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
Did the episode stir Art Wonderment memories? Share them via text or voice message.
Created & Hosted by Dr. Joana P. R. Neves, art curator and writer with over 20 years of experience in the contemporary art field. Artistic director of Drawing Now Paris since 2018, she has worked across the industry, from the art market to education. She co-launched the art residency and project space Worlding in 2020. Exhibitionistas’ first year offered exhibition discussions with guest co-host Emily Harding; organically, it grew into a more experimental show exploring art topics, stories and interviews complemented by Joana’s publication Art Thinkosaurus on Substack. She champions ‘Art Wonderment’s’ embrace of complexity against the lure of ready-made opinions. A polyglot, she grew up in Lisbon, studied and lived in Paris, to finally settle in London with her artist husband, four children and two cats.
Find us:
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Online: www.exhibitionistaspodcast.com
Do you want to be a guest on Art Etiquette? Reach out: joana@exhibitionistaspodcast.com
Copyright: Joana P. R. Neves, 2024.
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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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.