
Ashrafi Sultana
i am an artist. I had completed my BFA from university of dhaka in ceramics and MFA in georgia southern university in Sculpture. I am doing my MFA IN UMBC AT Maryland in USA.
I was born as a human and I would like to introduce myself as a human being. But it is not possible for me. If I say my name, you will understand I am a Muslim. If I say my country’s name, then you will understand I am from a different country. I am different from other people. I have a different culture and other differences. So, I am more of an identity than a human being. I consider human birth an accident and this accident could happen to anyone. Why did we recognize ourselves by this accident? Now I am more of an identity than a human. I feel like identity is also important for human existence. So, I am in the pendulum of this discourse.
Thus, People are fascinated with identity and selfishness, greediness. They forget they are human and people are equal-where few people have most of the money. After trying to feel my surroundings, I find technology, which brings all human beings together with great opportunities and blessings, and with the suffering of the human soul. It is not individual suffering, it is becoming worldwide. Everything has become mono- mono culture- mono idea- and other intersectionality related to human beings are becoming mono. Overall, the world is becoming mono, there are no variations. Here I am confessing my suffering-my inner contradiction with my identity, trying to balance between the two. But brutality sometimes gets equality, equality of consumer society products-equality of identity. Where most people are, labor-only existence matters, earning money- not humans themselves- and other money-hegemony all over life. I try to express my views with my artwork.
As I was born in Bangladesh, which is part of the Indian sub-continental, and my home is a few minutes away from the spice research center. As I grew up, I observed that I understand a lot more about spices than people across other nations and people from multiple regions of my own country. I simply learn about spices by observing my immediate surroundings. Furthermore, as I am living in the USA now, I find out people from other countries also bring different cultures and traditions to the United States and other multicultural countries. We can only minimalize our racial identity by mixing cultures, by mixing with other races, by mixing cultures, ethnicities and identity, groups, traditions and so on. As I have brown skin, which is made for mixed races, People from other regions came to the Indian subcontinent for business. And related to the spices- the spices are the reason-because of this, people from other sides of the world come to the Indian subcontinent for business and for coming to India. Some countries invent ships and overseas routes for shipping, the invention of the railway is related to this, then they started with business and ended up ruling and creating colonies and they leave their history with their objects and their activities. And this relationship is a matter of discourse. And the relationship of all the elements here in this artwork is a metaphor for this world and This artwork is results of my critical thinking about this world and I am trying to represent this notion with the politics of art.
The aroma of the artwork, the warmth of the lamp, the rhythm of the visual presentation and other elements related to the sensation and our auras, make an environment which is not fully defined, like a poem. My poem drawing suggests that we may all live in different parts of the world, but we all have one common ancestor and, commonly, we are all humans.