The Biotoop in Haren has been a breeding ground of creativity for many years now and has cemented its position within the creative scene of Groningen. Many artists dream of having their studio there and one of the lucky ones is Anika Mariam Ahmed (b.1988. Dhaka, Bangladesh). Surrounded by paintings in her spacious and brightly lit studio we spoke to her about her background and artistic practice.
"I have always been drawing and painting ever since I was little. I went to study Architecture for about a year and I really loved that first year. It was very playful and we studied design and did a lot of composition studies. However, the second year was focused on ergonomics and theory and I quickly had enough of that. I decided to apply to art school and was thrilled to hear that I was accepted. At the beginning, my parents weren't too happy about my career choice and as a way of offering a compromise to them, I studied English literature as well. However, my parents have been very supportive in the years that followed. I loved that study. Among other streams, we studied a lot of feminist and postcolonial theory, which helped me deal with a lot of current issues as well as that it provided me a way of looking at language. For example, we read Caribbean literature and in that some of the writers talk about having a hybrid language. As an expat or an artist of a different origin you always get the question; "Where are you from and do you identify as an artist from that place?". But I don't think it is all as simple as that and that as people move around and settle in a new place, they will end up adopting a more hybrid identity rather than one that speaks only of where they came from. While perhaps that is not even the question that you are primarily dealing with in your work, if at all.
Painting is all just on the surface; it's paint smeared on a surface. But there is poetry to all the brushstrokes, the forms and the lines.
The art school where I went to in Bangladesh teaches a lot of traditional painting and drawing. I appreciated that formal training and I liked doing all the model drawing and doing studies in nature. However, I also wanted to find my own voice in painting and decided to move to the Netherlands to study painting. I enrolled into the Frank Mohr Institute because it specifically had a Painting Programme and it helped that I could study here in English. It was a very free programme and there were many people that didn't use paint despite studying Painting, but perhaps looked through the lens of that medium and used it as their language to describe the world around them. After coming here I was very happy that I have had a traditional training because it has supplied me with a lot of material knowledge. It helps to know these things because you have the ability to use it to your own will. Painting is all just on the surface; it's paint smeared on a surface. There is poetry to all the brushstrokes, the forms and the lines.
There is a lot of pressure on artists to make marketable works, but I don't work that way and that provides me with a lot of freedom.
For my own work I collect a lot of images and photos and try to see how I can best paint it. It sounds like a simple approach, but painting is never that easy. I want to transfer a feeling with paint and that feeling can be conveyed in the light, the composition or in the way of painting itself. I use images that come from my personal surroundings. I like to look at everyday scenes and their composition, the geometry behind it all and how I could translate it to lines, colours and forms. Lately I use a lot of pastel, the colours as well as the medium. Because I haven't used oil pastels that much in recent years I feel that I don't have too much control over it and I like that. Not knowing what an image will turn out like gives surprises which are welcome.
People tend to divide painting into figurative and abstract, but I think that different ways of thinking about painting can live side by side. Painting is not that binary and in my own practice I try to straddle the figurative and abstract and find a balance in it. I see a lot of paintings on Instagram and art fairs that are very sleek and they fight for attention in the spaces that they occupy, whether on the screen or in the fairs, and neat speeches often accompany the work. Yet, I want to make small work that doesn't fight for attention. There is a lot of pressure on artists to make marketable works, but I don't work that way and that provides me with a lot of freedom. I try to find my way around the neat paragraph that is the artist's statement. If I could articulate my work into a simple paragraph, it would cease to be interesting to me. Artists and their work are interesting to me when you can see that they are looking for something, and not necessarily presenting something."
The work of Anika Mariam Ahmed can be seen from 6 October to 8 November 2022 at Galerie AdK in Amsterdam. You can also find more of her art on her portfolio page and on her own website.