Silent Witness

Art work by Shyamal Roy Chowdhury

Unassuming young artist, Shyamal Roy Chowdhury's first solo exhibition ended recently at the Art & Soul Gallery. Growing up amidst violence in Dhaka's Shyampur neighbourhood, Shyamal's exposure to art was extremely limited. A most resonant childhood memory was a bedtime story told by his father, of a fat man fighting ghosts, an image he tried visualising and committing to paper.
Realising his limited academic potential, Shyamal turned to art early on during his school years. He painted pharmacy delivery vehicles and tried his hand at wedding alpona to earn pocket money for art supplies. Noticing his commitment, his mother enrolled him at the Bulbul Academy of Fine Arts. Here, Shyamal shone and was the recipient of many awards. He went on to display his work at the 1994 National Exhibition aged 18, two years short of the participation age, a tough first call, he admitted. Soon after, Shyamal moved on to the Narayanganj Charukala to further his artistic education, where he graduated First Class First in 2003.
Apart from conventional painting, Shyamal undertook all the terracotta artwork for the temple built at the Ramakrishna Mission in Old Dhaka in 2004, being especially pleased with the fibreglass Nataraj on the front façade.
In 2005, Shyamal received a scholarship from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations to read for a Masters in Fine Arts, which he recently completed from Kolkata's Rabindra Bharati University. He would welcome a systemic change, as many face problems during their post graduate education, where experimentation is an integral part of the learning curve. To this end, he too, initially encountered difficulties vis-à-vis his conceptual Masters work. His mentors, artist Jogen Chowdhury and Professor Sovon Som advised him to seek inspiration from Kolkata's galleries, but Shyamal was ultimately influenced by a multi- styles and concepts workshop he attended in Delhi.
During his Masters, Shyamal began experimenting with a doll motif in his paintings. His object was to reduce realism, removing elements of the doll's anatomy by increasing colour and texture. “I found that the doll was disturbing the canvas and tried to break free from the old school, old techniques. The eye is like a camera aperture, and I was attempting to adjust the circular space, to make a sharper image.” There is vibrant imagery behind the choice of the doll.
Of his most memorable exhibitions, Shyamal mentioned a 2002 contributory show in Japan organised by artist G S Kabir, of four Bangladeshi and four Japanese artists, where his paintings, “were very much appreciated.”

The writer is a freelance contributor