ICCR to organise travelling exhibition 'Rokeya Sultana'

To celebrate 50 years of India-Bangladesh diplomatic relations as well as Bangladesh 'Mujibborsho', 'Indian Council for Cultural Relations' (ICCR) is organising various cultural activities in India and Bangladesh.

In a series of its activities, ICCR, in collaboration with Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi will be curating a retrospective travelling exhibition 'Rokeya Sultana' at three cities - New Delhi, Kolkata and Dhaka.

Besides, the 'Bengal Foundation', Bangladesh is partnering from Bangladesh to organise the exhibition in India and Dhaka. 'Indian High Commission' at Dhaka has been coordinating for the exhibition.

Exhibition 'Rokeya Sultana' will open on October 23, 2021, at the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, which is to be followed by shows in RTC, ICCR Kolkata and Dhaka.

The landmark exhibition traces the artist's fascinating trajectory from when she worked in Santiniketan with ICCR's scholarship as a student under the guidance of Somnath Hore, Sanat Kar and Lalu Prasad Shaw to her artistic career in Bangladesh with Safiuddin Ahmed and Mohammad Kibria as mentors. Under their tutelage, she straddled diverse mediums and experimented with different narratives that were a unique expression of her moods, emotions and intuitions.

The exhibition will showcase the poetic qualities of Rokeya Sultana's artistic compositions residing in the mythical figures embedded amid harmony, equally perhaps, in their transience in life or her depiction of the eternity of womanhood.

The exhibition comprises 111 artworks, 35 to 40 photographs, three animation videos, a film and 15 pieces of sculpture. The show is divided into two sections.

'Biographical' section, the introductory part of the exhibition, will be placed in the Lalit Kala Akademi. The curatorial note, artist's biography, acknowledgements, artist's photographs, excerpts of texts from the book, book display, sculpture display and film screening will comprise this section.

In the 'Artworks' section, most of the prints, paintings and drawings are culled from the artist's collection. About a third of the works are from the 'Bengal Foundation' and Abul Khair collections. The rest have been loaned by collectors Zareen Mahmud Hosein and Asfar Khair.

'Bengal Foundation' will release their recently published monograph, which has been produced in close collaboration with Rokeya Sultana. The 220-page monograph 'Rokeya Sultana' gives us the first comprehensive glimpse into the artist's cognition as well as her creative expression. This book will be released to commemorate this landmark exhibition.