Today we’d like to introduce you to Ali Asgar.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
My works are driven by my experiences of growing up in Bangladesh as a queer and living in the capital, Dhaka in a very heteronormative class-based society. The city of Dhaka which is one of the most densely populated megacity on the world shaped me as a person and pushed me towards my politically motivated creative process. On a context of Bangladesh where sex is a taboo, sexual diversity is a sin for its conservative religious value and overall talking about sexuality and sexual desire only happen on a close door elite discussion, I was motivated through my activism to produce works on public spaces by bringing the issues of queer suffering on the discussion table for the mass audience. In 2016, 36 blogger, writer and free thinker and religious minority group members were hacked into the death by the Muslim extremist group of Bangladesh who claimed their association with Al-Qaeda and ISIS later. In 2016 from February, I remember I used to always carry a sharp knife with me, in case if I get attacked. On 25th April 2016, when I was at my friend’s apartment at Dhaka to hang out, 6 extremists attacked my friend’s apartment with an open machete and killed 2 of my friend on their bedroom. I escaped from the house and after being house arrested for 2 months, I came to America on June 28th for an uncertain self-exile. I left Dhaka without seeing my family or knowing certainly where I am going. When I came to America, I knew I am leaving my 26 years of life back and for many years in future, I will never be able to go back to my city where I grow up and the city and the country which helped me to grow up intellectually with my work.
Coming to America was a depressing and traumatic experience, but also this new experience insists me to think deeply about trauma, history of trauma, consumerism, racial aggression, displacement, isolation, body politics and social privilege. In many ways, I am an alien in America. I didn’t come to America to peruse an American Dream, like many other Immigrant here. I come here because I had to choose between life and death and America was the opposite name of life for me.
I was born in 1991, Bangladesh; my work focuses primarily on the body and the relationship between body and space. My early work and activism were around the area of gender, sexuality and social norms which often reflects upon my personal struggle and experience of growing up in conservative Bangladeshi patriarchal society and its attitude toward members of the LGBTQI community. The controversial and politically charged nature of my work — exploring gender and eroticism — exposed me to significant risk in my home city of Dhaka, where I had staged provocative street performances and gallery exhibitions intentionally designed to challenge the conservative sexual mores of the culture. As an artist, my provocative art and personal identity placed me at extreme risk. I was awarded a prestigious Artist Protection Fund Fellowship (APF) in 2016. I am now currently working on an MFA in Performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago – SAIC. Isolation and displacement plays a key role in my current works and thought process, My recent projects are politically-inspired especially by the recent political stressful climates of the United States. My current project “No One Home”, a work constructed around the concept of human interactivity, displacement, trauma and queer identity and the key intention of this interactive performance piece is finding the meaning of home and belongingness. I have earned my BFA in Printmaking from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Dhaka and has participated in major group exhibitions including the 2014 and 2016 Dhaka Art Summits, the 2016 Kolkata International Performance Festival, the 2014 Dhaka Social Art Festival and the Asian Art Biennial. For the last one year, I had toured around the USA with my work and produced work in several spaces in Boston, Chicago, NY, and Maine. Earlier 2017, I was one of the leading speakers and a featured artist at the PEN World Voice Festival in New York City. My most recent ongoing work is a solo performance conversation “Exile Series = Rising Sadness” a work focuses on political drag, an experience of the queer migration and exile.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
My work and visual narrative motivated into a new direction in past one years at America. Like one of my show title I am “Othered Everywhere”, and America makes me realize resistance is a global phenomenon. America is beautiful with its own absurdity but also its depressing to see the increasing racial injustice and the lack of human interaction. Also, especially when I was in Maine I started thinking about white desire because of my many racial encounters. My experiences in Maine provoke me to think about how white desire want to see a brown queer suffering or how they want to appropriate a body, more precisely a brown queer body experience. White desire wants to validate their opinion and like to see them as an authority. These problematic tendencies of the white culture and its interrelation to brown queer suffering becomes the initiator of my current practice. My recent works talk about the discomfort of being a person who lives and works at the United State as an alienated persona.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Ali Asgar – what should we know?
As a creative producer and artist, I am interested in the politics of race, gender, and socially underprivileged group. I am more interested to think and know about theory, method, and process rather than technique. And on the end, I like to question, I like to question authority, rules, constructed images and established ideas. I am in constant search for answers through my visual narrative where questions are also sometimes unknown.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Over the past few years, I survive through my art (or non-art), producing new work and looking for new ideas becomes a part of my survival mechanism where the goal is not always so clear. As I always say – “I make art to survive, it’s not a luxury for me anymore”. This commitment to producing/ performing/ creating/ thinking/establishing new ideas becomes a key driving force to move forward, where sometimes not necessarily I am always looking to achieving something. I know I have to do it to survive and making Art became an instinct for me
Contact Info:
- Website: aliasgarart.com
- Phone: 207-299-0305
- Email: ali1987.aa57@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/
Image Credit:
Ali Asgar
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