Zihan Karim: Where virtual meets reality
Where Sultan portrayed the common people of the land in a muscular fashion, audio-visual artist Zihan Karim observed that those fishermen and farmers were now dwelling in the city as daily labourers. They were weak and pale. As a student he started sketching them, exactly how they were. One day Karim found one of the the labourers was dead in his sleep. Shockingly, nobody seemed to care about the fact that this person was missing. Karim decided to make a video installation, projecting on the same spot where the man had died to feel the public reaction. That was just one project from a range of interesting works of Karim, who works with many types of media including moving images, installations, sound, and painting.
Karim completed both his BFA and MFA from University of Chittagong. His work illustrates the uniqueness from the experiences he gathers from the subtleties of time, space and social issues. He intends to create a new dialogue sphere between virtual and reality in many layers. He stages interventions in the cityscape using film projections which reveal the special characteristics of the sites.
Karim is a core member of “JOG art space.” He has participated in various exhibitions including three of the Dhaka art summits, International Short Film Festival in 2012, Bangladesh Asian Art Biennale in 2012, 2014, and 2016, 5th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial in 2014, Itoshima Art Festival in 2014, Next Art Tainan in 2015, and Yinchuan Biennale in 2016. He received an honorable mention award at Bangladesh Asian Art Biennale in 2012 and 2016. He was also a curator for few exhibitions like ''Cheragi Art show 4(2016),” “After Midnight (2017),” and “AJANTRIK (2018).”
The talented artist is currently working as Assistant Professor at the Institute of Fine Arts, University of Chittagong.
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