Najib Tarque’s ‘Art Makes Us Human’ at 3rd Space
Slowly gaining more and more popularity as the cultural hub of Dhanmondi, 3rd Space hosted an insightful art talk recently, where youngsters spent a wonderful weekend afternoon brainstorming how art makes us human, with Najib Tareque.
Najib Tareque is an artist, printmaker and writer, best known for being one of the pioneers of online art galleries in Bangladesh. He is the founding member of Jolrong, one of the first online art galleries in South Asia. His discussion, Art Makes Us Human, covered the beginning of his journey, his realisations regarding visual art and the age we live in today, where information is power.
What was unique about the art talk was that it was not simple a discussion on art, but rather a wholesome experience of everything that is going on around us today. From literary conversations on recent happenings such as Abdullah Abu Sayeed’s article, Saree, to European artists from the last century, movies and Bill Gates, the programme had it all.
The art talk began with the question of what makes us humans different from other animals. Najib Tareque gave an example of how a spider weaves his own web, the same way decade after decade, while we humans keep on progressing. We have learnt to evolve over time and fine-tuned our skills and all that we see around us today. He discussed how from the clothes we wear to the words we speak on open mics, everything is in fact, art.
Art Makes Us Human was not just the title of the talk. It is a virtual art project started on Instagram by Najib Tareque in 2015, which eventually spread across Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Tumblr as well. Since 1987, he has been a part of various group and solo exhibitions, both at home and abroad. He has exhibited over a hundred images online in the last couple of years. Najib Tareque claims to have a thousand more posts ready, with all the images conveying different messages through writings, brush strokes and colours. A few other new mediaprojects came up in the discussion as well, leaving the audience excited for more interesting works from the artist.
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