British Bangladeshi artist Mukta Chakravarty’s six month-long art project ‘Canvas story: Narrating British Bangladeshi cultural heritage to enhance cultural resilience’, was inaugurated in London last week. The project aims to exhibit the Bangladeshi cultural heritage to a wider audience, including the British Bangladeshi diaspora. Arts Council England and National Lottery funded the project, and also endeavour to create a cultural resilience enhancing cultural identity across the young diaspora, showcasing the cultural heritage of Bengal.
Mukta Chakravarty carried out research and wrote three scripts on three separate areas of British Bangladeshi cultural heritage, namely Nouka Bais (Boat race), Dol (Festival of colour) and Manosamangol (a medieval Bengali literature). The artist illustrates three paintings on these topics and develop audio-visuals that will connect painting, music and poetry to showcase the stories of Bangladeshi cultural heritage to the audience via social media platforms. The audio-visuals are also aspired to be archived at the South Asian cultural heritage archive in the British Library.
In addition, as a part of this project, six online seminars will be arranged. With the participation of academics from London universities, along with the local representatives and cultural activists, these seminars will analyse and question the significance of cultural heritage in response to cultural identity, integrity and cohesion.
“Every canvas has a story of its own. I am here to tell stories through my canvas using my brushes, paints and imagination,” said Chakravarty. “There are interesting stories to tell about British Bangladeshi cultural heritage. I aim to depict three of those ethnic stories through my project, ‘Canvas Story’. The stories will be presented by an audio- visual combined with fine art and music, signifying the rich cultural heritage of Bengal aiming to build ‘one community living together’.”
In 2019, Mukta Chakravarty’s month-long solo art exhibition of 40 paintings, Tribeni -The Rhythm of Water, supported by London Borough of Tower Hamlets and Queen Mary University London, received appreciation from the critiques. During the pandemic, Mukta Chakravarty’s virtual fine arts project funded by Arts Council England, titled ‘Stay Alive with Fine Arts’ delivered live paintings and virtual exhibition to the audience’s doorstep.