Nazia Andaleeb Preema

I have five hard drives of my works of last 25 years. It was indeed an amazing journey through my various processes and experiences of art practice. So, this first compilation of indexing my art from 1998 till now is very exciting for me and the next generation of Bangladesh. For me, this compilation of artworks is my reflection on art.

As Bangladesh is yet to achieve proper research and documentation on art archiving, I believe this book will give a direction to document an artistic journey. Through this, I can reflect on my interpretation of taking art as my expression of freedom. This book is a testament of my true context for the commitment as an artist. Hence, this documentation also gives me a realization about what is next to explore. It would not be a decision, rather it would be a reaction to the experience I had as an artist for the last 25 years.

I have always been questioned (specially in Bangladesh) why I have different styles of art. This book has five chapters which focuses on those versatile approaches. As for me, what I paint is not my style, my philosophy tells a lot about that. I never hesitate to venture different creative initiatives, rather mine is an aesthetic journey. It is even vast. It is limitless to go beyond limitation. Art can be easily imprisoned. So, I consciously break my own limit to put them on test. The process was to destroy to create. By nature, I am non-conformist about my context. As art is a fluid transparent process, it requires a lot of space to venture. My voyage is my vehicle to overcome the contradiction of methodology of art. I believe without contradiction, I would never be able to find who I am.

An unknown life that I’m living is my inspiration. I am always searching for more. For me, more is less. Art is a vehicle to me to reach that unknown. It is the only language I use for describing my deeper unknown experiences. I am very keen and curious to align myself with my art process. It narrates the context. And, without context, we cannot be creative. The universe has unlimited resources to explore. My searching, understanding, creating is another inspiration. I always feel connected with my deeper senses. Art is never a separate entity. I express my realization through art. An artist has no boundaries. It is a formless journey. It is blending with knowledge, it is connecting the dots among every living objects of the universe. Thereby, I inspire myself from the sense of being non-existential.

I am organic as well as abstract; I have no particular form. I only plan to recreate. My art transformed over the years from tradition to digital, and now natural, spontaneous which is live art performance. From graphics designing to leadership, everything is a search to re-define my art. It is who I am. It has enormous possibility to create something unseen. Art is a question to me, not an answer. Hence, as an artist I am always alive, transfer from soul to soul. It is a deep journey, not a mere theory. Context is always changing, but art remains. It is perpetual. My next level, I am always curious to explore.

In the context of art, one must understand what the purpose of achievement is. For me, it is always an attempt to express narratives through visual elements. The interpretation is mostly metaphoric, the language is deeply connected to the core conscious of the experience that I gather from the eternal magical journey of my life. It’s a storytelling process. I travel to enrich my visual elements. Elements that are beyond my imagination to capture the unseen. Art makes us believe in illusion – the illusion is metaphorically independent. It’s an unconscious sense that appears to me as forms, lives, colours and shapes. Tradition and contemporary, every art has its own illustration. It is the inner interpretation that creates an effort and gives it a meaning. I practice traditional and contemporary art forms that are processoriented and I am trying to create an elaborative diagram of a storytelling. It’s not necessary to mean something. At the end, it is rather an incarnation of visual narration which grows organically.

In the second era of the new millennium, I believe that art should not be confined to the aesthetic realm only. This is because art is part of a creative process. This creativity has now a big role to play in shifting the stereotypical phenomenon of art itself. Art and creativity are now shifting our social and cultural spectrum, simultaneously helping us to cope up with many challenges which are flourishing in this revolutionary digital challenging era.

Enyetullah Khan

Since returning home to Bangladesh, Nazia Andaleeb Preema has carved a niche, or rather several niches for herself straddling the worlds of art and entertainment. Unquestionably however, it is her identity as an artist first and foremost, that too one who subscribes unapologetically to the modernist ethic, that tends to stand tallest. Indelible in everything she does is her years of training and practising her craft in Europe. Yet what is most essential to her work, is perhaps her identification as a woman.

This is perhaps best reflected in her groundbreaking series of Live Art Performances, which arrived on the scene most definitively with 2009’s ‘And Stare Continues’ – a somewhat disarming concept in our patriarchal society, but one gets the feeling Preema, in her role as artist, never took it upon herself to soothe or comfort the viewer. At least not through her performance pieces, in which she frequently assumes the role of performer. To start with, the premise would seem to be revert the point of view of the subject – a woman, the subject of so much unseemly staring in our society – back on those who do the staring, as Preema, clad in something resembling a niqab, takes it upon herself to give back as good as she gets. It is a work of singular defiance and uncompromisingly felt, as her eyes dart around the landscape. Behind the improvisational veil, one can almost detect a wicked smile escape her lips. And yet these initial movements give way to the solitary drop of a tear. In that segment, which covers the first two minutes or so of a performance that is nearly 8 minutes long, what she captures and embodies is the essence of what it means to be a woman.

Her other performances too exhibit a refreshing attitude towards challenging injustices that may seem inherent in societies, or testing the boundaries of their orthodoxies. The most obvious thing one can say about her art, is that she is nothing if not versatile as an artist. For those who may consider her work at times gives in too easily to an artist’s fancy for whimsy, especially from surveying the more modernist entries in what is an impressively large and encompassing oeuvre, there is always the work on canvas to fall back on, where she provides ample evidence of a perceptive eye, that is ably supported by the assured stroke of her brush. Here again, her work veers from the abstract to the figurative, never quite engaging with one enough to be pigeonholed or stereotyped (God forbid), yet comfortably leaving enough out there on the canvas to entice further scrutiny, to come back for more.

In her figurative work, Preema has engaged extensively with the female form in all its glories and misgivings, finding in here her avenue for her most honest expressions. She has continued this engagement in abstraction as well, at times displaying a predilection for dismantling the whole into its individual, suddenly unlikely looking parts, such as in The Sum of Her Parts and Body Parts. Both tend to disarm the viewer, which you feel the artist takes great delight in. Preema has been quoted as saying “Creativity is freedom. Creativity is being fearless and being able to say whatever you want without hesitation.” That sort of unfettered creative license tends to balk at most criticism. And who can begrudge her? This is the attitude that has allowed her to grow wings and fly far and high establishing herself as one of the country’s very few women artists who created an impact in their own lifetimes. An impact that can already be said to be sure to outlast her own lifetime.

In many ways, it can be said that it is still too early for this type of retrospective book to come out on Preema. As an artist, her best may still be around the corner, and besides, her versatility suggests she hasn’t really settled into what might truly be her groove yet. Or maybe she feels differently. In recent times her passion for women’s emancipation in her native Bangladesh has seen her branch out into establishing a grooming house for women in leadership positions. A worthy cause, no doubt. Yet it would be a shame if in the process she were to forego her strongest weapon to deliver any message she may like: her art.

Anisuzzaman
Professor Emeritus

Nazia Andaleeb Preema appeared on the Bangladesh art scene almost simultaneously with the advent of the current century. Drawing inspiration from her academic training she opted for abstract and semi-abstract works. Her favourite medium was oil although she also tried her hands in acrylic and mixed media. Using bright colours that created a variety of lines and forms on canvas, Preema was able to produce aesthetically satisfying works. Her colours were engaging and forms captivating and the viewer was able to identify and appreciate the subtle mind at work behind all these. But the artist herself was not satisfied with what she was producing, for she felt a strong urge to take to social realism, if one may use the term to designate her next phase of artistic activities. Years later she would return to her abstract expressionism, but only briefly. This is perhaps best reflected in her groundbreaking series of Live Art Performances, which arrived on the scene most definitively with 2009’s ‘And Stare Continues’ – a somewhat disarming concept in our patriarchal society, but one gets the feeling Preema, in her role as artist, never took it upon herself to soothe or comfort the viewer. At least not through her performance pieces, in which she frequently assumes the role of performer. To start with, the premise would seem to be revert the point of view of the subject – a woman, the subject of so much unseemly staring in our society – back on those who do the staring, as Preema, clad in something resembling a niqab, takes it upon herself to give back as good as she gets. It is a work of singular defiance and uncompromisingly felt, as her eyes dart around the landscape. Behind the improvisational veil, one can almost detect a wicked smile escape her lips. And yet these initial movements give way to the solitary drop of a tear. In that segment, which covers the first two minutes or so of a performance that is nearly 8 minutes long, what she captures and embodies is the essence of what it means to be a woman.

It was also during her early phase of work that access to internet was fast growing in Bangladesh. Preema seized the opportunity of pressing the advanced technology to her work. She thus became a pioneer graphic designer of the country both independently and as a consultant for national and international companies. But this was on the side.

Preema became more and more concerned at the life led by women not only in Bangladesh but also in the patriarchal world at large. She thought that the discriminations they were made to suffer needed to be looked at squarely and the need to assert their individual and collective existence was even greater. It is presumed that Bangladesh migrant workers in the Middle East, in imitation of the practice there, brought home the veil – the hijab in particular – for their womenfolk to wear as a symbol of the Islamic faith as well as for downplaying their femininity. Preema challenged this by portraying women in black veil – the niqab, the hijab, or the full length burqa – but their shining eyes underscoring their inner strength. Whether the eyes are of innocence or self-assurance, defiance or boldness, painful or playful, they apprear to make the statement that these belong to those who are not owned by anyone else. In Preema’s well acclaimed exhibition, Staring Women, the women stare back at the male gaze, as it were, without the slightest sense of weakness, inferiority or humiliation. Preema also portrayed a number of topless bejewelled women under the title of the Concept of Modern Radha. She was not recreating the loric character of Radha, the paramour of the Lord Krisna, who was her whole existence, but a contemporary self-exuding young woman on her journey to enjoy life. Other female figures also symbolized desire and frustration in them bringing out their sexuality quite freely.

The aforementioned works are done mostly in oil or mixed media on canvas with a few on paper. She paints the figures in black with a touch of red and vice versa, only sometimes in brown. In the Radha series, thin lines assume a greater importance than in the others.

Taking a bold step, Preema now painted the female body in whole or in parts, often going to the extent of frontal nudity, to acclaim that there is nothing to be shy of one’s body or her sexuality.

Restless as Preema is, she next wanted to obliterate the distance between the artist and her creations and turned to video performance to achieve the goal. She herself appeared on it in successive numbers, first to play the veiled woman she had painted and then other roles to portray the condition of women in our society or to mock the role assigned to them by it. Other male or female characters would interact intimately with her and there would even be a hint of lesbian relationship. She then moved further to adapt installation art in which she occupied the centrestage. She would disappear under a large sheet, make various sort of moves, use light and sound, play with a number of objects and even allow the onlooker to join her. Projections of reality would get intertwined with those of phantasy. One may reasonably ask if Preema was neglecting the role of a painter by moving away to video performance and installation art. The answer will be in the affirmative but with the additional explanation that she was still performing as a visual artist. To her life and art are the same and so are the artist and her person.

Preema has come a long way from her sheltered academic existence. She has been bold enough to charter her own course. She has defined norms and experimented with the unknown. She has combined her role as an artist with that of a socially conscious person working towards the empowerment of women in our society. That part of the story of her life remains to be accounted separately.

In the process Preema has come to occupy an important position as one who has contributed immensely to the shaping of Bangladesh culture.

Women of Abstraction 1
Mixed Media on Canvas
91 x 91 cm, 2018

Kaiser Haq
Academic, Poet, and Art Critic

Although the impersonal theory of literary and artistic creation been dominant in the modern age, it has not completely shaped our aesthetic responses. The theory insists on a separation of the person who creates from the person who has the experiences that go into the art. We may assent to it intellectually, and agree that in evaluating art aesthetic criteria matter the most. But faced with the perpetual tamasha of the art world we find that we get the most out of it if such an austere theory is held in abeyance. We gladly let lifestyle and artistic style intermingle; at least one of the modern masters, Salvador Dali, has made capital out of such a promiscuous tangle. Then again, ideological and historical circumstances automatically have a bearing on the relevance of a work of art. These are theoretical considerations worth bearing in mind when we approach an artist like Nazia Andaleeb Preema, who, I daresay, would readily subscribe to the motto “Art is performance, performance is art”.

Where should we begin our engagement with this artist? Her biographical sketch? Her varied artwork, moving from easel painting to installation to performance? Her cultural activism, promoting Brand Bangladesh or ‘Women in Leadership’? Any of these would be an inviting doorway into her world. I would suggest a somewhat unconventional approach, via something attached to her since her birth. Her name. Nazia Andaleeb Preema. It’s quite a mouthful. And I think I can show that it bears a significant relationship to the artist’s personality. Like the majority of Muslim feminine names in the subcontinent it floats free of any male-donated surname. It’s a collocation of three feminine names. They are also of varied provenance. Let’s take them one by one. Nazia is of Persian origin and means ‘pride’; Andaleeb is of Arabic origin, means ‘nightingale’, and is a unisex name. These two together would make an attractive, traditional Muslim name for women in this subcontinent. There are quite a few celebrities whose first name is Nazia. But our artist has never been addressed by this or her middle name, at least not to my knowledge. Everyone calls her Preema, as if it were her first name; and she signs her work with it, as if it were her surname. To compound the complexity, it doesn’t derive from a single source. Preema could be a Sanskrit-derived Hindu name meaning ‘love or affection’. Preema is also a western name derived from the Latin word ‘prima’, meaning ‘first’, and existing in a number of languages with varying connotations. In the online Urban Dictionary the entry for Preema reads, “A nice and cute girl who is also very hot and does awesome art. A fun person to be with and a great friend. May act random at times [Whatever that means!].” And it continues: “Funny, cute, nice, fun, spontaneous, crazy – so many words to describe one girl. In other words awesome.” By way of illustration the Dictionary cites this exchange. Person 1 says, “I can’t believe I had so much fun”. Person 2 comments, “Yes, that’s because you were with Preema.”

I haven’t made it all up, as you can verify with a few clicks on your computer. And you will then surely agree that one could put together a very interesting disquisition on the light Preema’s charming multi-cultural name throws on her personality and art. Preema (b. 19 Nov., 1974) completed her studies at the Institute of Fine Arts, Dhaka University, as the last century drew to a close, and in my estimation is very much a Twenty-first Century artist. I take it as characteristic of this century that Preema moves blithely from one medium and mode to another. I have already mentioned that she paints (mainly in oil or acrylic or mixed media), creates installations, and lately has been putting on shows of performance art. Her paintings seem to fall into two broad categories, abstracts and figurative paintings. The abstracts are either somber experiments with form, colour and texture; or playful compositions of squiggly forms, Miroesque or Klee-inspired. A few use digital media: LED.

The figurative paintings, again, fall into two categories: expressionist paintings, often distorting images and flirting with garish colours; and save a couple of animal figures, the subject is invariably the female form. The female form is however most conspicuous in a series of rather stylized compositions reminiscent of the Symbolists. They verge on kitsch but are redeemed by their obsessive focus on a certain part of the anatomy. Preema has an eye for eyes – feminine eyes staring out of their prisons of fabric. I feel an immediate attraction for these enigmatic
organic lenses; they seem to question, challenge; they exude an undefinable angst. I gravitate towards them as if under a spell. But more often than not I draw back; the spell breaks. The reason is that the female stare seems abstract, disembodied, or at least insufficiently worked over. A deeper engagement with the medium, mostly oil, would help capture the quiddity of the hidden bodies.

There is further cause for unease. All these staring women make a highly generalized statement. I should like to see individual faces and figures and pairs of eyes engage the viewer. I am surprised and not a little disappointed that Preema doesn’t put herself on her canvases. Her catalogue photographs show a beautiful, somewhat disturbed face sporting a sardonic smile. What a wealth of suggestiveness it would add to her canvases. Since Preema has lately started putting on rather provocative performances, she has a stock of images from them that she can transfigure into powerful paintings.

There is one more area Preema can – nay, ought to – explore. It is the male figure. Presenting troubled, haunted women is all very well, but one can rightfully demand that she engage with Woman’s Other. Men have painted women almost obsessively, and it hasn’t always been with the intention of objectifying them. The genders (male, female, and other) engaging with each other is a subject of crucial importance to art if we are to avoid getting trapped in gender-narcissism or gender-ghettoes. Preema is in mid-career, the right time to venture into new territory.

Ronni Ahmmed
Artist

More than quarter of a century, …. I know her as a soul friend. She is an eminent Artist of Bangladesh, also Entrepreneur, Thinker and a revolutionary character. She is a fighter, a lover, a sister! Over all a creative mind who loves to create her own unique path and creates vision through her own unlimited Journey …. She is a rebel against the social norms, Structure, values and Taboos …. against the existing social order mostly which is not friendly to women progression and lifestyle. She is a voice to follow …. and later on …. should be remember as an artist and reformer her Performing Art is also related to her perilous journey in the jangle of ferocious patriarchal entities and corporate Structure. Her pain as a woman …. and the child in her …. always appear…. in her painting and performances …. everything she does as an artist; she has established a feminine voice followed by her own life and believes …. She is also a socialite …. fashion Icon and traveller, travelled many places around the world for exhibition, business and multiple purposes. All these experience has a deep connection and impression on her art. At early stage, her language of art was abstract …. later on, she has become a figurative artist. Her colors are taken from the seasons and weather of Bangladesh. Her abstract paintings are colored by the leaves of spring …. Water falls from to the memory lane …. Mountain touching the summer sky …. a silent lake reciting poem …. while you look at them …. She is a child mind in the adult diplomatic world …. and only a child mind can be an artist …. Her light is hidden and waiting …. since the society is too hostile to face that. When she transformed her painting into figurative art, she started painting woman faces …. sometimes in anger, sometimes in pain and happiness …. sometimes miserable, hidden …. One of her painting of few faces …. side by side …. hidden by a burka veil in real …. The hidden faces come from her inner world that she wanted to protect …. from the outer world …. and other faces are like her journey …. fighting with emotions, experience, achievements and failure. The major language of her painting is not beauty; it is a scream …. came out of the agony and melancholia …. of modern time. Her successful works are all about pain and suppression of capitalism …. and unconscious world …. her different colors has different emotional motto; pink is full of lust and sexuality, commodity and her black is not depression and sadness; it is about mystery. Her Blue is the representation of beauty but mpregnated with the anxiety. Most significant part of her painting are the eyes of women’s. Which stares poignantly to the viewers. As if they are from another world …. a metaphysical entity experiencing the earth and human life …. They are talking pleasure and having pain through human form and life. She loves herself and her paintings, and all it’s about a monologue …. All faces she draw actually her own face in many forms and as many women. And her strokes on canvas are very informal …. Sometimes prehistoric …. naive …. sometimes lyrical, fiery and sometimes gifted. But it’s all about the power from her feminine side, which is fighting like a male in this capitalist world …. She is full of spirit …. energy …. and this spirit wants to survive and fight like a samurai. At the same time her spirit is modern and primordial urban & rural …. and tender
as a sunset …. Her Life and her art cannot be separated. It’s naturally switched to each other. It is beyond perfection or imperfection …. it is a mission to accomplish …. through art and other harmony, she is creating.

“I never liked reality. I used to paint the memory of my dreams. I still remember the colors of my dreams. The colors of my dreams were blue and mauve (electric).”

The Sum of Her Parts
Mixed Media on Canvas
122 x 91 cm, 2018
National Museum of Poland collection

Abed Chaudhury
Biologist and Art Critic

When I first met Nazia Andaleeb Preema, I saw in her a unique innovative spirit, a person in a search that was relentless, an artist of an extraordinary brand of neuro aesthetics. The distilled essence of Preema’s art to me is the quasi-biological nature of art where evolutionary biology has played its role. I venture to suggest that the multiplicity of her talent has a role to play in this.

Preema is no mere visual artist. Though a formally trained artist with a degree in visual art, she is also a singer with tonal gift and a heightened sense of music. Such parallel gifts indicate, in neural term, a generic attribute of creativity, a shift of multiple centers of brain to creativity. If we look around, such multiple attributes are rare. How many of our visual artists are also significantly profound in music? How many of them are also poets, writers, etc? Such focus and exclusion are often a hall mark of great gift in a particular type of creativity; its deviation also brings in a separate hue in visual art. A musical gift can certainly throw its own shadow on visual art.

After seeing a lot of her art work, I found a particular proclivity towards obscurity or veiling that has produced a significant volume in her creativity. Obscurityrevelation is the dialectic of visual art. While a frontal depicion of an object may clarify, educate, and inform – it is obscurity or mere suggestiveness that brings in an interest in art. Evolution has endowed our brain to like a visual game, similar to a
jigsaw-puzzle, and to feel rewarded with a ‘aha’ type discovery when an obscured image is interpreted after a visual search and chase. That is why suggestiveness of a tree shrouded in fog, appears more interesting than the full frontal botanical depiction of a tree.

A veiled woman’s face creates novel and interesting challenge for an artist, particularly a female artist. From an evolutionary neuro-aesthetic paradigm, a woman’s face is much more interesting than a random object of nature; in general, for a fellow human, or in particular from the point of view of a male member of the species. A woman’s face is a very important cue for a child, where the clarityobscurity of the nourishing mother’s face has an implication for the survival of the child. For a young male shrouding of a female face is interesting in its suggestiveness, where visual cues might have been used as a device to attract, suggest, or even to deny. A face covered in a ‘burqah’ where only the eyes are shown leaves the rest to interpretation; covered hair invokes questions about its length, texture etc. A selectively obscured face is clearly an enigma, something art loves and celebrates.

Preema’s painting plays on this aspect. To her, veiling is clearly an artistic device to explore in an elemental visual way but also perhaps in a socio-political way. From a purely neural evolutionary analysis, it brings into play ancient questions of human gender interactions. How the reciprocal visual exposure and obscurity of male and females have remained deeply ingrained in our brains and now informs not only our sociology and art, but also deep imageries of our art.

Preema is passionate about women and painting. She celebrates such passion through series of paintings called ‘Staring Women’ where women’s eyes are revealed but the majority of the face is obscured. In one of her painting called ‘Flower and Veil’, the visual essence is depicted cubist-like interplay of visual elements. The gestalt of veiling is celebrated in so many other painting in novel and innovative ways. To me what is interesting is that a fundamental dualism of art itself, e.g., revelation-obscurity, or veiling, is deconstructed perhaps as a deliberate feminist
device, bringing in very interesting questions at the interface of gender interaction and art. Faced with such artistic celebration of the veiling of a woman’s face, what would people say about Preema’s art? Veil has become an ideologically loaded word whose emotive discussions in intellectual and political circles make it less prone to subtle artistic understanding. In spite of this political interest in veiling, or perhaps because of it, Preema’s painting will find instant interest in contemporary times. My hope is that after such an interest is generated, a subtle deeply nuanced artistic exploration and resolution will follow rather than shallow posturing on veil among predictable socio-political line.

Eyes framed in black searches for the soul. Beyond veil, almost like a far-away mysterious place. Such mystery, almost cave-like is of spaces that are denied access and made exciting by their taboo; stoking imagination. Like a rain-drenched night, or the forlorn wait of day-break just before subhey-sadik. Stares coming from an entirely different world, looking and if gaze meets a gaze there could be fruitful communication perhaps? However, such looking and locking of eyes are also full of suspicion and incomprehension. It brings in primal fear, doubts and worries. Fear of
existence, doubts of love, not being reciprocated and worries embedded in thinking of future. Eyes and stares contain in them the distilled essence of all the negativities of human existence. It is like a long black ocean that can never be crossed. A stare can instill such strong denial. Beyond denial, is there an invitation also? Is it reflecting the duality of the mind where even in a victory, there remain doubts? “Joy korey tobu voy keno tor jaina” as the poet says. Or does it promise something behind the eyes; a world of pure bliss and salvation. Does it offer a coming night of pleasure? An ‘Opolok Nari’, she questions, denies and finally promises. In this triangular offering, mystery inevitably follows. I want to hang on to this mystery more than anything else. Something deep inside senses and responds to this mystery. And believes that at the end of the road of this blackened mystery there are orange glows and salvation, and unlimited pleasure.

“I knew a very different Dhaka with my parents and I remember going to Ramna Park to have evening tea. We had life like fairy tales. It was very unusual than Dhaka now.”

Women of Abstraction 3
Mixed Media on Canvas
91 x 91 in, 2018
Rounak Jahan collection

Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir
Professor of Economics

Preema is profound with possibilities. Her form, lines, surface and colors, or unity of ideas and images distinguishes herself. Her artistic expressions such as paintings, performances, installations constitute the essence of her action. Hers is a personal narrative of her own voyage. The journey is based upon, and illustrated through, certain key concepts.

I

Art is an interpretation of reality. The images presented is an expression of idea and conveying of messages, drawn on the interactions between living and nonliving organisms and their interdependence. The dichotomy between the forms of abstract and concrete becomes fallacious, if a visualization captures human beings’ relationships between the objects and beings of the objective world and their inner selves. The imaginative content of art is embedded in, and transcend beyond, the context to enjoy the aesthetic pleasure.

In her debut exhibition, ‘Prarambho’ in 1999, Preema ventures abstraction to engage the viewers to dive into a deep relationship with her canvases. For her, abstraction is not divorced from the reality. The inwardness of human feelings, the carpeted passions and the non-linearity of relationships between surface and objects find refuge in her art series such as Senses, Different Strokes, Moving Images. Her dynamic use of color, shapes and motifs not only expresses emotions and connected memories, intense ideas and concepts but also irradiate the surrounding world in embodied forms. An abstraction triggers her as a means to fathom out the incomplete accounts of the complex relationships between the exteriority of the world and inner selves of its inhabitants. For example, her performance, ‘Shotta: Existence’ paints the similar expedition. Though it is an interpersonal exploration of seeking truth, it reckons as a societally constructed existence. She reveals that truth remains elusive in a self-centric, fractured and ruptured individualistic society, which reduces human senses and sublimities into tradeable objects.

II

Art is beautiful, when it is representational and makes an attempt to connect. The danger is in its tendency to alienate to hide the process and to portray that the object of art is beauty. Beauty and love resides in human relationships. Nonetheless, an overemphasis on beauty, in essence, is a sordid artificiality.

Preema’s premise and promise also accolades in her aesthetics by opting through symbolic meanings, while being adherent to a deeper understanding in the joy of beauty, which comes from human relationship of connectedness. In her performance, Intimacy Conflict, the deep-seated apprehension and fear of affinity as humankind becomes isolated, estranged and alienated. Her belief in relatedness across the world allows her to be international. She happily borrows two Japanese concepts. ‘Wabisabi’ refers to a way of living that focuses on finding beauty within the imperfections of life and peacefully accepting the natural cycle of growth and decay while ‘Kintsukuroi’ originates from the art of pasting the broken pieces of pottery with gold or silver. The latter allows her to convey the understanding that the joining together is more beautiful than to be reduced in to rubbles as fragmented chunks. She champions human sociality and internationalism.

III

Artist creates as nature does, and the imitation of nature is, thus, unnatural. Replication is lifeless and superfluous, far away from truth. Nature presents its vast expanses of life systems – producers (green plants), consumers (herbivores, carnivores, omnivores) and decomposers (scavengers), and environmental systems – air, soil, climate etc. Both are inseparable. Its immeasurable wealth keeps species livable and lovable. The mother earth generates and sustains all forces. So does to the creative beings. It provides the inner force – inspiration. The gift of the nature can be better ascertained not by seeking to replicate the nature rather by transforming the visual cue from actual forms in nature to abstract the complexities of various forms of relationships between human being and nature, between flora and fauna, between biotic and abiotic resources, and living and non-living organisms. Such abstract depiction is creativity and beauty.

Preema has an appetite to engage with nature to create a harmony in chaos – a synthesis of ideas and images. She is an energetic enthusiast as an observer to navigate beneath the surfaces. For example, not recklessly, but pointedly she indulges herself into the exotic-aesthetic expressions of Ayami’s sensual body, wearing imaginary kimono with artificial pink cherries and black roses made out of fabric in ‘Sanji: From Japan with Love’. In her ‘Hotaru’ series of photographs, she weaves the series with watercolor to be reflective of aquatic beings while she illustrates 60 pieces of nature on a natural platform of Thai rice papers.

IV

Art represents imagination, yet it is not imaginary, and is rooted in place and time. Artist works on myth, but her work is not mythological rather an interpretation of history. Art visualizes stories and relations of material life, without being a mere chronicler like an historian. She seeks truth by being a thinker through new elucidations, even in some cases being far advance than science. Yet the search for truth remains incomplete as is the history and the science, providing an urge and impetus for constant discovery and liberation of beings through creativity, fathoming out of the contradictions between subjects and objects.

Preema’s ‘Radha’, the Hindu mythological representation of love and sacrifice, attempts to topple the orthodoxy, with a new meaning. On the contrary to the dogmatic subjugated rendering, her expose is of celebratory, not tied in the chains of patriarchy and hierarchical social order. Her ‘Radha’, without saree and archetype accessories flashes forward, yet she does not miss to point out the state of womanhood, and simultaneously she leads the viewers to road of freedom and liberation. The juxtaposition is though illusionary, yet it creates a vision for a new beginning by challenging the social construction of myth as if such is real.

V

Art is about experimentation and invention and so is science and its practical form – technology. Rooted in the similar reasoning and process and in their genesis of creations, both define and shape the world though their interactive processes. The mind, body and language of art have responded to and continue to retort to each of the waves of technology – from mechanization through steam engine, to mass production through use of electric power, to automation through electronics, and to the current period of a fusion of technologies, obscuring the distinctions amongst physical, digital, and biological domains. Art as imagination precedes science and thus acts as a vanguard for change, instead of being disrupted by technology. Yet it depicts the disruptions and struggles as embodiment of reality.

In her video art performance, ‘Aged with Cell Phone’, Preema expounds physical, digital, and biological domains. She connects herself, not as a science fiction nor as a sci-fi movie rather as a real persona in different time, space, and dialogues. She responds to newer forms of socializing, a contradiction in itself of remaining faceless yet engrossed in conversations. She is communicating to liberate herself in the forms of monologues and soliloquy while capturing the absurdity that the real life has imposed on disconnected individuals. It is pathologically painful to be dependent on a machine as an appliance is a creation of humankind on the one hand, while she sings the beauty of connectivity, on the other. The performance depicts helplessness of a rapturous monotonous life while her engrained optimism convenes a new dawn of human sociality through a new technology, though the first wave of which shrunk the humankind to a narrow self-centered individual. In her ‘News Agony’, Preema is overtly political, with her diagnosis that mass people are fed with narcissistic monologues to serve the power while people at large, in their hearts and minds, are crying for freedom.

VI

Art has the intrinsic power to lead towards freedom and liberation. In depicting reality, art has to step onto the stage as strong and empowered, eschewing victimization and defining feminine beauty for themselves as subjects, not as objects of a sexist patriarchy. Such warrants an understanding on women’s control over their bodies, sex, and sexuality while being conscious of intersectionality that women’s suppression can fully be understood in a context of the oppression along with racism, ageism, classism, ableism, and sexual orientation.

Preema’s best fit is her construction of identity, yet her valorization of identity contributes towards building meaningful, constructive solidarity between oppressed groups. Her representation of identity is not about being both as the start and endpoints. Her numerous creations, including series such as ‘Radha’, ‘Cosmopolitan Women’, ‘And State Continues and her performances’, ‘Marry My Eggs’, ‘Veils’, ‘My Unborn Fetus’ capture the emotive feelings in the forms of anger, fear, disgust and heroism. Her characters also express the universal principal, human feelings of soul and sense such as love, delight, laughter, contributing to the inner harmony. Undeniably, these are imbued with life, which comes from experiential learning of her intimate personal lived life and her surroundings. This is why her characters are so powerful. It originates from within herself. The mastery is that these do not remain her own as the viewers feel that these are her stories. They can relate, as if such are captures of theirs. Their dialogues with the paintings or performances or installations also create an audacity of hope!

VII

Preema does not want her artworks to be decorative pieces. The alienation of the art from its inner self is an outcome of reducing art as a mechanistic ‘showcasing’ or ‘beatification’ object. Such a social condition, resulting from malignant market structures, estranges art from humanity. She is perfectly mindful to avoid the aesthetic shortcuts that are characteristic of the contemporary art scenes. She seeks to expose the cracked modernity and its variations. A stunning challenge of breaking with tradition can only be survived through critical autonomy and creative innovation. She has taken the challenge!

Kehkasha Sabah
Art Curator

Visual art becomes very significant in the creation of identities and the expansion of knowledge. Our time can be marked as a civilization of visual art or as the century of visual communication. Nazia Andalib Preema, a name as such who strives throughout her life working for visual communication and strategic use of it for leadership in the creative community, women empowerment, and self-freedom.

She believes “Art is a connecting dot for every creative practice” and making platforms as such where young people/artists can become that ‘dots’ to building our creative economy is our social responsibility. She sees “Artists are an entrepreneur” and every artist should work to build visual and cultural awareness to society. This thought inspires her to take the different artistic journey as well as art marketing, building networks and creating new alternative platforms for young creatives. This dedication marks herself as a multidisciplinary visual artist and simultaneously holding] prestigious positions such as Director and Creative Editor of Bangladesh Brand Forum, President of Women in Leadership (WIL) and Founder of Bangladesh Creative Forum. These positions adhering versatility in creative platforms prevails her as a Women role model to our creative industry.

To analyze Preema’s creative endeavors many of us will agree to look into her fascinating life journey, and I’m no exception to that. Preema believes her ‘art is a process’, a process of learning and reflecting the society, a process of becoming an artist and acquiring the talents of leadership. She thinks her journey started 25 years ago when her father died leaving her alone with her mother and siblings. At that very young age, she had to face the harsh reality of our society towards living fragile women and children. Overcoming from every encountered challenging situation with grace, integrity and diplomacies, gave her a strong will power to stand alone. She started to educate herself in Fine Art and simultaneously use that expertise doing consultancies at corporate creative sectors as she realized the design, fashion, architecture, media, graphics, and all social visual engagement got influence from the Visual art /Aesthetical philosophies. This inspiration of working on fine art to corporate creative sectors gave herself a strength to make her feet grounded as a multilayered creative individual today!

In my view, what distinguishes Preema’s art from her other activities is the nature of its relationship to its public, which can be summed up as, “it’s the viewer who completes the work.” And yet to say that, if the viewer completes the work is to say the work is never finished because there is always another viewer who will complete the work differently. Thus, my purpose is to not defining Preema’s artworks rather investigate her process of art that works as a catalyst or connecting dot to her professional or personal life philosophy.

Preema started professional art career with her first solo show ‘Prarombho’ – ‘The new beginning’ at 1999, and the name seems acted metaphorically to her all artistic endeavors. The endeavors which she strives for, all fueled from practicing art itself, as she quotes “I want to people see the light. Art is not only light (Illumination) but also very crucial.”

Graduated from Faculty of Fine Arts in Painting, Preema doesn’t limit herself on two-dimensional surfaces only. She is prone to seek versatility and contemporaneity and she had the horizon to invest in. Her journey starts from painting, graphic design, digital media and recently investigating video art, sculptural installation, and performance. Above all, she showed a great spirit in painting and enthusiasm in performance/live art. She has done more than 20 solos, 50 group exhibitions, and residencies in the local and international arena which marked her as a successful multidisciplinary artist among the contemporaries of Bangladesh. Though the lenses of critical theories and examination, her work may not fully conquer the battle, but in the social aspects of a woman and being an artist in Bangladeshi conservative society, and her remarkable visibility than others, wins every heart!

Most of her created paintings dwelled between figurative and abstraction, starting from her first painting series ‘Senses’ and following ‘Paint and Pixel’, ‘Mysterious strokes’, ‘Labyrinth of Abstraction’ to the ‘Staring Women’. I think her abstraction also leads her in the later figurative journey especially ‘Objectified’, ‘Castle in the Sky’ and ‘Staring Women’ series. Her canvases of abstract and figuration are contemplative and distressed respectively, which stand as a referent of both a pleasure and a challenge for us.

As a critic, we face one of the greatest problems and greatest pleasures of abstract painting are -color. Color exists as an unbroken continuum, but the language that directs our perception breaks this continuum down into distinct areas that are selective hues. In Preema’s canvases, we see predominantly Red, Blue, Yellow, Green and Black and that all are dear to child psychology or pure curiosity. After scrutinizing her works more closely from past to the recent one, I feel Andalib’s painting does not begin from color but from the spiritual and the creative, from the Form – Form that is outlined! This outline could be the society, the people, the relations which inspires her, indulge her, dilute her or hinder her progressive thoughts. Her journey through a surface and colors subconsciously search for ‘Forms of her experiences’ and that’s the point where her figuration invades the abstraction. She feels an urge to reflex the positive and negative gestures of herself and society in her canvases. She also admits, “I frequently come back to abstraction, this fuels my whole journey in every aspect.”

On the other hand, her preconceived figurative works ‘Knitting the Veil’, ‘Under the veil’ and ‘Staring Women’ touched the contexts of women in our patriarchal society which she denotes as “urban fundamentalism”. Especially ‘Staring Women’ she portrayed women whose views and voices are suppressed or banned to show their physical entity through veils. Her figures/faces of women presented in monumental form – black veiled figures, shy yet elegant portraits, strikingly black outlined, expressive bold eyes filled with potentiality. Again, in her ‘Castle in the Sky’ series, we see completely opposite with expressive figures. Here her canvas is filled with gestural drawings of sensual body parts or full explicit figures (mostly women) presented with a women gaze. I believe both of the series have questions for society on women’s liberation, empowerment, and freedom.

Preema’s other achievement lies in her performance and video works, which she started 10 years back to adapt contemporaneity in her artistic language. Her earlier work was more performative and staged, day by day she developed it with challenging ideas reflexing social identities, body, sexuality, experiences and other contemporary social peripheries. ‘Marry My Egg’, in Art Basel 2014; ‘Identity’, in Dhaka Art Summit, 2016 could be a good example of unleashing her negative reflexes with positive synergy and discourse. Her recent works ‘Ico-Lation’ Performance & Video installation in Asian Art Biennale 2014, ‘Intimacy Conflict’ in Fukuoka, Japan 2016; ‘Checking Identity and Cause of Performance’ in train from Budapest to Bratislava 2018; ‘Movement with Rhythmic Air’ in Krakow Poland 2018 and ‘Body Drawing’ in Prague National Museum TAC 2018 – are more mature and commendable, as here she wants to challenge her identity, body, and space provoking audiences with their aesthetic judgments.

Through performance or new media art Preema “also explore the new possibility to reach to the next level challenging own limits”. In her real life, truly her foot seeks to cross borders of body, time and places. For art, work and self-exploration she has already traveled more than 70 countries. Interestingly, we can see this reflection of independent nature in her installation entitled ‘Wish I could Go Anywhere’ with selfworn shoes/stilettos, and a Collage painting ‘Cosmopolitan Women’ both presents her international presence, her desire and critical views on women identity and freedom in contemporary society.

It seems, Preema shows a special interest in adapting multiple styles in painting and also investigating diverse mediums of expressions. This is the admirable thing in her art practice, that she is ready to learn any time and every possible language of communications that gives her the freedom to reach the next level. But at the core of everything if we hear her words- “when it’s veiled then it is fundamental when it’s figurative then it is sexual, when it’s abstract then it is universal.”, we can imagine her all artworks have a question toward social representation of women, a desire of their freedom and contemplating for a path to leadership. However, we can say, Preema’s practice in art is to connect the dots in her professional and personal life. she practices art “to see what this whole existence is for.” This spirit paved her way as a liberated woman in a male-dominated society and this journey gives her freedom of voice and solitude in life.