Telling the tale of Home in the abstract
Nasrin Jahan Onika's inaugural solo exhibition 'Home' at Alliance Française de Dhaka tries to unveil the profound narratives veiled in the simplicity and abstraction of everyday home life
Home is where the heart is. Each of us have our own memories and stories of the place we call home. These stories can often entail something very little, but carry great significance.
An exhibition where such small details are captured sounds like a great idea to take art enthusiasts on a nostalgia trip. And such an exhibition was hosted by Alliance Française, which started on 1 March and ends today on 12 March. It was the first solo exhibition of artist Nasrin Jahan Onika and was simply titled 'Home.'
Walking into the exhibition venue - the Dhanmondi branch of Alliance Française - the first impression was very much underwhelming. For a lazy weekend afternoon, it won't be too shocking to expect a decent amount of people to be visiting. Surprisingly however, the whole compound was pretty silent and empty. Just the hall with the paintings on the wall.
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Needless to say, no home is ever that silent, other than homes that are not being occupied by any soul.
Portraying a home, with its simplicity, can evoke a feeling many might have ignored in their busy schedule. But a feature of this exhibition was that all of these paintings were made in the abstract. Abstract art in general is complex as it is intriguing, leaving the viewers to ponder upon the possible interpretations. But unfortunately, the core theme of the exhibition, to be made as an abstract art, didn't quite strike the perfect chord.
Most of these artwork included numerous scribblings throughout the canvas. Scribblings children tend to make in the walls of a house. Understandable why these can have a meaning, but it just did not harmonise well with the rest of the canvas.
The paintings also included random objects one can easily see strewn about their houses, but unfortunately not all of them could necessarily tell a story. In other words, many of the displayed arts failed to evoke a narrative.
'Home' featured a handful of abstracts that could be made a sense out of, while most really did not make any sense. Perhaps it made sense to the artist; but for a regular person, most of the paintings were either too vague or too brash, which can lead anyone to question, "What am I looking at and what am I doing here?"
