On July 22, Syed Muhammad Zakir’s solo photography show, Maya, will open at Bengal Shilpalay of Bengal Foundation in Dhanmondi, the capital.
‘Maya’ is Syed Muhammad Zakir’s second solo show. Here, Zakir recreates a city – the imagined illusory city of ‘Baghreb’. Time, for him, is not a linear entity, but something that belongs to the space-time continuum. In the exhibition, Zakir draws on the lives of the unnoticed millions wrestling with the city, and the loss and decimation of nature that they face every day.
A broken branch, a flood of trashed plastic bottles, a tree stump, an overflowing plastic bag, a tottering cart, layers of styrofoam packaging, and many more commonplace items, everyday possessions, and materials that allude to a precariously precarious world are all handled and transformed by him.
The unconventional pairing of commonplace items, their artistic manipulations, and their odd conversations within a foreign setting all contribute to the development of a new consciousness, maybe surprising in its need to return to nature before we exhaust ourselves.
Syed Muhammad Zakir is a visual artist based in Dhaka. He mostly works in public places, involving the people, the commons, and the environment. Through performance art, installation art, land art and wall-art, Zakir interrogates our lives and desires, and probes deeper questions relating to the universe and the cosmos.
Zakir is a trans-disciplinary artist that uses body movement and spontaneous action to engage his audience and provoke thought. He enjoys using the variety of materials, objects, and shapes that are all around us and that we can easily access.
In Zakir’s artwork, metallic and bright colors are prominent. His illustrations stand out for their vivid expressiveness and forceful lines. Zakir’s writing is sometimes seen as caustic, biting, and even hilarious.
Syed Muhammad Zakir, who was born in Rangpur in 1975, began creating work in 1994, the same year he enrolled at the University of Dhaka’s Faculty of Fine work. He received his sculpture training there.
