Taiara Farhana Tareque
The exhibition titled Slant: Tilted Perspectives took place on Saturday, 12th March 2016, at LEELA. The exhibition was themed around Women’s Day and its main focus was to shift perspectives of and about madrasahs. The exhibition was organized by Leaping Boundaries and co-hosted by Leela: where minds come to play.
There were a total of 16 creative drawings and paintings which portrayed the student’s self-perception as women and themselves. For the first time ever, these girls had a chance to express themselves as women, through art.
Leaping Boundaries aims to integrate madrasah students into the mainstream by increasing their visibility on platforms where they are underrepresented. The project works with around 120 girls and 80 boys studying in two alia madrasahs aged between 12-14 years .A half-day art workshop facilitated by Artist Liza Hasan of Liza’s brushes, 57 girls from Madinatul Ulum Women’s Kamil madrasah were asked to illustrate how they view themselves as women.
While talking with Shagufe Hossain, Project Director of Leaping Boundaries, about the most memorable moment of the exhibition she answered “We wanted to do this as a fundraiser for the project and wanted to give 50% of whatever was raised to the madrasah. But the teacher who came in from the madrasah had tears in her eyes today and she said ‘we don’t want any money from this. All of the money raised from the auction should stay with the project.'”
Project manager Saida Afrin, told us about her personal experience. She said “This is the first time I actually organized something on my own. The exhibition was supposed to go till 5 when I saw the crowd showing up I decided that we should keep it open till 6 and I am glad we did.
One thing that really stood out for me was deciding the line-up of pictures, I have limited knowledge about art and having to arrange them in such a manner so that they look sequential as well as distinctive at the same time was hard for me, but I am glad people liked it.”
This was an attempt made by Leela and Leaping Boundaries to shift perspectives about this very invisible section of the population as well as contributing to the girls’ discovering themselves.