The Faculty of Fine Art, University of Dhaka (Charukola), the alma mater of most prominent artists of the nation, is hosting Inktober Showdown Charukola 2019, at their premises. Just as the title suggests, the theme of the three-day exhibition is Inktober, the practice of creating an artwork every day for the month of October. Jake Parker, an American artist and illustrator, pioneered the popular annual celebration of Inktober during October 2009. The exhibition concludes today.

As people enter Charukola during the exhibition, they will come across hundreds of artworks hung across all over the premises. 

Photo: Monon Muntaka

The exhibition features works of current and former students of Charukola. While some followed the prompts given in the Inktober website, others opted to follow their own themes to tell their stories throughout the month.  

 Starting from popular series and movies like, Stranger Things and Star Wars, to old Bengali films like Hajar Bochor Dhore and Matir Moyna, various themes are projected through artworks at the exhibition.  

 Artworks of Bangla folklore characters, like Shakhchunni, Damuri or Petni, traditional clothes of different nations, portraits of historical figures, athletes and snippets from day to day lives are currently on display.  

 “The submissions must have 31 entries, one for each day. The artworks must be in A4 sized paper”, said Tamanna Tasneem Supti, a third year student of the Department of Drawing and Painting in Charukola. Her entries followed the prompts given by the Inktober site.  

Faiaz Rafid, another third year student said, “The character in my entries is based on myself.  

 I created this series following the official prompt. My character gets trapped in a fantasy world and in order to escape, he has to complete a set of tasks. He gets killed in the last one. However, later he is to realise that it was a virtual reality game all along.”

Photo: Monon Muntaka

 Ahsana Angona, a final year student, mentioned that the real difficulty of Inktober lies in maintaining the consistency rather than the skills. A pioneer of the exhibition herself, her entries feature the shenanigans of a cat.  

 The initiative of celebrating Inktober in Charukola began in 2017 by six students: Prosun Halder, Tariqul Islam Herok, Upoma Haider, Ashim Faiaz, Rafiuzzaman Rhythom and Ahsana Angona.  

 “I first heard of Inktober back in 2015. I wanted to try it out, but could not keep up. Later on in 2017, the six of us first held an exhibition,” said Rhythom “In 2018, there were 24 of us with 744 artworks. This year we have 48 artists with 1488 artworks.”  

They plan to hold another exhibition at EMK Centre, Dhanmondi featuring the highlights from this exhibition.