great memories there. It's still a place that's close
00:37:50
to my heart. But life is very different in
00:37:53
London compared to in Bangladesh.
00:37:56
There are ways to improve and there are also things that
00:38:01
people over there do better that we do not acknowledge here, and
00:38:05
I must present that as well. For instance, food, the white
00:38:09
person's relationship far away countries.
00:38:16
My experiences with towels, towels, towels, game towels.
00:38:21
Game changer. We have this fabric called
00:38:24
Gamcha. It's very thin weaved cotton
00:38:27
fabric that literally takes 5 seconds to dry, like you wipe
00:38:33
yourself. Everybody, every farm, like
00:38:36
people in the rural area, day-to-day, every Bengali
00:38:39
household has a gumsha. They use that instead of a
00:38:42
towel. They take a shower, they wipe
00:38:44
themselves after the gumsha, they dry it, they dry
00:38:46
themselves, they hang it out. It dries in five seconds.
00:38:49
You can wash that thing and it will be dry the same day and you
00:38:53
can use it as a towel every single day.
00:38:56
So essentially 1 gumsha you don't need to like cycle towers.
00:39:01
1 gum chair would be good for you.
00:39:05
Very peculiar. I'm, I'm relating so much to
00:39:09
that because I think that when you're an immigrant, you notice
00:39:13
the weirdest things because you're displacing your whole
00:39:17
life to a different country. And there are some things that
00:39:21
are just comfort that people don't talk about.
00:39:23
People think comfort is having a beige house with an island in
00:39:27
the kitchen, but that's not real comfort.
00:39:29
Time for a short break. What are you doing?
00:39:32
What are you up to? Are you driving?
00:39:35
Are you walking around town? Are you in the public
00:39:39
transports, maybe in London or elsewhere around the world?
00:39:44
Thank you, by the way, for being a faithful listener and welcome
00:39:48
if you're a newcomer. I am in front of my computer.
00:39:52
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00:39:58
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00:40:03
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00:40:11
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It is much appreciated. It's thanks to you that we're
00:41:52
still here. Coming back to the context of
00:41:55
the book, the book is told from the perspective of someone going
00:42:00
through these archives and trying to jot down a biography
00:42:04
of this political luminary figure, which is Babu.
00:42:08
And as he tries to understand or like write down the history of
00:42:14
this person who is again not no longer there, he uncovers a lot
00:42:21
about the nation and lot about the things that Babu was
00:42:25
involved in and through that learns things about the nation
00:42:30
that the general public or the character main character himself
00:42:36
didn't know about. And Numer the writer uses that
00:42:42
as a tool to wash all The Dirty laundry of Bangladesh politics,
00:42:48
then speaking. Of towels.
00:42:52
Speaking of towels, Numer, the writer uses that as a device,
00:42:58
speculative fiction as a device to talk about The Dirty politics
00:43:02
of Bangladesh that we couldn't speak out outwardly about.
00:43:07
And it resonated me a lot, Resonated with me a lot is when
00:43:12
a political party that was in power for the last 15 years got
00:43:15
ousted and then we get to uncover a lot of state secrets
00:43:19
that suddenly emerges. And it felt like it was running
00:43:23
in parallel to the book. Explain a little bit because so
00:43:27
the the character is fictional, the central politician is
00:43:31
fictional, but there is reference to real political
00:43:36
entities and to real events. Right, Yes, there are like
00:43:43
certain political figures are named all throughout.
00:43:48
Like for example, we have this father of her nation, the person
00:43:54
that is quite prominent in the history, his name is Sheikh
00:43:57
Najibur Rahman and his daughter is the ousted Prime Minister of
00:44:03
Bangladesh. So politics in Bangladesh is
00:44:05
quite dynastic. It's a it lives in the family,
00:44:09
it's being upheld in the family and it never got out of family.
00:44:13
It's in a form of monarchy or feudal system in with democracy
00:44:19
as an outward presentation. Last year there were everybody
00:44:23
felt politically conscious and there was a glimmer of hope that
00:44:28
the being might be able to steer away from that.
00:44:31
Right now it has culminated in a situation where if we are to
00:44:38
steer away from that, the other option is quite horrific.
00:44:44
It's the Islamic far right. People here in Europe or maybe
00:44:49
even in the United States, Canada, Australia, other
00:44:51
countries may may presume that Bangladesh is a Hindu country or
00:44:58
has, you know, other Chinese religion or whatever, but
00:45:02
actually it's in majority it is a Muslim country.
00:45:06
Bangladesh is Muslim majority and it has always been Muslim
00:45:10
majority, but there has been other all sorts of religion that
00:45:14
has coexisted, has existed since the independence of Bangladesh
00:45:19
in 1971, has been celebrated. But because, I mean, this is one
00:45:26
thought process that because we lived in this form of oppression
00:45:31
and this form of corruption for so many years, people, there's a
00:45:36
majority of people who believe that their needs were not served
00:45:41
by these politicians, whereas local grassroots religious
00:45:46
organizations managed to serve their needs at the same time.
00:45:53
What is the solution to corruption?
00:45:55
Perhaps it is God and God fearing men.
00:45:58
You explained to me when we met beforehand is that the book was
00:46:03
written in English. Numair studied in the United
00:46:05
States as well. And what he passed away by
00:46:11
drowning in Tokyo. Like he was walking along a
00:46:14
river, I think, or a canal, and he fell into the canal.
00:46:17
So he was a very international person, but he's still very much
00:46:21
was concerned with Bangladesh. Bangladesh isn't the name of the
00:46:24
book is the cover. It's on the cover, but but he
00:46:29
wrote in English. So I'm interested in knowing a
00:46:32
little bit about this contradiction of the language.
00:46:35
My parents can't speak English, right?
00:46:37
So the people essentially close to my home, close to my heart,
00:46:41
does not know a language that I also operate in.
00:46:46
But that is also the education that they gave me.
00:46:50
Everybody, anybody in Bangladesh, I, I think it's safe
00:46:56
to say, aspires to speak in English and the educated can
00:47:02
speak in English and. Oh, very interesting nuance.
00:47:08
That's a completely different picture.
00:47:12
Our constitution, our legislation which were formed
00:47:15
during the British colonial period, they're all, they're all
00:47:21
very much reminiscence or like a carbon copy of the British legal
00:47:26
system. Wow, but is it in English?
00:47:30
No, it's in Bangla. But like obviously there's an
00:47:33
English version and then there's the Bangla version and but yeah,
00:47:36
there's an English version as well.
00:47:39
So the British law. Is weaved into the the
00:47:41
constitution of of the country? Basically yes.
00:47:46
And even now, as they're talking about restructuring the
00:47:50
constitution, they're thinking of a parliamentary system that
00:47:52
is upper house and lower house. Quite reminiscence to the House
00:47:55
of Commons and House of Lords. We are on a colonial hangover.
00:48:02
The mayor obviously was very educated, was from a upper
00:48:06
middle class or like a upper class background.
00:48:09
But the way the book functions, given that it is in English, is
00:48:14
the specificities and certain conversations that Numair
00:48:19
reveals in this book. Perhaps, given that this this is
00:48:24
in English allows it to be a smokescreen from the local
00:48:28
politicians that he was critiquing during that time.
00:48:31
The biographer, so the character talks about how difficult it is
00:48:36
to from the Diaries, because he's reading the Diaries of this
00:48:39
person, how difficult it is to evaluate whether what's being
00:48:46
said is true, if it corresponds really to the reality of the
00:48:52
person, how to what extent it mirrors the desires more than
00:48:56
the realities. And I'm wondering about the
00:49:00
photographs that you talked about, your, your, your dad's
00:49:04
photographs and that relation, because a photograph by
00:49:09
definition is mute. Archive or history has a
00:49:14
tendency of putting certain figures on a pedestal and
00:49:18
idolizing them. All forms of archives do.
00:49:22
And it is important for us to burn that ideology, like to like
00:49:27
constantly critique that. And it's like the book does like
00:49:32
the you have to be a suspicious biographer, a suspicious
00:49:36
archivist to present a narrative.
00:49:40
What I have experienced in terms of when I discovered while going
00:49:46
through my father's past medical records.
00:49:48
And we also had to move houses in the process to go to a house
00:49:51
that's closer to the hospital. And during that process, a lot
00:49:56
of these photographs presented themselves or, and we often look
00:50:03
back into the past, or I often did look back into the past from
00:50:06
a like a roast in the glass. It's like, oh, like it's so hard
00:50:11
to critique that I'm reading it from the context of my own.
00:50:15
It's like, oh, how similar that we look.
00:50:17
He's wearing a Gap sweatshirt. Like he's so that's
00:50:23
unconventional. Like why is he doing it?
00:50:25
Well, how did he get his hands on that right?
00:50:28
How did he, how did he, you know, and like, like, oh, we're
00:50:36
like wearing he's. Be hanging out with.
00:50:38
To put his. Hands on an American.
00:50:43
Sweater. So it's just like they're photos
00:50:46
of him in a tutorial suit and then there are other photos of
00:50:49
him like in lungis and like traditional like like.
00:50:54
Like. Attire, working, working class
00:50:56
attire. And like, Oh, yeah, maybe this
00:51:00
is the portrait of a man who was aspirational and was trying to
00:51:03
make it for himself in a world like.
00:51:07
And it felt very similar to me. But at the same time, now I see
00:51:10
him. And there are ways I would
00:51:14
question or critique him. A presence of archive has this
00:51:19
power of, like, telling you that how dare you.
00:51:22
This is a great responsibility. Make sure you protect it.
00:51:26
And I face that, like, pretty good.
00:51:28
Like, it was difficult. And I'm glad that you pick up on
00:51:32
that, because I think the writer, the narrator of the
00:51:34
book, as he's writing down, tracing down Babu's story, also
00:51:39
faces that problem. As I was listening to you, I was
00:51:43
thinking of Anyafno, and I was thinking of how a biographer is
00:51:48
obviously talking about themself in some ways and talking about
00:51:53
themself ends up talking about the person and ends up talking
00:51:55
about a whole chunk of the population in some ways.
00:52:00
And it was interesting because I also was talking, talking,
00:52:03
thinking. Oh, but that's youth, isn't it?
00:52:05
Youth has aspirations. You don't know what your life is
00:52:09
going to be. You are, may I say, your age.
00:52:12
Yes, of course it's I'm 27. You were.
00:52:14
Born in. 1998. Yeah.
00:52:17
So you're 27 years old. So I don't you find that, you
00:52:24
know, thankfully youth also has a lot of hormonal help to be
00:52:29
very, to have some hubris. But there's a lot of
00:52:33
responsibility on you as well, you know, as a young person in
00:52:37
terms of your life and the life of other people you affect in
00:52:40
the changes that you, you know, in the choices that you make.
00:52:43
And I was kind of like, yeah, thinking about that in terms of
00:52:48
being an artist. How do I tell that story given
00:52:52
that I'm operating in two different languages so it can't
00:52:56
be text based. If I am communicating in one
00:53:01
particular language, I lose a whole set of audience and if I
00:53:08
communicate in the other language I lose the other side
00:53:11
of the audience. What is the universalness in it?
00:53:15
So I soon realized that I want there's this need to tell a
00:53:20
story that's not in the hegemony, but the story that
00:53:22
exists. But I can't tell that through
00:53:25
text. I can't tell that through
00:53:27
language and I can't also tell that truth.
00:53:32
Just simple images. Because images.
00:53:35
Again, as we discussed earlier, we often as viewers, we often
00:53:39
project our meaning into these images.
00:53:41
But images at the end of the day are mute.
00:53:43
Aren't images the opportunity to hold different stories?
00:53:49
I guess the images are what should be prevalent, and what
00:53:52
characterizes images is the ambivalence that they just say
00:53:56
the least that they might have. Does that make sense?
00:54:00
Yeah, it does make sense. Even this book.
00:54:03
This book in a sense, concludes to the image of Babu.
00:54:09
What is an expanded image? I think I'm quite curious in
00:54:12
understanding that. And you're right, images can be
00:54:18
an ambivalent mode to piece together narratives.
00:54:22
And images are quite important, like they are a prevalent thing
00:54:28
in our culture. And in a sense, it is changing
00:54:31
the way we are looking at image, we're looking at archive is
00:54:33
changing given the formation of the Internet and how we're
00:54:37
navigating the Internet right now.
00:54:40
But one thing that I realized throughout my time in making
00:54:46
this show, while reading through the book and while taking care
00:54:50
of my father, I realized that, oh, there was this whole
00:54:53
practice of taking photographs, printing it, developing it,
00:54:59
printing it, putting into the family album, right?
00:55:02
But that's quite coded to a specific timeline and a
00:55:05
generation. And before this, we don't have
00:55:08
photographs in our family archives.
00:55:09
We have letters from our grandparents, like exchanges of
00:55:13
letters. So before this, we were in a
00:55:15
society where our memory lacked image and was text based only.
00:55:20
And at some point that text got replaced with images.
00:55:23
And then at some point, those images end.
00:55:27
And all I have in my family archive, tucked away in that
00:55:30
same container are medical records, X-rays, city scans.
00:55:35
Yeah. Doctor's reports, countless
00:55:38
doctors reports. Right.
00:55:39
Because those were the only physical entities there is.
00:55:42
There were images, but those images are locked away in
00:55:46
corrupted hard drives or in an iCloud that we don't have access
00:55:50
to. And it helped me realize that.
00:55:54
Oh, the language of memory was always changing, and it's
00:55:59
changing in the contemporary setting as well.
00:56:03
But it's in a form. The language is in a form which
00:56:08
I don't really understand and I don't think I will understand.
00:56:13
Maybe my next generation will make sense of it.
00:56:17
In the what they're presenting currently as someone who's
00:56:20
excluded twice from the the narrative, which is something
00:56:24
that is too close to your experience now, which is your
00:56:28
father's illness and and the proximity with someone who is an
00:56:32
elder who is touched by something that makes them
00:56:37
fragile and vulnerable. And then you have the situation
00:56:41
of a past that is represented by a language that is not yours
00:56:46
anymore as well, because printed photographs had a language that
00:56:49
digital photographs don't. It's they're completely
00:56:52
different ways of taking pictures.
00:56:55
So I wonder why you as a 27 year olds, as the artist, as the
00:57:02
archivist, do you feel that you're not at all in the image
00:57:07
and you are more on the other side of the person who's
00:57:11
managing the images? Let me respond.
00:57:19
My response to this question might be quite complicated and I
00:57:23
apologize in advance for that, but go for it.
00:57:27
I will start the response with giving a little bit of context
00:57:31
of my show currently going on. Yes.
00:57:35
So the show that is happening in Nunnery Gallery, the title of
00:57:40
the exhibition is called The Ground Beneath Me and it tells
00:57:45
the story from the perspective of someone standing inside my
00:57:52
bedroom or my room in London. My rented room in London in my
00:57:58
absence and wondering where I am, what I'm doing and when I
00:58:03
will return. Something that compelled me to
00:58:07
move my all my belongings that are accumulated in my rented
00:58:11
room in London to the gallery space is because for a
00:58:16
significant chunk of last year, I was away.
00:58:20
I was I did not live in this room yet I paid majority of my
00:58:24
income my went into maintaining a room that I did not have it
00:58:29
have it like to live in, right. And that felt like why am I
00:58:36
doing this? And I'm doing this to have a
00:58:40
sense of access, perhaps a sense of security.
00:58:43
And it's also the life that I worked hard in building after
00:58:46
coming here. They all lived there.
00:58:50
And while that room remained still in London, I was in
00:58:54
Bangladesh taking care of my father.
00:58:56
And there were all these political events that were
00:59:01
happening that were unprecedented.
00:59:03
I was also in and out of the hospital a lot during that time.
00:59:06
This kind of similar incident happened in 2009 where my father
00:59:11
was first time for the first time diagnosed with a critical
00:59:13
illness. And the nation was going through
00:59:17
this tumultuous period. And it felt like a deja vu for
00:59:20
me. And it was, it was activated by
00:59:25
visiting the medical records because we needed to, to like
00:59:29
for, for his illness. The year was 2009, when the
00:59:35
political party that has recently been ousted first came
00:59:38
into power. And I was 1011 years old and my
00:59:43
father was diagnosed with a critical illness.
00:59:45
And he sat me down and he told me I might not live long.
00:59:47
You have to take care of the family.
00:59:49
And he sent me to school the next day.
00:59:51
Well. I'm so sorry to hear that
00:59:54
that's. And I had an absolute breakdown,
00:59:58
right? And during that time, school
01:00:03
closed early. We went back home and all the
01:00:07
adults were glued to the radio or the TV and something was
01:00:10
happening to the nation. We do not know of what, right?
01:00:15
And later we realized or like we were told that the a certain
01:00:20
wing of the military revolted against the senior officers in
01:00:25
in asking for restructuring us to like.
01:00:29
Asking to stop corruption. And as a result, killed off 57
01:00:34
senior military officers. And they were put on mass
01:00:39
graves. Like, it was this weird thing.
01:00:43
And everybody in the nation was like, in shock of what just
01:00:46
happened. And during that process, a lot
01:00:48
of civilians in the neighboring areas got injured, got shot, And
01:00:53
it was a very chaotic period. And that's when the party first
01:00:56
comes into power. Throughout as we grew up, we, we
01:01:02
learned that, oh, the investigation is going on about
01:01:04
this. We don't know why it happened.
01:01:06
FBI, Scotland Yard, they all come into our country with their
01:01:10
help, the investigation on rolls.
01:01:14
And during that time, I had a friend whose father died in that
01:01:18
incident. And I found it quite poetic
01:01:22
because he used to console me about my father's passing away,
01:01:26
the idea of my father's passing away.
01:01:28
But then my father seeked his treatment and came back alive.
01:01:32
But then her father went away right as a result of that.
01:01:37
In my head, I was that That was my experience.
01:01:40
And I always lived with that Guild.
01:01:42
And we haven't connected in the last 15 years.
01:01:46
I felt like it was, since I am in Bangladesh, stuck there in
01:01:51
the middle of all this, I wonder what my friend is doing.
01:01:54
So I tried to find her and I managed to find her.
01:01:57
And I reach out to her and I used those medical documents as
01:02:01
the gateway into starting the conversation of where she was
01:02:05
during that period of time and what actually happened from her
01:02:09
perspective. And she tells me all of that.
01:02:12
And that takes the shape of a film that plays further
01:02:17
alongside the gallery. But as all of that happened and
01:02:24
my father's treatment finished, I finally came back to London.
01:02:28
I was like, wow, so much of my money went into keeping the
01:02:33
space and I guess my plans are still alive.
01:02:36
So somebody has been coming in and watering my plants.
01:02:39
I wonder the person who was watering my plants knew what I
01:02:44
just went through. I wonder where the notion of
01:02:48
care comes into this, this set up that you have in the
01:02:56
exhibition and also if that's perceived by the spectator, if
01:03:01
it's something that you, that is important to you to be
01:03:05
perceived. I've noticed that it's been like
01:03:08
what, four days? But I've noticed that I had
01:03:11
these sticky notes that were on my in my room and there was this
01:03:16
this cup full of pencils and people started writing notes on
01:03:21
the sticky notes and leaving them there and.
01:03:24
No. Really.
01:03:26
And they started writing these messages and like, left them
01:03:29
there. And today, when I went to the
01:03:31
gallery to pick up my book, I noticed them.
01:03:34
There's a tradition in the UK of people showing their rooms or
01:03:38
doing things with their belongings.
01:03:40
You have Michael Landy, who destroyed all his belongings.
01:03:43
Breakdown is such a good reference.
01:03:45
Yes, Breakdown. Yeah, I quite like Michael
01:03:49
Landy's reference of Breakdown because it was an Art Angel
01:03:53
Commission where that Selfridges building, that's what the
01:03:58
Selfridges right now. It was on the process of
01:04:01
becoming Selfridges, but that's where the Art Angel Commission
01:04:04
took place, where he. So Selfridges, for those who are
01:04:07
not in the UK, is this big commercial building with lots of
01:04:14
shops but kind of high end brands and commercial areas.
01:04:21
Sorry, do you go on? And I also worked there before
01:04:26
and in my show did. You.
01:04:29
In my show there's my name batch in the in the place in the place
01:04:34
where I keep all my keys alongside my my contractor, my
01:04:39
employee pass which does not work anymore.
01:04:41
So please, it won't because I haven't.
01:04:44
I haven't tapped it in in a while for.
01:04:48
Those wanting to take it from the show, don't try it.
01:04:50
It's not worth it. But what about Michael and
01:04:55
leaders is takes all his belongings alongside his car and
01:05:00
with the help of a numerous amount of text he breaks them
01:05:04
down like crushes them to bits. While I was also going through
01:05:09
this and I was discussing with people what I need to do for the
01:05:13
show, I kept thinking about or conversations that coming kept
01:05:19
coming up. Was all the context that you're
01:05:21
giving me about what is going on in your life.
01:05:24
Giving context to someone in such detail is a job.
01:05:29
And I don't know if you are willing to take on that job, but
01:05:34
where does all that emotion live?
01:05:37
And to me, I was like, well, all those emotions are living in my
01:05:42
empty bedroom that I really need to go back to.
01:05:46
And yes. I thought about it immediately.
01:05:50
I thought, so wait, how is he sleeping?
01:05:53
In what state is his bedroom empty?
01:05:55
There's a photo on my Instagram of my room as it stands now,
01:06:00
which is my quite recent post but it's.
01:06:04
OK, so I'm looking at the most emptiest room I've ever seen in
01:06:09
my life. As in a room that someone lives
01:06:14
in. Obviously it's it's looks like
01:06:16
you are showing a space to rent basically.
01:06:20
It's just, I, I, I wanted to ask, I want to have people ask,
01:06:26
where does he live now? And that's also the title of the
01:06:30
show, in a sense, alludes to that.
01:06:35
I also wanted to show what, you know, like if I'm to represent a
01:06:42
Bengali person, Bangladeshi person in this contemporary
01:06:45
scene, what best way to represent it than to show how
01:06:50
they live or how they have lived and it's all there and.
01:06:58
And how does an immigrant live in London?
01:07:02
Yeah. So I suppose that you, as you
01:07:06
described, you got to the end of the book, you finished it.
01:07:13
Does the book provide some sort of closure or some sort of
01:07:19
growth? I quite enjoyed the process
01:07:22
going through the book, particularly because every event
01:07:28
he's describing when this book is published, which is in 2019,
01:07:33
but it's he probably wrote earlier and he's depicting a
01:07:36
scene in 2028, but we're in 2026 now, right?
01:07:41
A lot of the scenes are run in parallel to the incident that
01:07:46
happened last year and the year before.
01:07:50
Naming of politicians, people coming and going.
01:07:55
It felt like this book would hold answers to what comes in
01:07:59
the future, given that I was going through a precarious
01:08:02
circumstance. It ends in a manner where I'm
01:08:06
like, OK, I've gone to the end, but the troubles in my life has
01:08:11
not ended. So, so I felt some some sort of
01:08:19
way, which wasn't pleasant, but the process of it was the
01:08:28
process of going through the book helped me like it.
01:08:32
There were moments where I was like, Oh, I'm discovering so
01:08:34
many things. And as I'm showing it to you,
01:08:37
you can see it's like and also you would notice the footnotes
01:08:44
are they're. Huge.
01:08:47
The footnotes are quite huge, and so he and they're they're.
01:08:55
All on the line, there's notes, there's you told me there's
01:08:59
drawings. I think I didn't.
01:09:00
I don't. Know that's kind of fine
01:09:01
drawings. I don't know if I'm ready to.
01:09:04
I don't know if I'm ready to show.
01:09:07
Maybe listen, let's oh, wow, at the very end.
01:09:12
Oh. You I mean and it's an.
01:09:14
Interior. Yeah, it's an interior, but like
01:09:17
other other stuff as well, there's other stuff.
01:09:20
Yeah, at the end of a chapter. Yeah, there's also a.
01:09:23
Drawing in pen with with a pen 333 question marks what?
01:09:33
What it's a in terms of global discourse, often times in my
01:09:38
personal experience, always felt like did not get the right
01:09:42
attention from the colonial mother and or like even in the
01:09:46
global global hegemony, like we make very little noise.
01:09:50
We even in even in London, most of our history, Bengali migrants
01:09:57
come here and they set up Curry houses, right?
01:09:59
Majority of the Curry houses are by Bengali immigrants, but they
01:10:03
are marketed as in authentic Indian cuisine.
01:10:06
So we're, but we're not, we're not trying to present to this
01:10:09
authentic Bengali cuisine. We're not putting out our
01:10:12
identity. We're trying to mimic something
01:10:16
else. So in that context, like I felt
01:10:19
like this was one of those very few books hopefully might give
01:10:26
context in tangent to someone, Rushdie, Kamala, Shamsi, Mosin,
01:10:31
Hamid or Indoteroy and all. Indian authors, yeah.
01:10:37
Indian Pakistani authors, yeah. Pakistani.
01:10:41
And can a work of art really give you answers, even if it's
01:10:44
very even if it's very accurate in regards to predicting the
01:10:50
future? This is this hits close to home
01:10:56
in the sense that. Sorry.
01:10:58
No, no, no. And it is quite poignant
01:11:01
question in the sense that a lot of writers, a lot of artists
01:11:06
often get asked, you know, like, OK, what's the solution?
01:11:11
You're presenting a problem, you're presenting a scenario,
01:11:14
what's the solution? And the reason why also I felt,
01:11:19
I guess because the book concludes in a way that doesn't
01:11:22
give me answers. But that being said, it's quite
01:11:27
dangerous to like then we we move into the the, the realm of
01:11:31
shamanism suits Sayers and saying figures, right?
01:11:37
We don't have the answer. And I don't know why we are
01:11:41
expected to have the answers just because we are.
01:11:47
And I hope the answer comes in unison.
01:11:50
And I hope it's not an answer. I hope it's it's recognizing the
01:11:58
sign of times, recognizing the way we live, the recognizing our
01:12:02
current life and being like no, having enough people experience
01:12:08
it might generate empathy for change.
01:12:14
Yeah, yeah. Because my, one of the questions
01:12:20
I wanted to ask you is are you very aware of the fact that
01:12:25
your, the, your exhibition is going to be perceived and
01:12:30
experienced in from, from very different perspectives that your
01:12:36
spectators are not, you know, a sort of monolith?
01:12:39
I don't know if I'm allowed to share this, but I think it's OK
01:12:42
if I don't name anybody and if this person ends up listening to
01:12:47
it, I have a lot of respect for you.
01:12:51
But when the show open the show in the middle of my room is a
01:12:56
cardboard lampshade which is the architectural mock up of the
01:13:02
General Assembly hall of Bangladesh.
01:13:05
They have 350 seats and they represent 350 demographic, 350
01:13:11
members of parliaments that represent various different
01:13:15
quotas, various different shapes and forms.
01:13:18
It's quite iconic. It's quite egalitarian.
01:13:23
It was very utopian even in its design.
01:13:28
It's I've never been inside that building.
01:13:31
I've never been inside that building.
01:13:34
For a long period of time. We were not allowed to.
01:13:37
And then I saw on social media last year, people stormed inside
01:13:41
that building. A part of me was like, oh, I
01:13:43
wish I was there to see what was inside it.
01:13:46
It's been gate kept from us for so long.
01:13:48
And then when I came to London, I met a curator who's doing a
01:13:55
South Asia exhibition, curation major exhibition in one of the
01:14:00
biggest London institution. I heard that I'm from Bangladesh
01:14:04
and was like, oh, I recently visited Bangladesh and I got a
01:14:08
tour of the national Parliament building and started showing me
01:14:11
these photos. And I'm like, I have spent 20
01:14:14
years of my life and I've walked outside.
01:14:18
I've gone countless times. That's like past that building
01:14:21
countless times and I've never stepped in.
01:14:25
And this person who doesn't even live there gets to stand in the
01:14:30
middle of it and witness it all on the show opening.
01:14:36
The granddaughter of the person who wrote the Constitution of
01:14:39
Bangladesh was there. And she's my age.
01:14:44
And and I kept wondering how she feels about this.
01:14:49
But I was really, really worried and shy to ask that question.
01:14:55
And I wanted to respect her presence and her autonomy in it
01:15:00
as well. But it must be very different
01:15:03
for her to must be different. That was very striking for me
01:15:13
because we often think about informing people, You know, art
01:15:18
is great because it will inform other people about my situation,
01:15:23
about my region, about my city, about my gender or whatever.
01:15:27
And actually, what I found incredibly moving is that what
01:15:32
it sent you back to this question is how you share a
01:15:37
history with people who are perceiving it in a way that may
01:15:43
be very difficult to fathom. You know, from another
01:15:46
standpoint, I'm currently experiencing something very
01:15:49
similar in a, in an exhibition of mine.
01:15:51
So it kind of touched me deeply. Share with me a bit about that,
01:15:56
I'd love to hear it. Very quickly, it's an exhibition
01:16:00
that I curated by. It's a solo exhibition of a
01:16:04
Portuguese second generation born in France from the
01:16:08
Portuguese diaspora because Portugal had a million people
01:16:14
fleeing the country during the dictatorship that ended at 74.
01:16:18
So this is late 60s immigration, her father and, and her father
01:16:24
had to walk across the Pyrenees to go to France.
01:16:27
It was economic diaspora, really people who were in deep, deep
01:16:32
misery. She, her father passed away.
01:16:34
And so she's inheriting the story and she has this
01:16:37
exhibition. So we built this exhibition
01:16:41
together that isn't that now opened in Lisbon and in
01:16:45
Portugal. There's a big denial about this
01:16:47
history. And the experience was very
01:16:53
surprising during the opening because even my own mom told me
01:16:56
things that I had never heard about, you know, related to that
01:17:00
history. And, you know, people who
01:17:06
started crying or being being very emotional or being
01:17:09
incredibly happy and, and feeling seen and feeling that
01:17:14
somehow there was a celebration of that history that is so rich
01:17:18
for the country as well. And also the incomprehension of
01:17:21
certain layers of Society of that history and and, and a
01:17:25
difficulty in addressing the subject with them.
01:17:27
Yeah, that that really I have to highlight that as well, which
01:17:33
was sobering experience as well. Yes.
01:17:39
Like is it? Yes, it's in Matt Maat, which is
01:17:44
a a museum in Lisbon and it's called Notre Fu in French
01:17:50
because she, you know, broaching the subject of the language.
01:17:54
She chose to keep it in French even though she is a Portuguese.
01:17:58
She's the daughter of Portuguese immigrants and she speaks
01:18:02
Portuguese. Isabel.
01:18:04
Isabel Ferreira. Isabel Ferreira yes, that's it.
01:18:07
I would just ask you to close up and to finalize this exchange to
01:18:16
maybe name and not work and now not running away from a creative
01:18:23
piece that might not have to do anything with visual arts, but
01:18:26
in in this particular instance, like a work of visual arts or
01:18:31
film, or you know that that may have been important to you.
01:18:35
It's actually called where is the friend's house and.
01:18:38
Where's the Friend's House? By Abas Kirosami, Yeah.
01:18:41
It's so beautiful. It's quite minimal in dialogue,
01:18:45
but it takes place in a school and a school in a rural area
01:18:52
where children have to go really far to go to the school.
01:18:56
And the story is about how one of the students gets his
01:19:01
homework copy mixed up with the person sitting next and or packs
01:19:08
mistakenly packs the person sitting next to their homework
01:19:12
copy and is throughout the day very worried that he will not be
01:19:17
able to finish his homework and get punished by the teacher.
01:19:19
So he finds ways to find him and visit him or to find his house
01:19:25
to give him his homework copy. But he has so many of these
01:19:29
familial responsibilities that he has, he has to do after
01:19:32
school with all the adults telling him what to do, get
01:19:35
milk, get bread, do this, do that, and then do your homework.
01:19:40
And they're not listening to him.
01:19:43
They're thinking he's lying and he's he's trying to find excuses
01:19:47
to go play. And I think it was like a great
01:19:52
device to show how much or how little we listen to children,
01:19:58
our young people, and how optimistic and how empathetic
01:20:03
inherently they are. Wow, well, thank you so much.
01:20:10
Let's leave that suggestion there.
01:20:12
And thank you. Thank you, Laisu, for doing this
01:20:17
and for sharing such an incredible book with us.
01:20:20
So it is Babu Bangladesh Numa Atif Shuduri the audio book for
01:20:28
my my dyslexic friends out there.
01:20:31
The audio book is actually really really well read.
01:20:34
I. Have a question, Is the audio
01:20:37
book read by a female voice actor?
01:20:41
No male. Because there's a version of the
01:20:43
audio I heard that Lubna Choudhury reads out, which is
01:20:48
the mayor's mother. The the mother who's my
01:20:53
principle was my late principal in high school.
01:20:56
Yeah, thank you, Lysul. This was absolutely illuminating
01:20:59
and really, really enjoyable. Thank you so much for having me,
01:21:02
Joanna, Really appreciate it. Have a good rest of your day.
01:21:08
OK, bye bye. Cool.
01:21:12
That was wonderful exhibition. This is an independent podcast
01:21:22
created and hosted by me, Joanna Pianevis.
01:21:25
Because we're all both actors and spectators of art and life.