Dharon: A celebration of homegrown artforms

Faced with institutional apathy, shifting economies, and an urban market that rarely looks inward, artists of indigenous art and crafts are switching their ancestral profession just to survive. 

As a result, a visual language that took centuries to build is gradually fading out of sight. Against this backdrop of cultural amnesia, 'Dharon', an ongoing folk art exhibition, which ends tonight at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy.

Organised by the Fine Arts Department of Shilpakala and curated by Jinnatun Jannat alongside co-curator Ayesha Nazmin, the exhibition refuses to treat rural art as a nostalgic relic.

Instead, it frames the work of grassroots makers as a vital, highly adaptive contemporary practice that deserves a central place on the global art stage.

"The concept of this exhibition is basically the title itself, how we retain what originally belongs to us," explains Jinnatun. 

"Almost all the artworks are done by root-level original artists; some I collected myself and others were in the collection of the Shilpakala Academy, from which I curated for this exhibition."

Walking through the gallery space, viewers are confronted with a deliberate dismantling of old academic hierarchies. For generations, colonial-era frameworks have categorised rural expression as mere "craft," implying a hierarchy where it sits a distinct step below modern, urban fine art. 

Dharon rejects this entirely. By bringing together five distinct artforms— Nakshi Kantha, Patachitra, bamboo art, clay puppets, and rickshaw paintings — the exhibition argues that these are complete art forms governed by their own internal logic, aesthetic rules, and material intelligence.

The artists of Bangladesh's agrarian society traditionally relied on whatever materials the earth provided at arm's reach. Yet, as the exhibition demonstrates, their practices were never static. 

As times changed, these artists naturally absorbed new technologies, synthetic materials, and shifting narratives, proving that folk art is a spontaneous and active cultural component rather than a museum piece trapped in time.

Nowhere is this adaptability more striking than in the artworks responding to the July Uprising of 2024. 

Several pieces of Nakshi Kantha and rickshaw art — developed through recent workshops organised by the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy. Here, the bold, glossy strokes of rickshaw paint and the painstaking, rhythmic needlework of Nakshi Kantha become vehicles for protest. 

Memory, identity, and political defiance are stitched into fabric and painted onto metalboards. By combining the stylistic characteristics of rural art with the grief and anger of recent months, these pieces prove that indigenous mediums can serve as sharp, real-time commentary on the state of the nation.

Complementing these politically charged works is an expansive array of clay dolls sourced from the private collection of Imran-uz-Zaman. Gathered from various districts across Bangladesh, the figures highlight the intense regional diversity of the country's folk art. 

A puppet moulded in one district carries entirely different structural signatures, stylistic choices, and local folklore than one shaped in a neighbouring region. Together, life, memory, and sheer imagination intersect to create an aesthetic expression that has long deserved a recognised position in the broader art world.

The exhibition is a sharp reminder of what is slipping through our fingers while our collective gaze remains fixed overseas. Even in this exhibition, the curators could not physically visit the places from where these artists have emerged. 

Since parts of the curation was done from the collection of Shilpakala, for obvious reasons of not being able to curate artworks from the original land where they belong, the exhibition had some shortcomings to the core idea. Properly curating and preserving the art of the grassroots requires the kind of slow, deliberate fieldwork and funding that institutional timelines rarely accommodate. But for Jinnatun, the current iteration of Dharon is just a starting point, constrained by the realities of time and logistics. 

"I want to work further with these artists; some are from Rajshahi, some are from Bagerhat, and some are from the Bandarban area," Jinnatun notes, acknowledging the massive geographical and cultural scope of the country's artisan network. 

"I haven't got enough time to do this. If I could get a minimum of one year for this and visit every corner of the country, it could have been better, and I would genuinely be able to do justice to their artwork."

However, Dharon is a necessary attempt to build a meaningful dialogue between the village and the city, the artisan and the urban audience, the past and the immediate present; and the organisers are right to claim that Dharon is not just an exhibition rather it is a cultural position. It operates as an urgent call to look within our own borders.