The New Nation - Internet Edition

Art & Culture Report

A weeklong two cartoon exhibitions were held at Drik Gallery at Dhanmondi in the city recently. One included cartoons on the Liberation War published in newspapers worldwide in 1971 and the other was a compilation of works from a retrospective of Abu Abraham, works of five Nepali cartoonists reflecting the dynamic political changes that have taken place in their country in the last 10 years and award-winning sketches from the South Asian Cartoon Competition organised by Himal.

Unmad, a Bangladeshi satirical magazine and Drik jointly organised the exhibition titled 'Liberation War in Cartoons. The show featured cartoons published in local (the then East Pakistan) and international newspapers on the war that involved West and East Pakistan and India.

Lt Col (Rtd) Sazzad Zahir inaugurated the exhibitions as chief guest on December 22. The exhibition based on the works of the War of Independence and South Asia Cartoon Congress. The exhibition featured works on the heinous activities like mass killing, raping and looting of the Pakistani Army and their associates during the Liberation War in 1971.

Some 74 cartoons were on display at the exhibition, which were taken from the publication 'Liberation War in Mass Media.' Cartoon collector Reaz Ahmed has collected and preserved these sketches from a book featuring 345 cartoons, said the organisers.

There were 58 cartoons in the other show at the same gallery on the distance between powerful and powerless by Basu Kshitij, Vatsayan, Abin Shrestha, Rabin Sayami and Abu Abraham. Works of Abraham were a testament of his fearlessness, perceptiveness and mastery of critical humour. These illustrations reflected the crucial political events that were taking place not only in India but throughout the South Asia from the 1971 Bangladesh's war of independence, the 1975-77 Indian emergency, the 1979 hanging of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the 1984 assassination of Indira Gandhi, the mysterious death of Zia ul-Huq in an air plane crash in 1988, to the controversial Indian peace-keeping force operations in Sri Lanka from 1987 to 1990. The exhibition ended on December 28.