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Freedom (with Italian-Egyptian artist Usama Saad)
Freedom (with Italian-Egyptian artist Usama Saad)
etching and aquatint on Hahnemuhle cotton paper, 1 of 4
24 x 16 in
2019

This work was made in Rome during my visit there in December 2019. It is part of a body of work that is being developed under the concept of "Reflecting Alphabets," curated by Ursula Bonetti. The piece "Freedom" is made in collaboration with artist Usama Saad, with the assistance of Caterina Tedeschini. We were exploring the concept of Freedom and Words using different scripts. I immediately thought of the fight for freedom of Bangladesh over our right to speak our own words and language and our right to use our own unique Bangla script. I created my plate in Rome in the studio of Caterina Tedeschini. Usama is from Egypt and later created a plate with the Arabic word for freedom. We continued our collaboration over Skype and email over the next few weeks and finally agreed on the colors and placement of plates.

There is Bengali/Bangla writing of the words "mother language" "state language" and "freedom," and the gold lettering in Arabic says "freedom." The work is about the freedom to speak one's mother language and use our own scripts.