Ronnie Ahmed's installation takes Europe by storm

Ronnie's installation in Venice.

Ibadur Rahman, the curator of Ronnie Ahmed's installation exhibitions in Europe's major cities and elsewhere, spoke of the press conference at Sonargaon Hotel, due today at 6pm: “I'm the director of a new art foundation in Bangladesh. We're hoping to create a collection of Bangladeshi art for Tate Museum in England. I'm promoting Bangladeshi art in Europe and North America. I took Ronnie Ahmed's work to the 14th Venice Festival of Art, which runs concurrently with Venice Biennale.
“This is a huge installation, on display alongside works of renowned artists, like Marc Quinn and 30 others from all over the world. Ronnie's work was very well received in Italy. We'll be going to the Frieze Art Fair in England. We're going to the Kochi Biennale in India, and the Venice Archliberal Biennale next year.
“The interesting element of Ronnie's work is that he executed an architectural concept with bio-degradable material -- to create a new reality and narrative that combines Venetian and South Asian stories. It is called 'The Tomb of Karacos'. It has been very well received by European curators, and is getting a lot of attention. Ronnie and I have been working together for a long time, almost 20 years.
“The installation has been done with eggs and the pyramid is huge -- five metres tall. 'Karacos' is a myth. Salman Rushdie wrote a book, 'The Enchantress of Florence'. The heroine is a young, beautiful Mughal princess -- in the Florentine court of the Medicis -- during the High Renaissance period. At this time Akbar was the emperor of India. The typical oriental narrative is intermingled with Renaissance narrative. Ronnie has been exploring this myth for a while. Karacos is like a deity for outsiders. The installation features hundreds of hand-painted eggs, and everyone seems to be impressed with it. Even for the western audience it's something novel, something revolutionary.”
Ibadur Rahman says that Ronnie's work is being lauded because no other artist from the subcontinent has done something like this of late. The other Asian artist who took part in this festival is Feng Feng from China.
In the last few years, says Ronnie Ahmed, “I've been exploring ideas through sculptures and paintings.” He wanted a bigger perspective, he says, than the ones seen at Alliance Francaise and Bengal Gallery. He says that the size of the canvas does matter; the artist likes big images and large canvases. In his latest installation one sees the glass on hundreds of eggs. The red flag on top is to heighten the effect. “I always try to avoid the conventional language -- using potatoes for instance, to represent human faces,” says Ronnie.
Rahman says, “I think that he [Ronnie] represents a different reality. He is working on a myth. He's dealing with a series of lies. He's searching for the truth, which is invisible to the conventional eye. Conventional language cannot express the truth that an artist is searching for. The lies throw light on the interior truth, which is not readily visible to the eye.”
Ronnie adds, “It's an individual myth that I deal with. It's not a collective myth. Sometimes I take a myth from my surroundings, like Noah's ark. I hope to do something on 'Mahabharat'.”