Ma: Telling stories through shapes

Life, death, and everything in between – is what I see when I look at the paintings of my mother, Shameem Subrana. Hers is the story of the everyday woman, navigating a patriarchal social order, struggling to find her place in a world that has built-in barriers for women, fulfilling her role as a mother while nurturing her talent as a painter, who allowed her entrepreneurial side to open an art gallery to promote young artists back in 1997, when there was only one other art gallery in the city. 

I remember her struggles well - she used to take us, her twin daughters, to what we knew as the Art College when she was a BFA student because there was no one else to look after us. We would play with statues in open spaces near her classroom, so she could keep an eye on us. At times, her friends who were on break would keep us company. 

I remember the opening of Gallery 21 (now Gallery Twenty One) at our house when we were in our teens, amidst reservations from family members who were unsupportive of her professional endeavours. But she was as dedicated as they come, and she made it happen with unequivocal support from my grandfather, Prof. Khan Sarwar Murshid (and I saw first hand how the patriarch can make a huge difference in the lives of the women in his family). One of my fondest memories is of Syed Abdullah Khalid's exhibition of paintings - he painted flowers and I had never in my life seen painted flowers look so beautiful, so alive! Prof. Abdur Razzak and poet Sufia Kamal had inaugurated the exhibition, while my sister and I sang Amar Bhaier Rokte Rangano Ekushe February to mark the opening of the exhibition. What an honour it was!

Amidst everything, Ma made time to paint whenever she could, even as my sister and I "helped" her paint, adding brush strokes when she wasn't looking (only to be found out later, much to our surprise). 

Then, she stopped painting when my brother – her son – died in 2005. Her scheduled exhibition was cancelled, and she refused to turn to the one thing that she truly enjoyed. And perhaps that's how grief works. We guilt ourselves. We keep thinking how we could have prevented something that is completely beyond our control. We stop the clock in any way that we can because we want to hold on to what we have. In the absence of support systems, formal and informal, we suffer, sometimes in silence, and sometimes in chaos.

And that's why I think it's a miracle that my mother, Shameem Subrana, started painting again, that she picked up that brush and started to tell her story. I am very proud of her as she gets ready to exhibit her paintings at her own gallery (that she revived two years ago) on January 9, 2016, in celebration of what would have been my brother's 26th birthday. I stare misty-eyed at the paintings that represents, in my opinion, her life and in some ways, mine too (and yours!), as she tells stories of natural and man-made disasters: climate change and global warming, child marriage, violence against women and other shackles, migration of people and ideas, urbanisation and creation of densely populated slums mired in poverty and hunger, nationalism and its death. As she explores the meaning of life and death amidst systemic and structural inequities and inequalities that create disparities in health, well-being, and even where people are laid to eternal rest, she tells stories of the everyday man and woman through her own stories of struggle, of being silenced, of losing the vocabulary to denounce her own oppression, and then finding her voice through her paintings.

Titled "What I Talk About When I Talk About Life," Ma's paintings can be uniquely identified through her use of rectangles, circles, squares – shapes that take on a different meaning in each of her paintings. Sometimes, a circle is the bangle of the young girl who is being married off to an older man without her consent, without her realising what it is that she is getting into; sometimes, it represents debris and pollution of river bodies like the Buriganga. Her elongated rectangles are sometimes candles, and sometimes, they are people in a protest. Her use of vibrant colours make the stories come alive. For example, in a "protest" painting that is primarily blue and purple – representing people – she has opposition members in an opposite colour (orange), mingling with the people of the dominant colour (purple).  In another painting, she uses black and white to depict the stampede that killed thousands in Mecca, in memory of the dead pilgrims who were there for Hajj.

In essence, Ma's exhibition of paintings is a social commentary on the world in which we live, representing the current spate of isms and issues that plague us across the world. Her work can be deemed feminist; indeed, feminism is not just about women, it is about all oppressed groups, and her paintings tell their stories. When I look at her paintings, I realise that it is no coincidence that I became a social-worker, that my research is on social problems, that I am interested in marginalised groups and what can be done to improve their lives. 

What I take away from the paintings, however, is a sense of hope. With death and destruction our constant companions, it is easy to feel disheartened. It is easy to interpret the status quo as one that will continue till eternity. But, Ma would like to think there is hope in fighting back, in resisting in whatever way we can, in building resilience, and accepting the inevitability of death. As someone with a strange relationship with hope, and death, I try to keep this in mind.   

The writer is Assistant Professor at the School of Social Work, University at Buffalo.