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Transforming clay into terra cotta
Farida Shaikh

Alak Roy’s first love is sculpture. He dreams of being awarded with a hillock to turn it into a sculpture garden.
   His first solo exhibition was ‘Matir Kanna’ in 1981 and in 2007 was his fourth exhibition at DC Hill Chittagong ‘Steps to Ecology of Mind -1.‘Maner Pratibash’ is all about man and his environment.
   Man is not alone, for the environment; also called nature, is his best friend. Man is not a part of nature; man and nature is and has always been one and the same.
   It is painful for the artist to experience the break in this bondage; the imbalance that is set forth is beyond repair, for the harmony in nature contains man’s soul, and his mind.
   In the plaintive voice he announces ‘…there is just one sky, one moon, one sun and one and only earth… life is endeared with bountiful beauty, to seek and save this beauty is our common concern…’
   His most recent work titled, ‘As Sidr Blew Over the Fishing Village’ in clay and wood is the capsized fishing boat with four fallen fishermen immersed in bloody water and the living one proclaiming the continuity of life and another struggling for life against the full fury of the hurricane and the tidal bore that hit the Sunderbans most severely on November 15, 2007.
   The sculptor’s sensibilities were awakened for quite some time to the severe devastation on rural communities due to storm and upsurge. The final shape to that agony was given soon after the storm Sidr.
   Mass Killing of Trees is a kind of self destruction; all bare and naked, annihilation of many trees by man. Birthday of a Banyan Tree is a rhetorical representation. Tree like man is life, so why can’t a tree celebrate its birthday?
   Death of Fertility Goddess gives a closer look at emptiness symbolised by human breast devoid of the body lying lifeless.
   The series of sculpture titled Earth Looking at the Sky is a symbiotic representation ‘… for there is only one earth…’ and the limitless sky up above.
   The influence of Feng Shui, a form of geomancy and a kind of architectural acupuncture, cover the exhibited sculptures.
   His sculptures, Listening to the Duet of Wind and Fallen Leaves, or Living Together with Nature or Life within Seed, Seed within Life, are in the foot steps of Henry Moore ‘not a decoration of life but an experience of the significance of life’ by interaction with nature.
   Starting in 1978 he has done thirty three numbers of commissioned mural and sculpture work in the country; most prominent works are at Grameen Bank Building in Dhaka and the Military Academy in Chittagong.

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