Firoz Mahmud

I used to like and read ‘Itihash’ (history) and ‘Vugol’ (geography) more than ‘Onko’ (mathematics). My father and grandfather were academicians, historians and writers. I was influenced to reflect legacies, myths and histories on my paintings. Thus my drawings and paintings are narrating the colonial legacies, influences and remnants of the Bengal region, aspects of cultural heritage and the history of European in South Asia and traditional influences of the West in Bengal. I use idioms juxtaposing old palaces, forts, spice trees or herbaceous plants, wild animals, migrational and geographical traces and colonial traders. The narrativity and mythology of paintings and drawings that beg the question of how they exist today, and what forces have created new visual territories, impacting how we remember our own cultural histories and those of our neighbors. Very often, I confront many Bangladeshis at different locations in New York and many of whom had arduous experience migrating to the US. Being influenced by the book ‘Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America’, I feel to reveal a lost history of Bengali sojourning and life-making in New York city. Living and confronting different cultures, regions and horizons vacillated most of my art projects, which made me a person of mixed feelings. But I don't want to lose my own culture, history and legacy.