Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation Acquires Rashid Rana’s “Familial Unfamilar 2” work from Sanctuary Exhibitions held in North America

The importance of Familial Unfamiliar 2 lies in its creation by globally recognized artist Rashid Rana (b. 1968), where the medium becomes the message. This 4×6 ft hand-knotted rug is based on Rashid Rana’s Transliteration series and features a Western masterwork juxtaposed with a contemporary photo of refugees adrift on open water and facing an uncertain future. A familiar image to most of us who watched the exodus of refugees into Europe as the conflict in Syria intensified and millions[1] of people were displaced from their homes. Rana’s careful rearrangement of both images disorients the viewer and creates an alluring abstraction, but closer inspection exposes the contrasts between the painting’s idealized gentry and the photograph’s reluctant migrants. “By taking European paintings and rearranging their fragments, I’m trying to see the possibilities beyond that one particular image, and free them from a specific time and place,” Rashid Rana explains. “By transliterating them, we liberate ourselves and see beyond their original contextual frameworks.”

Widely considered as one of the most prominent and original contemporary artists working in South Asia today, Rashid Rana emerged in the early years of this century as the most energetic and productive representative of an entirely new kind of art emerging from South Asia. Distinct for his ideas, imagery and pictorial strategies, his work, in the past decade and a half, portrays dramatically different modes such as paintings, stainless steel sculptures, video installation, photo-sculptures and photo mosaics, each time finding a freshness of purpose and a surprising inventiveness of visual language. More recently he is associated with developing a conceptually driven, well-informed art practice that maintains a pixelated attention to formal concerns. These works cut across conventional notions of the scale and status of the photographic object, opening up its potential to represent cultural, social and physical realities. His works revolve around a subtle simultaneous exploration of media and identity – both bound by a sharp political edge as he satirizes pop culture and looks to reinterpret varied elements of art and cultural history.

“Rashid Rana’s Familial Unfamiliar 2 truly transcends borders and is a great addition to Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation collection” said Durjoy Rahman.

Familial Unfamiliar 2 was created by Rashid Rana for the exhibition titled Sanctuary and curated by Cheryl Haines and Michael Chagnon was exhibited from October 07, 2017 – March 11, 2018 at Fort Mason Chapel in San Francisco, USA and March 21 – October 25, 2020 at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Canada. The notion of Sanctuary—both physical and psychological—has been fundamental in shaping a sense of selfhood and social identity throughout human history. But in an era of increasing global migration and rising nationalism, the right to safe haven is under threat, and the necessity for compassion is greater than ever. Seeking to address these issues and ideas, FOR-SITE Foundation invited 36 artists from 21 different countries to design contemporary rugs reflecting on sanctuary. The participating artists represented diverse ideologies and backgrounds (many including experiences as migrants and refugees). Other global ‘power houses’ invited to participate, in addition to Rashid Rana, included Ai Weiwei (b. 1957, China), Shiva Ahmadi (b. 1975, Iran) and Mona Hatoum (b. 1952, Lebanon) to name a few.

Rashid Rana said “I am thrilled to see my work become part of the Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation (DBF) collection given their profile and displacement, migration and identity issues being central to their programming and core values. I am also thankful to my friend Ali Adil Khan of the SAGA Foundation to make the connection with DBF and to Durjoy Rahman for acquiring my work.”

[1] at the end of 2019, there were 6.6 million Syrian refugees hosted by 126 countries worldwide.