The New Nation - Internet Edition

Sheikh Arif Bulbon

“Nazia Andaleeb Preema is an artist with many faces. Painter, filmmaker, writer, editor, graphic artist and performer, she is a real 'exploratory' of artistic creation. It would be very comfortable for an artist who found his style to do and do again the same thing because 'it works.' But is this the role of the artist to never be challenged? In my view, an artist must be in perpetual search and renew himself constantly. It is also the approach chosen by Preema who does not hesitate to endanger herself, even is she needs to divert her public, offering every time works that never resembles to any other," said Jacques Bounin, Charge of the Cultural Affairs of the Alliance Frnacaise about promising artist Nazia Andaleeb Preema at her solo exhibition titled 'Labyrinth of Abstraction' at La Galerie of Alliance Francaise.

The exhibition was inaugurated on July 3. The art works of Preema were conceptual abstractionism. It contained a mass of gold and black colours.

She said, "I want to give a new dimension to my work. Gold and black are colours which artists often wish to avoid. I want to take these in my works by different ways. If anybody closely looks at black, he or she could find a combination of many hues. Earlier I used black with other colours. Now I have combined other colours on my basic of black colour.

The gold is another colour, which has power to make the painting more vibrant. I wanted to do something new to my art lovers. For this reason, I have selected these two colours in my works."

"I want to shift my paintings closer to the real life. I have tried to interlock a common platform through the varied paths. I hope it will lead all through a tangle of meditation and deep examination," she said while expressing her works.

"I believe art has no confirmation, rather it deals with possibilities. Hence I always want to try possibilities more than anything. I don't want to be the 'Prisoner of Art.'

For me painting is a feeble, unsuccessful activity, after all. But it has unlimited possibilities to go beyond and rise further. I know that art can take me more (?). For me, this is the only process, which art knows and this is the only way an artist should take," said Preema about her self-realisation on art.

Twenty-eight art works are in the show. It is mentioned that all works have unique style and presentation. None has similarity to other works.

While describing her works she mentioned that the artists Soulages and Bosch influence her. From Bangladesh, Mohammed Kibria and Safiuddin Ahmed remain her favourites, along with Shishir Bhattacharya.

In Preema's works she also included the elements that were part of the creative process.

This brings us to a new realisation that art is not limited to be a piece of painting only, it also represents elements, experience and the artist's journey through it.

She has taken successfully taken art beyond the rectangular frames that opened a horizon of possibilities for her to explore something new. It may be bring a different trend in abstract art where this new dimension would lead her and us. Only time can say it.