Soumitra dev

The solo art exhibition of  Soma Surovi Jannat, entitled Grey Contours has begun at La Galerie, Alliance Française de Dhaka. The inaugural ceremony was held on Friday, 23 March 201.

Writer and art critic, Prof. Dr. Syed Manzoorul Islam graced the occasion as the chief guest while artist, Prof. Shishir Bhattacharjee and artist and critic Mustafa Zaman l also attended the opening ceremony  as special guests.

Soma Surovi Jannat has completed her B.F.A from the Department of Drawing and painting, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Dhaka, in 2013 and M.F.A from the Department of Painting, Visva Bharati, Santiniketan, in 2016. Not to mention, she has already attended more than fifteen group exhibitions at home and abroad including 7th Beijing International Art Biennale, China, 2017. She received the Media Best Award in oil painting at the annual art exhibition of University of Dhaka, in 2011.

'Grey Contours'

In the exhibition 'Grey Contours' we witness the emergence of an artist whose works reside between the real and the imaginary. "Soma Surovi Jannat works with the world, seen mostly as real, often as an absurd realm seemingly unfathomable in its breadth and depth, and at times as a receding horizon -- a real beyond our rational understanding," to quote Mustafa Zaman. The recognizable forms of humans, animals and man-made objects are rendered unfamiliar since they are seen through the lens of imagination. In fact, they are translated into metaphors, as such, "debased from their actual morphological structure."

The artist attempts to create a space where viewers can enhance their overall visual perception through an acute understanding of the interrelationship between the world and the constructed images.‘Grey Contours’ consists mostly of a  series of drawings interspersed with a few installations -- together they embody Soma Surovi's experience of living in a Santhal village in West Bengal, India. The sparse pen drawings rendered on handmade paper bring to light a new perspective on objects and natural elements.

Surovi is a practitioner who tries to incorporate her experiences of nature into the artistic space she creates. Her efforts are directed towards harnessing the time and space she herself has been part of -- a matrix in which she has had the opportunity to develop her understanding of "being in the world".  They are developed through a direct contact with the real spaces. This process creates its own values and makes its own demands while she tries to discover a sense of harmony amongst what are otherwise disparate and unrelated elements in the external world.

The exhibition will remain open till 7th April 2018, at La Galerie, Alliance Française de Dhaka. Visiting Hours: Monday to Thursday from 3:00 pm to 9:00 pm, Friday and Saturday (9:00 am to12:00 noon and 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm). We are closed on Sundays.