Artist Zakia Khan Chandana's Surrealist Exhibition Explores Unconscious Reality

Artist Zakia Khan Chandana's third solo exhibition, 'Reality of the Unconscious Mind,' opened on Friday, July 3rd, at Alliance Française's La Galerie in Dhaka, Bangladesh, presenting a mature exploration of her long-standing surrealist artistic journey. Chandana's work visualizes the unconscious mind not merely as a psychological concept but as a tangible surrealist realm, where dreams, memories, desires, and identity intermingle, blurring the lines between reality and imagination. This approach draws parallels with the renowned surrealist Salvador Dalí, who similarly centered his art on depicting the unconscious. Each painting functions as a distinct universe, illuminated by a magical interplay of light and shadow, hinting at a creation that extends far beyond the canvas's physical boundaries. The exhibition, running until July 8th, features pieces like 'Veins of the Earth,' a powerful metaphor for the climate crisis with ominous red clouds and a struggling tree symbolizing faint hope, and 'Fragmented Horizon,' depicting a broken future with a dry tree inside a sphere against a barren landscape, reflecting environmental anxieties. Other works, such as 'Journey Against Destruction,' explore the tension between creation and destruction through fragmented scenes and absent human figures, while 'Roots Beyond Time' uses solitary landscapes to symbolize the fragility of time, memory, and existence. While Chandana's art aligns with surrealist traditions, it offers a unique perspective, incorporating contemporary global concerns like climate change and South Asian realities, distinguishing it from Dalí's focus on European modernist psychological crises. Her piece 'Mirage of Gravity' freezes an ancient settlement on the verge of collapse, a symbol of civilizational fragility, and 'Fragmented Horizon' presents a dislodged earth and floating debris, representing contemporary fragmented realities. Chandana's art transcends personal feeling to echo collective crises and human questions, offering potent visual metaphors for climate change relevant to today's art world.