Visual Arts and Fiction? Laisul Hoque's book: Babu Bangladesh! N. Atif Choudhury

ART BOOK CLUB is a segment where a guest suggests a book which was not written with visual arts in mind and yet is a source of inspiration, guidance and / or creativity for their work. Hosted by Joana P. R. Neves, this episode welcomes visual artist Laisul Hoque.

• How can a work of fiction influence the work of an artist?
• Can a visual arts practice be illuminated by storytelling? How can art practices she light on the value and limitations of archives and photographic documentation of the past?
• To what extent do images convey the truth?
• Is visual arts the territory where we reckon with our ties with the past, and our emotional needs?

Laisul chose: Babu Bangladesh!, written by Numair Atif Choudhury.

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What you get from this episode: Curating revelations, unexpected curating methods, lessons in community, art philosophies, ethical art questions.

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0:00 Intro

04:19 Choosing an artistic career

11:13 Autobiography in visual arts

18:26 Book: Babu Bangladesh! By NUmair Atif Choudhury

20:14 How a book intersects with personal life

22:15 The personal, the politics, the art, the book

28:20 What is Babu Bangladesh! about?

35:14 Family photo archive and visual arts

39:26 Break and call for action

41:43 Speculative fiction as device for truth telling

45:58 Why is Babu Bangladesh! In English?

48:32 Taking ownership of the historical archive?

56:18 StorytellingThe Ground Beneath Me: An artistic exploration of care

01:03:34 Displaced spaces of art

01:10:16 Does art provide answers?

01:21:14 Outro 

#visualarts #visualartist #bangladeshiartist #bangladeshart #arteducation #artbookclub #bookclub #bangladeshfiction #numairatifchoudhury #joanaprneves #exhibitionistas #exhibitionistaspodcast #arttalk #art #visualartsepisode #visualartspodcast #contemporaryart #talkart #youngartist #bowarts #nunnerygallery #londonexhibitions #londongallery #londonmuseum #bestlondonart

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

My name is Lysul Hawk. I'm an artist. I was born in Bangladesh and I came to London in 2020. I have a new show in Nanri Gallery, which is part of Bo Arts.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

So what book touched Lysul Hawk's creative work, despite not having been written with contemporary visual arts in mind?

SPEAKER_00 0:21

But the book that I want to share with you is uh Babu Bangladesh by Numeratov Choduri. We were like just starting our A-levels. We tried picking it up, we read it, everything went over my head. Nothing stuck to me. I read it throughout my trip in Bangladesh, throughout the experience of taking care of my father as I experienced the politics. Maybe it formed the show that I have right now, but hard to tell.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

He writes about Bangladesh. Bangladesh is in the name of the book, is the cover, but he wrote in English, indeed. And you will find out much more about this iconic book that should be read worldwide. It is a fantastic read, a meandering labyrinth in the Bangladeshi politics, but also in the mind of whoever tries to find the truth about society, economy, politics, and their entanglements with personal life. Stick around because you will also find out about the exhibition that Elizabeth hinted about The Ground Beneath Me, taking place currently in Beau Art's Nunnery Gallery. And this exhibition has a lot to do with the book. And don't forget, sign up to our Substack, Exhibitionist Files, which is part of Art Thinkasaurus on Substack. You will not get a newsletter, I promise. I always write about the artists, I always share a few thoughts post-editing. So the link is in the show's notes, and now the ball's in your court. It's your time to play. Exhibitionisters is an independent podcast created and hosted by me, Joanna Pierre Nevis. Because we're all both actors and spectators of art and life. Hello, Exhibitionisters. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode. This episode is an art book club. And just to remind you, I invite artists, curators, anyone involved in contemporary art and ask them if there's a book, a very special book in their canon, their personal canon, that is not particularly connected to contemporary art or art in general, but that had an influence in their creative work nonetheless. And today I have a very special guest. I'm really chuffed to have a conversation with him. Hello, Lysul. Do you want to introduce yourself? But first of all, thank you so much. Welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Thank you so much, Yourna, for having me. Um my name is Lysul Hawk. Um, I'm an artist based in London. Um, I was born in Bangladesh and I came to London in 2020, and since then I've been practicing here. Um I have a new show that has just opened in Nunnery Gallery, which is part of Bo Arts, and uh it's running till the 12th of April.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

You said that you are from Bangladesh and you arrived in London at a very specific moment in time. I would even say in history, actually, which was the beginning of the pandemic, so you studied at Chelsea School of Art. Um, how was it, you know, making that move? Oh, sorry, I did I say something wrong.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

I said that's understand Martins. I wish I said that talking about why did I say Chelsea?

SPEAKER_01 4:07

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Anyway, Chelsea's pretty cool. Chelsea's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Now that I think of it, I should have applied to Chelsea school. What was I doing? Well, listen, regrets, let's talk about them. So you arrived during the pandemic from Bangladesh. And uh, can you tell us a little bit about that decision to come here? Because you have a very interesting background. So you started by being nudged towards engineering, and then you started thinking that might not be for me. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that context? Because I think it's always interesting to see how people kind of come into contemporary art and we all arrive in this weird space from very different walks of life.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

The education structure in Bangladesh is very much geared towards STEM subjects. It's uh either you be a doctor or an engineer, the other option would be law, or like then also go into finance or accounting. And um the structure, the national education board, everything is geared in a manner where you have these national exams and you sit for them, and it's score-based, and it's tiered based on how much you score in these exams. And the top tiers of it obviously goes to STEM-focused subjects, and then the middle tier would go into commerce and finance, and the rest would go into humanities and whatnot. And um students or young people often get very little autonomy in selecting or like choosing their pathway. And um it's also society, it's what society values after I finish my O levels and A levels, which is secondary exam examination. I was naturally geared towards studying engineering, and I had to I don't know. Uh I I bumped a lot of classes, and uh I I had a I had a very difficult if I have to describe my teenagehood, it would be I found it quite difficult.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

And uh even in even academically, because uh I I presumed you were a pretty good student, and that's why you were kind of driven to um to that particular kind of studies, engineering.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

In my perspective, I was a nuisance. I was a headache for everybody. I I had a really I had a real difficult time. I gave my parents a hard time, I gave my teachers a hard time. And during that time, I was I knew that I always wanted to be an artist. I had a knack for like image making in terms of photography, but also drawing, but quite elementary level of understanding of what art is. What I found really interesting was during that period, which I found quite tumultuous, I found myself hiding a lot behind books. I found myself like losing myself in the world of fiction, non-fiction, literature. And uh that resulted me in being like, okay, I do enjoy reading, I don't enjoy studying engineering. Though there is a right now as an artist, there are a lot of transferable skills.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

It's so great as a curator to work with artists who come from science. But so you were saying that you kind of were you you chose otherwise, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Yes. My university had a very good literature program that people who engage with arts and culture kind of respected, but outside, everybody hated anything creative. Um, and um, so I switched without telling my parents. I thought I this would be a gateway into me ending up doing the things that I want to do or getting education closer to the things that I wanted to do. And uh soon after I finished my literature degree, I applied for my then dream school, which was Central St. Martin's. Um, things have changed a lot now. I know a little bit about the UK art scene, and maybe I wouldn't call it that.

SPEAKER_03 8:45

Maybe Chelsea.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

Probably not. Uh none of the UL schools. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Would you still consider coming from abroad and not having a network here, or someone who would be, you know, come straight from I don't know, uh, Nottingham or whatever, outside of London. Do you still think it's a good idea to enroll in a school and to have that experience if you want to go towards an artistic practice, or would you now think differently?

SPEAKER_00 9:18

I think it's important to get an arts education. It helped me a lot in understanding how I see the world, and I would have been a very different artist if I did not have any form of training regarding art. But given that, most of the London schools, most of the UK that like the ones that people gear towards going are often structured in a way that will inevitably lead to disappointment because of capitalism, because of how much students are cramped into these spaces. And uh most of the tutors facilitating these spaces are often overworked, and they do not have the capacity to cater to all these students. And uh it's eventually leads to a very disappointing experience, particularly when there are international students fighting the entire world, crossing all the oceans just to be here. It's it's a it's a high expectation and it's a very tough expectation to live up to.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

I'm glad that you had a kind word for tutors and teachers, because I think it can be very frustrating for them. For you know, my my friends who are teaching at university at the moment are incredibly frustrated.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

But at the same time, I'm quite drawn to going back to these spaces and trying or attempting to do the things or provide the things that I did not have or I would have found helpful as a student. And I guess that's the weird Sisyphus complex that we have where we're like, we keep being optimistic.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

So you left your family behind. Uh, do you want to tell us a little bit about that context? So your family obviously had expectations from your studies and your role in society, and you somehow include your family in your work as well, a little bit sometimes. Um how how have you because I'm thinking of that piece where you were focused on the favorite snack of your father, and people actually got to taste it. So you activated different relationships with work and with the material that makes up the work and kind of expanded that notion. And at the same time, you were providing uh or you were exploring something that is more um inward-looking, let's say, or that encompasses uh a sort of an intimate or private realm of the artists and kind of autobiographical.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

Well, I have this work which you just briefly mentioned, it's called An O to All the Flavors, and uh it's the work is about my it's an expansive storytelling work where I try to explore this earliest memory of my father helping me discover his favorite chapter snack in Bangladesh, obviously. And um it's something unfortunate.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

What kind of snack is it?

SPEAKER_00 12:38

It's uh it's vegan, it's uh is chickpea flour balls, fry fried balls soaked in sugar syrup, and the other thing is uh gram flour flakes with spice seasoning. So it's like they're two separate things. One is dry, one is soggy sugar syrupy. You don't mix them together.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Because you were saying unconventional, it's kind of an unconventional okay. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Yes, so it's like dipping fr fries, McDonald's fries, in like milkshake kind of situation. That's the equivalent, that's the equivalent I can think of. And um there was this period of time when um I did not have that much contact with my parents, and I was really craving that. And there is a very, very significant, prominent Bengali population in London, which is, and many of them share a similar story as mine. And all these communities, all these places where these Bengali communities have settled, they all have these sweet shops, and all these sweet shops sell the components to make my father's favorite charlotte snack. And uh, when I was commissioned in 2023 during South Asian Heritage Month by Tower Hamlet's council to make a work, I was craving the sweet, and I was going into these sweet shops and I was buying them separately, and I was trying them. I was starting these conversations with the shopkeepers, and I was trying it with them. And in return, I was telling them the story of how I discovered this and how I don't have very minimal contact with my dad, and we don't engage with emotive conversation, and they would share similar things about how they have a similar relationship with their father, and it became this collective catharsis moment where like I would go buy suites, but we would end up giving therapy to each other. And when the commission period came and I had to exhibit something, I went up to these sweet shops and I was like, hey, this is a week-long thing I'm doing. I'm gonna set up this display cabinet inside the gallery space that's gonna look like a sweet shop. Will you give me these things for a week so that I can make other people try it? And uh it kind of worked out. And then it went to Whitechapel Gallery for a day-long exhibition. And during that period, I was like, oh, I can't keep getting free suites from these sweet shops. They're a business and they have to run. And during that time, during that time, I was already involved with this organization called Oitidjo, which is um this British Bengali organization that helps promote Bengali culture in London. And they have this social enterprise wing called Oitidjo Kitchen, where they try to engage women who Bengali women who are often growing up or being brought from Bangladesh in in aspirations of better life through marriage, and they're kind of subjected to this patriarchal environment where they grow up in these council housings and they don't because they don't speak English, they're not often trusted to be outside. And oftentimes these women get frustrated with their life or like try to take charges, try to take initiative of their life, and they come out and they seek forms of employment because finance like independence, like monetary independence is the first step to like to autonomy. Oh, they all have this pre-existing skill, which is cooking. So maybe we can start this catering service, and they have this other wing where which is Otijou, where they promote Bengali arts and culture, where they involve artists, Bengali artists like me, based in London. We run workshops, we run community engagement programs, we interact with, we try to engage with them so that they build a sense of encouragement to like engage with the outside world, engage with London. And it worked out quite poetically because oh, the work the work is trying to critique patriarchy and the lack of emotive language between a father and a son. But then this group of individuals who are entrenched or like subjected to confinement through patriarchy or patriarchal systems, and trying to break free from it, trying to break free from it ends up learning how to make these suites to present it so that they can start this, so that people can come and start this conversation about how it is a problem.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Yeah, that's wonderful. Yeah, it's such a strange thing because I think you pointed out something that is that we're kind of um struggling with at the moment internationally, which is I mean internationally, at least in a kind of international, global 1% um um realm that rules us, which is that the patriarchy obviously affects women and also affects m men, you know, and there's a a very strange entanglement there, whereby then of course the way it affects each of the genders and all the genders in between is going to be very specific to each gender, actually. Um this um connection that you have with the culture you came from and the country and the politics that you came from on a personal, you know, in some ways transmitted on the personal level, is also contained, I think probably in the book that you chose to bring today. So can you tell us what book that is?

SPEAKER_00 18:52

Of course. Um so the book that I want to share with you is this book. It's uh Babu Bangladesh by Numerat of Choduri, and it's published by Harper Collins. The book came out in 2019. Uh, the writer passed away in an accident in 2018. The events of the accidents are unaware. We were we're not sure what happened. He was working on this book and then it was published posthumously. Um but I have a strange connection to this book. The school that I went to, the writer Numaire is the son of the principal of that school. Uh the principal is no more, she passed away as well. When the book first came out, I was in a literary festival with a friend of mine, and uh I saw my late principal weeping on a stage and talking about the book, and it compelled us to pick up the book and read it. And during that time, like we were like just starting our a-labels. Like, we tried picking it up, we read it, nothing, everything went over my head. Nothing stuck to me. And I was like, this is terrible, I'm gonna put it back. Never picked it up.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

I feel for my principle, but I don't want to read it anymore.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

But when I when I did move to London, I did pack up everything that I had, and my books included. It was more of a running away from home moment, given that I did not study the subject or the program that my parents enrolled me in, and I studied literature, and then when I graduated, I told them I did not study this, but I studied this literature program, and I got into my dream art school. I'm gonna go be an artist. Will you help me buy a plane ticket? If not, it's okay, I'll sort it out kind of situation.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

Wait, did they pay for the ticket? Yeah, or were they so mad?

SPEAKER_00 21:02

They were really mad and they stopped talking to me, but like they paid for my plane ticket. But it's also the kind of structure that we have to understand in the sense that I can't really rely on money for from them because of the currency difference. The income, they're both retired, but the income that they have wouldn't even sustain a month for me here, right? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

So you have to make your own life, you have to build your own life economically.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

Yeah, so I'm like it was a quite stressful period.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

I mean, especially during the pandemic when you arrived.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Yes, especially during the pandemic, but I did manage to bring all my books only last year in 2024. The country that I'm from, Bangladesh, went through this period of change, but it was quite tumultuous and it was a roller coaster. And the remnants of that is still being felt, where a government, a political party that was in power for the last fifteen years since 2009 got overthrown by a mass uprising. The Prime Minister then fled to India, and then an interim government was set up. And that interim government worked towards building, creating a re-election program. And uh as we speak right now, the election is beginning to happen in Bangladesh. 2020, at the very beginning, during July, when this was all happening, it happened all of a sudden. I woke up one morning and I opened, I went on social media. I went to social media and I realized that there was the sentiment of like protest that was going on. Students were asking for reforming the education system and reforming the job structures, how the job market works, and kind of relates to the similarly kind of relates to the problem that we were speaking of earlier. And that led to a very bad mishandling by the government. And next thing I know, I'm on social media, the university that I went to, police are throwing grenades like smoke. Like, what do you call the smokes?

SPEAKER_01 23:28

Oh gosh, there's um there's a name for the gas. Gas.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Yeah, gas bombs.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

Gas bombs, maybe? I don't know. Do you know? I can't remember.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Well, I'm not well versed on protest lingo. Clearly.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

We didn't know about that kind of thing. Yeah. How would we?

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Heavier, like social media is full of the university they went to, heavy artillery, like helicopters swirling around, like shooting inside with rubber bullets. I'm like, we don't know what's going on. And I tried to contact my parents, they're not picking up. And absolute chaos, right? Two days later, internet shutdown, right? Like communication blackout, can't even reach my parents. My mental health was left the chat. My mental health was gone. Um during that period. Yeah, during that period, like we like there, there were like a lot of us scattered, like my friends who are like also abroad trying to do the same thing. We started communicating and uh we downloaded these apps to like make calls internationally. But then my parents did pick up and they said that yes, this is happening, but we're trying to be safe and whatnot. Yes, and that rolled out for almost three months. July, August, late August is when the incident led to the Prime Minister going to India. During that time, I won the East London Art Prize, which is run by which is organized by Bo Arts, and a part of that prize is the Holocaust. When I have a show now, and it felt quite charged in the sense that okay, we are a British, we were a British colony, and also during after the partition, it's India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. And Bangladesh came out a lot later because it was a chunk of Pakistan, but we have colonial remnants, and because of the colonial remnants, I can speak in English. What do I do given that I have an opportunity to present something at the heart of the empire? And it felt quite overwhelming.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Yeah, I was gonna ask you, how did you feel? Because it's the weight of the responsibility. I always think of this sentence by um James Joyce, well, not James Joyce, but one of his characters, I think it's in Ulysses, but I'm not sure, where he says, history is a nightmare that I want to wake up from. And for me, it's that the weight of the conflicts that you feel as an individual, and at the same time that you want to kind of step away from to have a free life. But in there you felt that you had to take on that that sort of I wouldn't say responsibility, but that inheritance, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I managed to do any of that. I I feel like that that thought process itself is also a trap. It's the it's it's this you can never win. You can never you can never come out of it victorious. But during that time, I my father got diagnosed with a critical illness, and I was called back home. My mom was like, I don't know if like I can handle this, this is too much. And I was like, okay, this is the first time ever I'm a full-time artist, and I'm not bounded by a contract to support myself through a job. This is the only opportunity I will get to be fully available to you. So I dropped everything and I went back home. I took this out of my room. I was like, okay, I'm gonna. This feels this feels like it's relevant right now to read it. And um and I read it throughout my trip in Bangladesh, throughout the experience of taking care of my father as I experienced the politics. Maybe it formed the show that I have right now, but hard to tell. But what I realized while working on the show and reading this book is what Nomer tried to do through this book was very difficult. And uh and uh I felt I felt like I was in a shoe, and I felt like I was trying to do the same thing, and um, I guess the book taught me or gave me clues into not making the same mistakes, if I'm to say that they're mistakes.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

Okay, that's really fascinating because so I downloaded the audiobook because uh it was going to be delivered too late, and we kind of decided to do this recording very quickly, and we were very we were so efficient that I didn't have time to order the book and read it. Um, but I did download the audio the audiobook and I started listening to it. And I it's very different from what I expected. It has for me, it's kind of like uh do you know W.G. Zebald, you know, the German writer who was based here in the UK. He wrote these books that are they're they're fiction, but they're also there's there are a sort of dramatization of inherited trauma because German, as you can imagine, died recently. He is he inherited the a very heavy history, um, where you know there are the the guilty parties, so that it's a very specific and and a kind of uh inheritance. And the books he wrote were very much um linked to real facts, but at the same time there was this kind of s flow of consciousness. Uh, for example, the rings of Saturn is a walk in the beach, and so he describes what he's seeing, and suddenly, you know, when he's describing, you know, fish caught in a net altogether cramped up, suddenly, and there's photos sometimes in the books. You think, oh we so he makes the the reader work a lot, and I remember getting to that point and thinking he cannot say it. I'm the one who has to think the connection he's making between those cramped up bodies and recent European history. So I kind of had the same feeling because this is someone who is a sort of a double of the author of um Naymar Atif uh Shuduri because the the main uh Numeir, sorry, Nume Atif Shudori because he is an archai he's a researcher, right? So the the the narrator is a researcher, and so there's this situation where Numer Atif Shuduri was also uh um he was an academic. So there's this kind of thing that Zebald actually also works into his writings sometimes, but um sometimes didn't. Uh but there's always this component of research. But there's humor in it.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

There is. Yeah, it's quite funny.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

It's a very poignant form of humor because it's a humor that involves very serious situations. So tell us a little bit about is it so where where do you find yourself in the book? Is it in the documentary part of it? Is it in this kind of doubling of the researcher as a character in the book?

SPEAKER_00 31:22

Yes. Um the book, the premise of the book is basically it's this researcher, archivist, writer is looking back into the archive to piece together the story of this political luminary figure, which is on the cover of the book, which is Babu. The cover of the book is that this entire.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

The cover looks like a manga cover. It's an entire different for those who are watching, lucky you. I think it was the manga when you showed it to me. We had a meeting beforehand, and last I said, Oh, do you have the book? Yes, and or I looked it up on Google and I saw, oh, so you mean it's a uh a graphic novel? Um no, no, no, not at all. The the cover is quite something. Is the is the uh Bangladeshi cover the same?

SPEAKER_00 32:13

Yes, the Bangladeshi cover is the same, but I personally, from my perspective, find it quite controversial because it's published by HarperCollins India. The figure that they're trying to depict as Babu is wearing a traditional Indian clothing. And it's yeah, it's quite misleading. So they're wearing a duty, which is often associated with Indian clothing. We don't we wear a lunghi, which has Czech patterns in it. Um it's um it's it's depicting it's again projecting an identity onto us that's somewhat not representational in my personal opinion. And again, it's quite quiche. It was it's quite like it's quite a lot. There's a tiger, and then this like this blockbuster. But then again, it's also if I'm to critically analyze this, it's also looking at the lens of how political elections happen in Bangladesh, but through a very uh exaggerated lens, or perhaps from the lens of someone who often looks down on it, if you say if you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

I see, I see. It's a very distance. So for those who are listening, it's a very uh sort of a green, uh, very light, um luminous green, the book, and then it has kind of these fire explosions, these kind of like flames all around it. There's the title in in uh white letters, Babu Bangladesh, and then in the middle, and then you have the name of the author, same colour, same type of letters, and then the letters are connoted a little bit comic books, and then in the middle it ha you have a very comical book style character with no face, and he's just kind of emerging and jumping towards us or running, dressed in Indian attire, and behind behind him there's this face of a tiger, but you can't see the feature, you can't see the eyes and the the nose, and you just have this kind of very orange, uh brown, uh very bright colours. And so everything feels quite, as you say, almost a caricature of what you would associate with that side of the world, although that side of the world is clearly not represented as being as Bangladeshi or you know, Bengali. So it's it's quite peculiar.

SPEAKER_00 34:47

So the cover was also, in a sense, a lead or a clue to me to like shape my exhibition, is because when I went back home, I found a lot of these family archives of my father. He took the photographs that he took during his student years and during his like early, like young adult life. And they present an image of him that is so foreign to me, an idea of him that I'm not really I've never really encountered. It's quite mirroring of like how I am right now, but of obviously of a different generation, obviously it's sepia toned and black and white. And uh I was like, if I am to put the cover of my show, it would be just that image or just those images. I would use them as a few. The images, those photographs of my father's family archive.

SPEAKER_01 35:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:43

And um it wouldn't be I wouldn't try to ornate it with anything. I would it would just be that, you know, like it would I would try to stick as real, close, stay as close to what was real then or what felt real then.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

So in the beginning of the book, um you have a sense of how this person comes across the archive, which is in a very um almost uh the scene in itself and the person who delivers the archive wouldn't be the person you'd imagine having an archive, which I found really funny and fascinating at the same time. And I think the situation of you going into a uh your own father's archive and and looking at those pictures and this kind of uncanniness of seeing a completely different person and also a past that you could never have experienced. Is this something that you connect?

SPEAKER_00 36:41

I mean, there's in terms of the political history of Bangladesh, there's a lot of things that is hush-hush growing up. We were like, no, we can't speak about this. Let's not speak about this, our neighbors will hear it and whatnot. We need to keep it among ourselves. But there's a lot of insinuation, but that seeps into societal behaviors in the sense that you know you have to keep your thoughts to yourself, you can't be like, you can't be out there as well as they use parental figures, often use this as a mechanism to be controlling. Um, it's a it's a segue from this thought process of worrying in a country that where social security can can often differ or change. I'm I want to speak mindfully of it because obviously it's I'm um I'm aware that I might be presenting Bangladesh as this unsafe space, but no, I've spent my entire 20 years there, and um I've had great memories there. It's still a place that's close to my heart, but life is very different in London compared to in Bangladesh.

SPEAKER_01 37:56

There are ways to improve, and there are also things that people over there do better that we do not acknowledge here, and I must present that for for instance food, the white person's relationship to faraway countries.

SPEAKER_00 38:16

Uh my experience is with towels, towels, towels, towels, game changer. Um, we have this fabric called gamcha, it's very thin weaved cotton fabric that literally takes five seconds to dry. Like you wipe yourself, everybody, every farm, like people in the rural area, or day to day, every Bengali household has a gamcha. They use that instead of a towel. They take a shower, they wipe themselves up with a gamsa, they dry it, they dry themselves, they hang it out, it dries in five seconds. You can wash that thing and it will be dry the same day, and you can use it as a towel every single day. So essentially, one gamcha, you don't need to like cycle towels, one gamcha would be good for you. Very peculiar.

SPEAKER_01 39:06

I'm I'm relating so much to that because I think that when you're an immigrant, you notice the weirdest things because you're displacing your whole life to a different country, and there are some things that are just comfort that people don't talk about. People think comfort is having a beige house with an island in the kitchen, but that's not real comfort. Time for a short break. What are you doing? What are you up to? Are you driving? Are you walking around town? Are you in the public transports, maybe in London or elsewhere around the world? Thank you, by the way, for being a faithful listener and welcome if you're a newcomer. I am in front of my computer. I'm editing and recording and designing the new podcast art that goes with this episode. I am researching um the artist, the book the artist chose. All of these things I love doing, but they take time, they take energy, and they are hard work really. So without further ado, take your phone, look into your computer, wherever you may be, on a tablet, there is a link for you to become a member on Substack. You can also become a big supporter over there if you want to donate a bit more than just a membership. And there's also a link for donations, and yet another link for very, very small donations because I know that not everyone can contribute in the same way. If you can't contribute, if you can't donate, there's another thing that you can do, and believe me, it makes a huge difference. The more likes, the more comments a podcast has, the more it is bumped up to the three, four, five, ten first podcasts that are listed when you look for new podcasts about contemporary art, which is what we're about. So please don't hesitate, leave a comment, follow us on Spotify, leave a comment on YouTube, wherever you are, whatever you might be doing. It just takes a few seconds. So please like us, follow us, subscribe to us. Go ahead, click on those buttons, click on those links, and then go back to the episode. It's a really, really nice one. Thank you to those who signed up. Thank you for those who receive our emails and support us through Substack or have donated. Um, it is much appreciated. It's thanks to you that we're still here.

SPEAKER_00 41:54

Coming back to the context of the book, um, the book is told from the perspective of someone going through these archives and trying to jot down a biography of this political luminary figure, which is Babu. And uh as he tries to understand or like write down the history of this person, who is again not no longer there, um, he uncovers a lot about the nation and a lot about the things that Babu was involved in, and through that learns things about the nation that the general public or the character the main character himself didn't know about. And umaire the writer uses that as a tool to wash all the dirty laundry of Bangladesh politics.

SPEAKER_01 42:48

Speaking of towels.

SPEAKER_00 42:51

Speaking of towels, Numer the writer uses that as a device, speculative fiction as a device to talk about the dirty politics of Bangladesh that we couldn't speak out outwardly about. And it resonated with me a lot is when a political party that was in power for the last 15 years got ousted, and then we get to uncover a lot of state secrets that suddenly emerges, and it felt like it was running in parallel to the book.

SPEAKER_01 43:25

Explain a little bit because so the the character is fictional, the central politician is fictional, but there is reference to real political entities and to real events, right?

SPEAKER_00 43:40

Yes, um there are like cer certain political figures are named all throughout. Like, for example, we have this father of our nation, the person that is quite prominent in the history, his name is Sheikh Najibur Rahman, and His daughter is the ousted prime minister of Bangladesh. So politics in Bangladesh is quite dynastic. It's a it lives in the family, it's being upheld in the family, and it never got out of family. It's a in a form of monarchy or feudal system in with democracy as an outward presentation. Last year, there were everybody felt politically conscious, and there was a glimmer of hope that the beam might be able to steer away from that. Right now, it has culminated in a situation where if we are to steer away from that, the other option is quite horrific. It's the Islamic far right.

SPEAKER_01 44:46

People here in Europe, or maybe even in the United States, Canada, Australia, other countries may presume that Bangladesh m is a Hindu country or has you know other Jainist uh religion or whatever, but actually it's in majority, it is a Muslim country.

SPEAKER_00 45:06

Bangladesh is Muslim majority, and it has always been Muslim majority, but there has been other all sorts of religions that has coexisted, has existed since the independence of Bangladesh in 1971 has been celebrated. But because I mean this is one thought process that because we lived in this form of oppression and uh this form of corruption for so many years, people, there's a majority of people who believe that their needs were not served by these politicians, where else local grassroots religious organizations managed to serve their needs. At the same time, what is the solution to corruption? Perhaps it is God and God-fearing men.

SPEAKER_01 45:58

You explained to me when we met beforehand is that the book was written in English. Numer studied in the United States as well, and what he passed away by drowning in Tokyo. Like he was walking along a river, I think, or a canal, and he fell into the canal. So he was a very international person, but he still very much was concerned with Bangladesh. Bangladesh isn't the name of the book, is the cover. Uh it's on the cover, but um but he wrote in English. So I'm interested in knowing a little bit about this contradiction of the language.

SPEAKER_00 46:35

My parents can't speak English, right? So the people essentially close to my home, close to my heart, does not know a language that I also operate in. But that is also the education that they gave me. Everybody, anybody in Bangladesh, I I think it's safe to say, aspires to speak in English. And the educated can speak in English.

SPEAKER_01 47:04

And oh very interesting nuance. That's a completely different picture.

SPEAKER_00 47:11

Our constitution, our legislation, which were formed during the British colonial period, they're all they're all very much reminiscence or like a carbon copy of the British legal system.

SPEAKER_01 47:27

Wow. But is it in English?

SPEAKER_00 47:30

Uh no, it's in Bangla. But like obviously there's an English version and then there's the Bangla version. And uh, but yeah, there's an English version as well.

SPEAKER_01 47:39

So the British law is weaved into the constitution of the country, basically.

SPEAKER_00 47:44

Yes. And um, even now, as they're talking about restructuring the constitution, they're thinking of a parliamentary system that is upper house and lower house, quite reminiscent to the House of Commons and House of Lord. We are on a colonial hangover. Numaire obviously was very educated, was from an upper middle class or like an upper class background. But the way the book functions, given that it is in English, is the specificities and certain conversations that Numaire reveals in this book. Perhaps given that there's this is in English, allows it to be a smokescreen from the local politicians that he was critiquing during that time.

SPEAKER_01 48:32

The biographer, so the character talks about how difficult it is to from the diaries, because he's reading the diaries of this person, how difficult it is to evaluate whether what's being said is true, if it corresponds really to the reality of the person, how uh to what extent it mirrors the desires more than the realities. And I'm wondering about the photographs that you talked about, your pa your your dad's photographs and that relation, because a photograph by definition is mute.

SPEAKER_00 49:12

Archive or history has a tendency of putting certain figures on a pedestal and idolizing them. All forms of archives do. And it is important for us to burn that ideology, like to like constantly critique that. It's like, oh, how similar that we look. He's wearing a gap sweatshirt. Like he's so that's unconventional. Like, why is he doing well? How did he get his hands on that, right? How did he how did he you know?

SPEAKER_01 50:31

And like how we like wearing hanging out with to put his hands on an American sweater.

SPEAKER_00 50:43

So it's just like there are photos of him in a satorial suit, and then there are other photos of him like in Lungies and like traditional, like like working working class attire. And I was like, Oh, yeah, maybe this is the portrait of a man who was aspirational and was trying to make it for himself in a world, like, and it felt very similar to me, but at the same time, now I see him, and there are ways I would question or critique him. A presence of archive has this power of like telling you that how dare you, this is a great responsibility. Make sure you protect it, and I face that like particularly, like it was difficult. And I'm glad that you pick up on that because I think the writer, the narrator of the book, as he's writing down, tracing down Babo's story, also faces that problem.

SPEAKER_01 51:41

As I was listening to you, I was thinking of Ani Arnaud, and I was thinking of how a biographer is obviously talking about themselves in some ways, and talking about themselves ends up talking about the person and ends up talking about a whole chunk of the population in some ways. And it was interesting because I also was talking, talking thinking, oh, but that's youth, isn't it? Youth has aspirations. You don't know what your life is going to be. You are, may I say your age?

SPEAKER_00 52:12

Yes, of course. I'm 27.

SPEAKER_01 52:14

You were born in 1998, 1998. Yeah, so you're twit 27 years old. So I don't you find that, you know, thankfully, youth also has a lot of hormonal help to be very uh to have some hubris, but there's a lot of responsibility on you as well, you know, as a young person, in terms of your life and the life of other people you affect in the changes that you, you know, in the choices that you make. And I was kind of like, yeah, thinking about that in terms of being an artist.

SPEAKER_00 52:49

How do I tell that story given that I'm operating in two different languages? So it can't be text-based. If I am communicating in one particular language, I lose a whole set of audience, and if I communicate in the other language, I lose the other side of the audience. What is the universalness in it? So I soon realize that I want this need to tell a story that's not in the hegemony, but the story that exists. But I can't tell that through text, I can't tell that through language. And I can't also tell that through just simple images, because images, again, as we discussed earlier, we often, as viewers, we often project our meaning into these images, but images at the end of the day are mute.

SPEAKER_01 53:43

Aren't images the opportunity to hold different stories? I guess the images are what should be prevalent, and what characterizes images is the ambivalence that they to say the least that they might have. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 54:00

Yeah, it does make sense. Even this book, this book, in a sense, concludes to the image of Babu. What is an expanded image? I think I'm quite curious in understanding that. And uh, and you're right, images can be an ambivalent mode to like piece together narratives, and uh images are quite important, like they are a prevalent thing in our culture, and in a sense, it is changing. The way we are looking at image, we're looking at archive is changing given the formation of the internet and how we are navigating the internet right now. But one thing that I realized throughout my time in making this show while reading through the book and while taking care of my father, I realized that oh, there was this whole practice of taking photographs, printing it, developing it, printing it, putting into a family album, right? But that's quite coded to a specific timeline and a generation. And before this, we don't have photographs in our family archives. We have letters from our grandparents, like exchanges of letters. So before this, we were in a society where our memory lacked image and was text-based only. And at some point that text got replaced with images, and then at some point those images end, and all I have in my family archive, tucked away in that same container, are medical records, x-rays, city scans, yeah, doctor's reports, countless doctor's reports, right? Because those were the only physical entities there is. There were images, but those images are locked away in corrupted hard drives or in an iCloud that we don't have access to. And yeah, it helped me realize that oh, the language of memory was always changing, and it's changing in the contemporary setting as well, but it's in a form, the language is in a form which I don't really understand. And I don't think I will understand. Maybe my next generation will make sense of it.

SPEAKER_01 56:17

In the work that you're presenting currently, as someone who's excluded twice from the narrative, which is something that is too close to your experience now, which is your father's illness and and the proximity with someone who is an elder who is touched by something that um makes them fragile and vulnerable. And then you have the situation of a past that is represented by a language that is not yours anymore, as well, because printed photographs had a language that digital photographs don't. It's they're they're completely different ways of taking pictures. So I wonder where you, as a 27-year-old, as the artist, as the archivist, do you feel that you're not at all in the image? And you are more on the other side of the person who's managing the images.

SPEAKER_00 57:16

Uh let me respond. My response to this question might be quite complicated, and I apologize in advance for that. But go for it. Uh I will start the response with giving a little bit of context of my show currently going on. Yes. Um, so the show that is happening in Nanre Gallery, the title of the exhibition is called The Ground Beneath Me. And it tells the story from the perspective of someone standing inside my bedroom or my room in London, my rented room in London, in my absence, and uh wondering where I am, what I'm doing, and when I will return. Something that compelled me to move my all my belongings that are accumulated in my rented room in London to the gallery space is because for a significant chunk of last year, I was away. I was I did not live in this room, yet I paid majority of my income. My went into maintaining a room that I did not have it, have it like to live in, right? And that felt like, why am I doing this? And I'm doing this to have a sense of access, perhaps a sense of security, and it's also the life that I worked hard in building after coming here. They all live there. And while that room remains still in London, I was in Bangladesh taking care of my father, and there were all these political events that were happening that were unprecedented. I was also in and out of the hospital a lot during that time. This kind of similar incident happened in 2009 where my father was first time for the first time diagnosed with a critical illness, and uh the nation was going through this tumultuous period, and it felt like a deja vu for me. And it was it was activated by visiting the medical records because we needed to like for for his illness. The year was 2009, when the political party that has recently been ousted first came into power, and I was 10, 11 years old, and my father was diagnosed with a critical illness, and he sat me down and he told me I might not live long, you have to take care of the family, and he sent me to school the next day.

SPEAKER_01 59:53

I'm so sorry to hear that.

SPEAKER_00 59:54

That's quite and I had an absolute breakdown, right? And during that time, school closed early, we went back home, and all the adults were glued to the radio or the TV, and something was happening to the nation. We do not know of what, right? And later we realized, or like we were told, that the a certain wing of the military revolted against their senior officers in asking for restructuring, like asking to stop corruption, and as a result, killed off 57 senior military officers, and uh they were put on mass graves, like it was this weird thing, and everybody in the nation was like in shock of what just happened. And during that process, a lot of civilians in the neighboring areas got injured, got shot, and uh it was a very chaotic period. And that's when the party first comes into power. Throughout as we grew up, we we learned that oh, there are investigations going on about this, we don't know why it happened. FBI, Scotland Yard, they all come into our country with their help, the investigation on roles. And uh during that time, I had a friend whose father died in that incident. And I found it quite poetic because he used to console me about my father's passing away, the idea of my father's passing away, but then my father seeked his treatment and came back alive, but then her father went away, right? As a result of that. In my head, I was that was that was my experience. And I always lived with that guilt, and we haven't connected in the last 15 years. I felt like it was since I am in Bangladesh, stuck there in the middle of all this. I wonder what my friend is doing. So I try to find her and I manage to find her, and I reach out to her, and I use those medical documents as a gateway into starting the conversation of where she was during that period of time and what actually happened from her perspective, and she tells me all of that, and that takes the shape of a film that plays further alongside the gallery. But as all of that happened and my father's treatment finished, I finally came back to London. I was like, wow, so much of my money went into keeping this space. And I guess my plants are still alive. So somebody has been coming in and watering my plants. I wonder the person who was watering my plants knew what I just went through.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:46

I wonder where the notion of care comes into this um this setup that you have in the exhibition, and also if that's perceived by the spectator, if it's something that you that is important to you to be perceived.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:06

I've noticed that it's been like what four days, but I've noticed that I had these sticky notes that were on my in my room, and there was these this cup full of pencils, and people started writing notes on those sticky notes and leaving them there. And uh No, really, and they started writing these messages and like left them there. And uh today when I went to the gallery to pick up my book, I noticed them.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:34

There's a tradition in the UK of people showing their rooms or doing things with their belongings. You have Michael Landy who destroyed all his belongings.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:43

Breakdown is such a good reference, yes. Breakdown, yeah. I quite like Michael Landy's uh reference of breakdown because it was an art angel commission where um the Selfridges building that's uh what is Selfridge's right now?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:59

It was on the process of becoming Selfridges, but that's where the Art Angel Commission took place, where he So Selfridges, for those who are not in the UK, is this big um commercial building uh with lots of shops, but kind of high-end um brands and and uh you know uh commercial areas. Sorry, do you go on?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:23

And I also worked there before. And in my show. Did you in my show there is my name batch in the in the place in the place where I keep all my keys alongside my my contractor, my employee pass, which does not work anymore. So please it won't because I haven't I haven't tapped it in in a while.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:47

For those wanting to take it from the show, don't try it, it's not worth it.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:53

Um about Michael Andidas is uh takes all his belongings alongside his car, and with the help of a numerous amount of text, he breaks them down, like crushes them to bits. While I was also going through this and I was discussing with people what I need to do for the show, I kept thinking about or conversations that kept coming up was all the context that you're giving me about what is going on in your life. Giving context to someone in such detail is a job, and I don't know if you are willing to take on that job, but where does all that emotion live? And to me, I was like, Well, all those emotions are living in my empty bedroom that I really need to go back to.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:46

And uh I thought about it immediately. I thought, so wait, wh how is he sleeping? In what state is is his bedroom empty?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:55

There's a photo on my Instagram of my room as it stands now.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:00

Uh which is my quite recent post, but it's Okay, so I'm looking at the most emptiest room I've ever seen in my life. As in a room that someone lives in, obviously. It's it looks like you are showing a a space to rent, basically.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:20

It's just I I I I wanted to ask, I wanted to have people ask, where does he live now? And uh that's also the title of the show, in a sense, alludes to that. Um I also wanted to show what you know, like if I'm to represent a Bengali person, Bangalesi person in this contemporary scene, what best way to represent it than to show how they live or how they have lived? And uh it's all there. And uh and how does an immigrant live in London?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:04

So I suppose that you, as you described, you got to the end of the book. You finished it. Um does the book provide some sort of closure or some sort of growth?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:20

I quite enjoyed the process of going through the book, particularly because every event he's describing when this book is published, which is in 2019, but it's he probably wrote earlier, and he's depicting a scene in 2028, but we are in 2026 now, right? A lot of the scenes are run in parallel to the incident that happened last year and the year before. Naming of politicians, people coming and going. It felt like this book would hold answers to what comes in the future, given that I was going through a precarious circumstance. It ends in a manner where I'm like, okay, I've gone to the end, but the troubles in in my life has not ended. So I felt some to some sort of way which wasn't pleasant. But the process of it was the process of going through the book helped me. Like it there were moments where I was like, oh, I'm discovering so many things, and as I'm showing it to you, it's underlined. Uh it's it's like, and also you would notice the footnotes are they're huge. The footnotes are quite huge, and uh Wow. So he and there it's all underlined.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:56

There's notes, there's you told me there's drawings, I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:00

I didn't I don't know if I'm gonna find drawings. I don't know if I'm ready to I don't know if I'm ready to check.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:07

Maybe listen, let's oh wow, at the very end. Oh you I mean no.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:13

And it's an interior. Yeah, it's an interior, but like other other stuff as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:19

Although there's other stuff, yeah, at the end of a chapter. Yeah, there's uh a drawing in pen with with a pen. Three three three question marks.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:34

In terms of global discourse, oftentimes, in my personal experience, always felt like did not get the right attention from the colonial mother, and or like even in the global global hegemony, like we make very little noise. We even in even in London, most of our history, Bengali migrants come here and they set up curry houses, right? Majority of the curry houses are by Bengali immigrants, but they are marketed as in authentic Indian cuisine.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:05

Indian cuisine.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:06

So we're not yeah, but we're not we're not trying to present it as authentic Bengali cuisine. We're not putting out our identity, we're trying to mimic something else. So, in that context, like I felt like this was one of those very few books hopefully might give context in tangent to someone Rushti, Gamila Shamsi, Mostan Hamid, Orendha Tiroi, and uh all Indian authors, yeah. Indian Pakistani authors, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:40

Pakistani. And can a work of art really give you answers, even if it's very even if it's very accurate in regards to predicting the future?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:52

This is uh this hits close to home in the sense that sorry. No, no, no, and it's a quite poignant question, in the sense that a lot of writers, a lot of artists often get asked, you know, like, okay, what's the solution? You're presenting a problem, you're presenting a scenario, what's the solution? And uh the reason why also I felt I guess because the book concludes in a way that doesn't give me answers. But that being said, it's quite dangerous to like then we we move into the the the realm of shamanism, soothsayers, and uh sane figures, right? We don't have the answer, and uh I don't know why we are expected to have the answers just because we are and I hope the answer comes in unison, and I hope it's not an answer. I hope it's uh it's recognizing the sign of times, recognizing the way we live, the recognizing our current life, and being like, no, having enough people experience it might generate empathy for change.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:14

Yeah. Yeah. Because my one of the questions I wanted to ask you is, are you very aware of the fact that your the your exhibition is going to be perceived and experienced in from from very different perspectives, that your spectators are not, you know, a sort of monolith?

SPEAKER_00 1:12:39

I don't know if I'm allowed to share this, but I think it's okay if I don't name anybody. And uh if this person ends up listening to it, I have a lot of respect for you. Um but when the show opened, the show in the middle of my room is a cardboard lampshade, which is the architectural mock-up of the General Assembly Hall of Bangladesh. It has 350 seats and they represent 350 demographic, 350 members of parliaments that represent various different quotas, various different shapes and forms. It's quite iconic, it's quite egalitarian, it was very utopian, even in its design. It's I've never been inside that building. I've never been inside that building. For a long period of time, we were not allowed to. And then I saw on social media last year people stormed inside that building. A part of me was like, oh, I wish I was there to see what was inside it. It's been gatekeeped from us for so long. And then when I came to London, I met a curator who's doing a South Asia exhibition, curation, major exhibition in one of the biggest London institutions. And I heard that I'm from Bangladesh and was like, oh, I recently visited Bangladesh and I got a tour of the National Parliament Building and started showing me these photos. And I'm like, rah, I have spent 20 years of my life, and I've walked outside, I've gone countless times outside, like past that building countless times, and I've never stepped in. And this person who doesn't even live there gets to stand in the middle of it and witness it all. On the show opening, the granddaughter of the person who wrote the Constitution of Bangladesh was there, and uh she's my age, and uh and I kept wondering how she feels about this. But I was really, really worried and shy to ask that question, and I wanted to respect her presence and her autonomy in it as well, but it must be very different for her too. Must be different.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:09

That was uh very striking for me because we often think about informing people. You know, art is great because it will inform other people about my situation, about my region, about my city, about my gender, or whatever. And actually what I found incredibly moving is that what it sent you back to this question is how you share a history with people who are perceiving it in a way that may be very difficult to fathom, you know, from another standpoint. I'm currently experiencing something very similar in a in an exhibition of mine. So it kind of touched me deeply.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:53

Can you share with me a bit about that? I would love to hear it.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:57

Um very quickly, it's an exhibition that I curated uh by it's a solo exhibition of a Portuguese um second generation born in France uh from the Portuguese diaspora, because um Portugal had a million people uh fleeing the country during the dictatorship that ended in 74, so this is late 60s immigration, her father. And her father had to walk across the Pyrenees to go to France. It was um economic um diaspora, really, people who were in deep, deep misery. She her father passed away, and so she's inheriting the story, and she has this exhibition. Uh, so we built this exhibition together that isn't that now opened in Lisbon. And in Portugal, there's a big denial about this history. And the experience was um very surprising during the opening, because even my own mum taught me things that I had never heard about, you know, related to that history, and um, you know, people who um cr started crying or being being very emotional, or being incredibly happy and feeling seen and feeling that somehow there was a celebration of that history that is so rich for the country as well. Um, and also the incomprehension of certain layers of society of that history and and um and a difficulty in addressing the subject with them. Yeah, that that really um I I have to highlight that as well, which was um sobering uh experience as well. Yes. Yes, it's in Math, M-A-A-T, which is uh a museum in Lisbon, and it's called um Notre Feu in French because she you know, broaching the subject of the language, she chose to keep it in French, even though she is a Portuguese, um she's the daughter of Portuguese uh immigrants and she speaks Portuguese. Isabel Isabel Ferreira. Isabel Ferreira, yes, that's it. I would just ask you to um uh close up and to finalize this exchange to maybe name an artwork and now not running away from uh a creative piece that might not have to do anything with uh visual arts, but in in this particular instance, like uh a work of visual arts or film, or you know, that that may have been important to you.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:35

It's actually called Where is the Friends House?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:37

And Where is the Friends House by Abas Kerostami?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:40

Yeah, it's so beautiful, it's quite minimal in dialogue, but it takes place in a school and a school in a rural area where children have to go really far to go to the school. And the story is about how one of the students gets his homework copy mixed up with the person sitting next, and or packs mistakenly packs the person sitting next to their homework copy and is throughout the day very worried that he will not be able to finish his homework and get punished by the teacher. So he finds ways to find him and visit him or to find his house to give him his homework copy. But he has so many of these familial responsibilities that he has he has to do after school with all the adults telling him what to do: get milk, get bread, do this, do that, and then do your homework. And they're not listening to him, they're thinking he's lying and he's uh he's trying to find excuses to go play. And I think this is like a great device to show how much or how little we listen to children or young people and how optimistic and how empathetic inherently they are.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:06

Wow. Well, thank you so much. Uh let's leave that suggestion there. And uh thank you, thank you, uh Lysul, for doing this and for sharing such an incredible book with us. So it is uh Babu Bangladesh, Nume Atif Shuduri. Uh the audiobook for my my dyslexic friends out there. The audiobook is actually really, really well read.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:34

I have a question. Uh, is the art audiobook read by a female voice actor?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:40

No, male.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:42

Because there's a version of the audiobook I heard that Lubna Chodhuri reads out, which is Namair's mother. The mother who's uh my principal, who's my late principal of my school. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:56

Thank you, Lysul. This was absolutely illuminating and really, really enjoyable.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:01

Thank you so much for having me, Jonah. Really appreciate it. Have a good rest of your day.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:08

Okay, bye-bye. Cool. That was wonderful. Exhibition This is an independent podcast created and hosted by me, Joanna Pierre Nevis. Because we're all both actors and spectators of art and life.