Digital Art, Visual Art and Photography Exhibit:
“Emerging Faces, Portraits and Identities of Bangladesh.”

The Media Studies and Journalism (MSJ) Department launched an exhibit entitled “Emerging Faces, Portraits and Identities of Bangladesh” on August 19, 2010 at ULAB Campus B.  The exhibit featured three communication campaigns, 30 plaster masks, 32 face paintings, 32 photographs, 40 digital masks, the film adaptation of Syed Walliullah’s  novel “Death before Dawn” and research findings on the Identity Construction and Visual Texts of Bangladeshi Youth.  The exhibit will run until September 20.

All items produced by students of the Media Studies and Journalism (MSJ) Department from the courses: Development Communication (with Marium Akther as lecturer); Visual Communication (with Marium Akther as lecturer); Social Context of Media (with Abul Mansur Ahmed as lecturer); Introduction to Photography (with Razibul Hossain as lecturer); Multimedia Production (with Imtiaz Ahmed Chowdhury as lecturer); Video Communication 2 (with Razibul Hossain as lecturer); and Research Methodologies (with Anis Pervez as lecturer).

The exhibit took off from the Face Negotiation Theory of Stella Ting-Toomey, which divides cultures into collectivistic and individualistic.  Based one’s culture, he/she constructs a public face and a private face.  For Ting-Toomey, people who belong to individualistic cultures do not have distinct public and private faces but those who come from collectivistic cultures have very distinct public and private faces.  However, Ting-Toomey added that people are not imprisoned by their cultures. They can have identities of their own choosing. As applied to Bangladesh, the country can be considered collectivistic where there is a huge gap between private and public faces.

The exhibit was part of the Department’s Curriculum Integration Program, which was established to facilitate faculty and students from various year levels and study concentrations to work together and learn from each other.  It has two primary objectives.  First, it utilizes active learning approaches to enhance the educational experience of students.  Second, it encourages students to look inward – to reflect on their own personalities, aspirations and identities.  The Department believes that students must be comfortable and confident with themselves before they can positively contribute to others.

The exhibit was the culminating activity under the Summer 2010 MSJ Department Curriculum Integration Programme.  The first forum entitled “Portraits of Bangladesh” was held on June 17 with Abul Mansur Ahmed (Associate Professor, Dhaka University) and Anis Pervez (Associate Professor, MSJ Department, ULAB) as speakers.  The second activity was conducted on July 8 with ULAB Senior Lecturer Marium Akhter tackling “Visual Texts of Bangladesh” at the ULAB Auditorium.  

Aside from these, students from the “Development Communication” course  featured the communication campaigns they produced for Spanish NGO Aid, Exchange and Development (AIDA).  Three communication campaigns on raising awareness on women empowerment in Bangladesh was presented, along with prototype posters and other communication materials.