Fragments of the Anthropocene - at Bengal Art Lounge

“Fragments of the Anthropocene”, an exhibition of video works, installations, paintings and drawings by Shimul Saha and Zihan Karim, opened at Bengal Art Lounge in the city's Gulshan on January 30. 

The exhibit was jointly inaugurated by Professor Salimullah Khan, Department of General Education, ULAB, and Rafiq Azam, Principal Architect, Shatotto.

The term “Anthropocene” designates the present time interval, in which many geologically significant conditions and processes are profoundly altered by human activities. “Fragments of the Anthropocene” invites the viewers to discover two young Bangladeshi artist's take on this phenomenon. Their works hint at a few pressing issues that will find echo in today's Bangladesh. 

Both born in the early eighties, Shimul Saha and Zihan Karim have lived most of their lives in Dhaka and Chittagong respectively, two sprawling urban areas which have profound influence on their art practices. 

Their “Anthropocene” is an age in which the individual is primarily confronted with loss: loss of (bio) diversity through physical pain or debilitating diseases, loss of heritage through the incessant transformation of the cityscape, and loss of creativity to conform to new behavioral codes and aggressive social norms induced by urbanisation. 

Far from being resigned or nostalgic, Saha and Karim treat these issues with sensibility or, on the contrary, scathing irony to deliver a powerful understanding of the age they live in.

Zihan Karim's two “Clocks”, projected on the ground question the constant urban renewal at stake in big cities. In this video-work, old buildings of Chittagong marked for demolition are filmed in close-up, their images shaken up and distorted. Animations of bikes progressing clock and counter-clockwise on the edge of the videos seem too long for a soon-to-be-forgotten past, or to aspire for a bright future. 

Shimul Saha's poignant light installation, “Toward the Being” and the various light-boxes, representing rotting leaves, directly refer to the sapping powers of cancer. In the context of the exhibition, the glowing artworks read as a larger metaphor for an entity confronted to the degeneration of its parts; a body attacked and slowly exhausting – and an indirect hint to the effects of human activity on nature. 

The show, opening from 12pm to 8pm every day, will continue till February 27.