Rokeya Sultana

About Rokeya Sultana

Rokeya Sultana is a Bangladeshi artist with an international sensibility. An accomplished and award-winning artist, printmaker and professor, Sultana studied at the Institute of Fine Arts, Dhaka, and at Vishwa Bharati University, Santiniketan. This was followed by a residency scholarship to L'Atelier Lacouriere et Frelaut, Paris. Also a Fulbright scholar, Rokeya Sultana's art is a reflection of loss and displacement and the impermanence of life. She was influenced in her formative years by the tumultuous 1971 revolution. She addresses the issues of womanhood and the power of intuition and imagination as a feminine attribute that moves into universal truths. The complexity of motherhood and the mother's struggle in the adverse situation of her urban life found expression in the 'Madonna' series of the early and mid-1990s. She has engaged in a quest for quietness, depth and lyricism. Her use of fluid and transparent colours, controlled accidental effects, figures drawn in lines and free-floating organic forms reveal her deeper understanding of the bounty of nature and the cycle of human life within it. Through a symbolic personal language, she expresses metaphysical perceptions of women in communication with nature, who lead the next generation, becoming the key to the world. She serves as professor, Department of Printmaking, at the Institute of Fine Arts, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh.