A call for simplicity in life

Painting by Sanjib Datta.

Sanjib Datta, 51, shaven headed and wearing rectangular spectacles, has displayed his mixed media works at a solo exhibition at the Dhaka Art Centre. He combines surrealism with symbolism to drive home his message. Like most artists in Bangladesh, Datta holds up the mirror to the bitter realities of the current socio-economic and political scenario. His paintings have a soul-pitch, like many Chittagong-based artists, such as Laila Nazlee Mansur, Nilofar Chaman and Alok Roy.
Datta's protagonists are men with wings and pixie-faces. At times they appear like Spiderman going through the rubbish of the city. All around are the overwhelming concrete jungle. The high-rises often bear glass fronts, as if the tall buildings are cages are made of cement and glass. The humans outside are adult Tokai, who rummage the rubbish bins for syringes, which may have been used to administer drugs. The raw manner of drawing attention to the misdeeds is startling, as is often the case with avant-garde artists.
The figures can be seen as futuristic, or borrowed from science fiction. The creatures on the canvas are like sentinels, who warn mankind to arrest material progress at the cost of cultural values. Industrial and material progresses are not all there is to life, believes Datta, like most artists of the 20th and 21st century. At times the winged creatures are shown to literally attack the Bangladeshi Taka notes, almost like honeybees, geared to collect materials. “People have lost their dreams of living in peace and harmony, in their quest for material progress,” says Datta, who laments the loss of simplicity and harmony in contemporary existence.
In presenting overt shapes of perfume bottles along with female models, with their outthrust bosoms, he highlights the boldness but emptiness of contemporary, urban living. The male figures reveal an undue exposure of their bodies.
Datta is a modern artist, out to shock the viewer into realising the hedonism and corruption around -- where there is laundering of black money and undue crashes in the stock market. Sure, money and material comforts are essential in life, Datta says, even as he questions, “Should an individual forget his roots and indulge in selfish hedonism?” Unwanted elements are thrown into the rubbish bins, which are later found in the garbage by the cleaning man. The artist delineates this ugliness in graphic details to shake us out of our complacency.