At Edge Gallery, Lobongolotika: Cartographies of the Feminine brings together 65 artworks by 23 women artists, tracing a landscape of femininity that refuses to remain within familiar frames of sacrifice, silence and suffering. Through painting, drawing, tapestry, sculpture and installation, the exhibition explores the many ways women claim space, express desire and shape their own identities.
Named after a traditional Bengali confection whose delicate folds are held together by a clove, Lobongolotika draws a thoughtful parallel between tenderness and strength.
The metaphor runs through the exhibition, where vulnerability and resistance, memory and imagination coexist without settling into a single narrative. Co-curated by Gallery Coordinator Puja Basak and Gallery Manager Shobuj Sultan Anmon, the showcase brings together distinct artistic voices under a shared curatorial inquiry into the feminine as a creative sensibility rather than a fixed identity.
Rokeya Sultana’s richly layered Where Dreams Meet the Time: Madonna 3 draws viewers into a world of saturated colour, while Sima Mondal’s Structure of Life intertwines the female figure with mechanical forms, suggesting the complicated relationship between agency and constraint. In Buriganga, Tulsi Rani Das gives the polluted river the body of an ageing woman, connecting ecological decline with histories of labour, memory and displacement. Nur Munjerin Rimjhim’s Threadbound offers another tension, portraying creativity as both liberation and entanglement.
Bipasha Hayat’s Anthology of Torn Memories adds a darker, tactile dimension, reminding viewers that freedom does not erase pain. Rather than speaking in one voice, the artists reveal femininity as an evolving, sometimes contradictory experience.
Extended until 22 September, the exhibition invites viewers to encounter a freedom that takes many forms unruly, reflective, tender and resolute.
