Celebrating young local artists

Art has no rulebook or status quo. It is transcendent as artists get the freedom of spirit and the opportunity to create their own enchanting world of contemporary arts and illustrations with their preferred art media. On the occasion of World Art Day, we present to you some young local artists who have challenged the perception regarding art media and the main essence of art through their art pieces.

Ha Ja Ba Ra La

Have you ever imagined that your commonly-used emojis can be an art medium to paint Chanchal Chowdhury? Or how about using MS Word to illustrate John Lennon? Tanmay Sarker Shuvo, known as Ha Ja Ba Ra La on social media is pursuing art in these unorthodox ways to challenge the common perception of drawing portraits. His artistic journey mainly started amid this pandemic when he was trying to deal with his mental breakdown. Tanmay has explored multifarious ways of creating portraits such as shadow art, emoji art, typewriting art, masking tape art, pixelated art, fingerprint art, paper folding art, halftone art, pareidolia art with water and many more. He also creates energetic black and white portraits just by scribbling which he loves to call 'organised chaos'. To him, art is therapy and keeps him going.

Teabag Stories

Have you ever thought that the teabag you just threw away could be your canvas while taking a zip from your tea? Md. Sadituzzaman, a self-taught artist inspired by Artist Ruby Silvious, is using this ordinary thing as his canvas for his extraordinary artworks. His 500+ teabag canvases depict a variety of his every day or random thoughts and visual delights such as natural beauties or essence of our country, portraits, popular book covers, social issues, special days or trending topics. With the thought of doing something that gives him a career as well as happiness, he started 'Teabag Stories'. Due to its uniqueness, his artworks have been used on the covers of 7 books published in this year's book fair. Pelipaper, a Turkish tea bag filter paper-producing company's catalogue cover also has his artworks. His teabag stories have been displayed in Pencil's exhibition at Dhaka Shilpakala, Obscure Artists of Bangladesh and Renesa's exhibition.

BYRAWNAK.COM

When it comes to representation, South Asian art and culture have only been promoting women who fit a certain set of beauty standards and personality traits for a long time. Rawnak Rahman, a 19-year old girl hailing from Dhaka addresses these issues with a hint of humour to show the utter ridiculousness of these standards through her digital art pieces. In her recent artworks, she has tackled colourism, body images and child marriages in South Asia in striking styles to hold the audience's attention, to make them think and question. Some of her artworks made with mixed media along with digital art and traditional art have been displayed in Garrison Art Center, SKS Spring Art Weekend 2020 and SKS Spring Art Weekend 2021. When asked about the motivation behind her works, Rawnak said, "Belief in individuality and valuing where you are from but also standing up for what is right. And I want to create work that portrays the social barriers that prevent young women from excelling and being proud of themselves."

DhakaYeah

DhakaYeah, an anonymous entity is working to explore and bring out the quintessence of this colourful city. Blending the old and new Dhaka, the whimsical and quirky illustrations of DhakaYeah portray the mundane, romantic and bizarre aspects of it which are experienced by a very few people but most of us have only dreamt of. The main ingredients of DhakaYeah's contents are imagination and nostalgia. The artist or group of artists wish to anonymous and love to explore different and exciting digital art media such as Photoshop, Procreate, Tayasui to create their masterpieces. DhakaYeah believes, "Art may not always mean to be comfortable to the audience, but it has to be something quirky and thought-provoking to them."

Mahatab Rashid

Cartooning, a satirical medium of art is one of the best ways to protest against injustice and wrong things non-violently. Mahatab Rashid, a professional cartoonist for around 6 years, loves to present a story or express a meaningful thought or message through his cartoons. He addresses different aspects of life and focuses on various significant political and social issues by brainstorming and his unique way of art. Currently, he is working on his very own graphic novel named Otolanto. To him, anything that has a coherent thought or message behind it is art. I take my inspiration from life, let it be an incident or a scene. And I love to work with digital art media because the possibilities are endless here", said Mahatab.