‘PLASTIC DEMOCRACY’ Residence with Britto Arts Trust in Bangladesh

                    ‘Mother of Corruption’

Jessica Rost

Installation

I had some difficulty adjusting to my comfortable life back here in the UK, after spending two months in Dhaka, Bangladesh, one of the most polluted and over populated capitals, in one of the poorest countries of the world.

It is probably quite normal to feel disorientated after such an intense period of work and certainly common to feel ‘culture shocked’ even returning from a short break. But this time the adjustments were harder to make and perhaps the changes to my outlook were permanent.

Bangladesh culture is the richest I have ever experienced in terms of creativity and ingenuity; folk art, textiles, music…the country is also rich in natural resources. It is however, one of the most corrupt countries in the world.

These contradictions woven into the daily life provided endless artistic fuel for my work. The beautiful textiles; wood block printed cottons as cheap as chips, hand woven silks and jute cloth next to the beggars sifting rubbish for anything recyclable, next to the heroin addicts sleeping on pavements. The colourfully painted trucks belching out thick smog into the barely breathable air and the Rickshaw pullers, with no shoes, who sleep on the streets, between pulling the beautiful people and their heavy loads everyday, all day, for very little money.

The frustration, even resignation, among young Bangladesh artists was obvious. The longer I stayed, the more I understood what they were up against, the more I admired their strength and witnessed their helplessness, verging on hopelessness.

In this country the political system holds everything in an impossible arm lock. Those with any power will stop at nothing, using bribes, blackmail, religious law and force, to gain more power. They are controlling health services, businesses, trade, and education.

This includes the Art Colleges, where, due to the continual national strikes by various political factions, the average time taken to complete an MA is eight years. Many students are forced to show affiliations to particular groups to gain access to their Halls of Residence and the lecturers are employed and selected not according to experience, qualifications or even enthusiasm but according to their political alliances. Most of these lecturers offer no guidance to students and are rarely seen in the colleges.

My residency was supported by Triangle Arts Trust and funded by Arts Council England. The residency was hosted and organised by Britto Arts Trust in Bangladesh.

Britto is a voluntarily organisation run by a small group of trustees, -practicing artists themselves. Despite the constant struggles, which include; keeping foreign funding safe from the corrupt banking system, facing the changing, often dangerous situations, working in a country where inflation is out of control and the electricity is cut off up to six times a day, where people have little or no contact with the international art world…despite all this, Britto survives. It provides a valuable support, a forum, for many young artists, who want to make contemporary work but would otherwise give up, with no dialogue and no audience within the art education system provided.

During the two months I was in Bangladesh I made many works which reflected the frustrations, the ‘no-win’ situations and the inequalities which I witnessed there, including a collaborative performance, ‘The Road to Plastic Democracy’, two short films and the installation ‘Mother of Corruption’. I worked closely with a Bangladesh artist, Kabir Ahmed Masum Chisty, a member of Britto Trust, who was also taking part in a residency. There were many similarities in the themes we were both exploring and our work came together in an exhibition which we called ‘Plastic Democracy’, at The Goethe institute, Dhaka.

'The News at 10’

Kabir Ahmed Masum Chisty

Puppet Show Performance

 

‘Blue Mosquito’

Jessica Rost

Still from Film

From the beginning of my stay I was interested to find out what the real Bangladesh was about. With so much recent history and problems still raging, I wanted to know where the people had come from, their story. I was at first disappointed to find that many of the ancient buildings are left to crumble and the folk traditions are given little value. I soon realised that the identity of Bangladesh is kept close to the people through personal experiences, stories, songs, puppet shows and music. It can’t be defined through architecture or objects in the museum.

The film, ‘Blue Mosquito’, is about the feelings I experienced under the surface of everyday life there; the struggle to be free, the search for the unattainable, the longing for the impossible. The film is a song, a beautiful love tragedy; the hopes, and aspirations which are constantly interrupted by the menacing mosquito eyes.

        

 ‘Mother of Corruption’

Jessica Rost

Installation

A net is both a partition and a divide. It protects some of us from danger and it prevents change and opportunity or it can bring people closer together, connecting them to each other.

In this case, the blood suckers, (paper mache mosquitoes painted with the colours and logos of the many Bangladesh political parties), are trapped inside the net, unable to have any control on either side. Trapped in net bags used to carry shopping; they are the political market place.

The over sized mosquito inside the net installation denotes that things may be out of control. The monster mosquito is free to come and go through a large hole; her scale is on a human scale inviting the viewer to enter the lair.

Although in this work I was using very specific imagery related to issues I witnessed during my stay in Bangladesh, I wanted the work to reach out on a broader human level. It is a work about all religious and political fundamentalism and the frustration and inequality which I see that causes.

  

Jessica Rost

April 2006