Art
The Lure of Fairyland
After having a Great Deal of Capitalism We are Waiting for Mr Becket, acrylic on canvas, 2004.
Once upon a time it used to be thought that by painting someone's image a painter stole his or her soul. And in the post modern world, painters do not steal souls but paint it in different forms instead of dominant subject reality.
Ronni Ahmmed, an artist of discursive language and a painter of soul, has attempted to illuminate the individuals in his canvas. Every stroke he makes has “stories of melancholia and absurdity, alienation of the people and the society or the alienation of aliens.” This is how Ronni described his work during the lunching ceremony of his book “The Cosmic Ark” at the Hay Festival 2013.
“The Cosmic Ark” is divided into 8 chapters including his most ambitious and acknowledged works- “Archeology of Noah's Ark” and “Cosmic Turtle Visiting Green Earth”.
“Archeology of Noah's Ark” is a 100 feet long and 10 feet wide mythological scroll that deals with time and space, desperate objects, figures and ideas, biblical stories, fairy tales and so on. Myth and history shape his work and he criticises the hegemonic role of history that forces to create meaning.
Ronni Ahmmed's sculpture Cosmic Turtle Visiting Green Earth.
Ronni believes that his work is a mixture of all genres. So for him images are beyond future, past and present. And that is why, “I think my subjects are all souls of life sources, in a way. And I believe the whole world is a lump of soul,” Ronni says. According to him the myth is the best spaceship which can travel in time and space, which is able to create a new civilisation where people will find a new existence in a faraway island.
He loves to play with the distorted forms of subject and connect them with the mundane world. In the middle of Noah's Ark, a giant topsail covered with a fragile Noah's face and other objects in the commodious boat gives an impression of crazy stories and objects that connects us with the present world, a place of living refugees floating in the universe with violence, greed and sins. The attraction in the piece is the sub- themes that cover a lot of our contemporary beliefs. “This is a random work involving the ark, theology, proverbs, superstitions and as all these subjects collide to form a literally fantastic aura, in the end it's reality that is made the villain and pointed as the only core of all hypocrisy,” says Ronni.
Launching of “The Cosmic Ark” at Hay Festival, Dhaka, 2013.
He adds, “Now, there are two ways to appreciate this work, one is by looking at the images that differ tremendously and the other is by trying to relate these figures to form one whole meaning. Though the former is easy, the latter is unquestionably tough. But those who are looking for some challenge this piece will not disappoint them”.
At a glance, his stories might not help an audience to create meaning, some of the images are downright bizarre or too magical but the whole idea is to make the viewers feel like he/she is in some wonderland. Syed Manzoorul Islam, Professor of English Department of Dhaka University, described it as a “plethora of images, and lets the viewer make their own meaning or sense.”
One of Ronni's recent creations is a giant tortoise sculpture called “Cosmic Turtle Visiting Green
Detail of Achaelogy of Noah's Ark.
Earth”. The epic sculpture is built to protest the killing of turtles all over the world. The sculpture is 18 feet in height, 36 feet in breadth and 57 feet in length, which is more like a dome shaped cave. The mural inscribed on the interior wall celebrates the archetypes, which according to Carl Gustav Jung a Swiss psychiatrist is “ancient or archaic images that derive from the collective unconscious”. The painted characters are like the El Castillo cave of Spain but the difference is Ronni is engaged with sarcastic forms about the inherent uncertainty of mind and the fragility of human civilisation.
The interesting part of Ronni's work is that he executed an architectural concept with eco-friendly materials to create a new reality and narrative that combines South Asian stories. Ronni's work has been very well received by European curators, and is getting a lot of attention in the country as well.
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