Chris Evans
A Sculpture for the Ahmed Family, 2005/2006 (detail)
Maquette (plaster, pigment), correspondence with Syed Refaat Ahmed (2 framed letters), photograph (Sufia Ahmed, Gulshan 2 residence, Dhaka, Bangladesh)
Dimensions variable
A Sculpture for the Ahmed Family is part of a series that Evans is making with various people around the world who we’d regard as belonging to their country’s ‘elite’. Evans visited Justice Refaat Ahmed, in his home in Dhaka, and questioned him about his family’s influence on Bangladesh – and what effect the elite can have in relationship, or in tandem with, the country’s faltering democracy. Refaat Ahmed talked about “rising above all that is commonplace and forging a neutral and passive path through the polarities” and the idea of a Banyan tree was proposed by his mother who was drawn to its quality of endurance.
A Sculpture for the Ahmed Family is part of a series that Evans is making with various people around the world who we’d regard as belonging to their country’s ‘elite’. Evans visited Justice Refaat Ahmed, in his home in Dhaka, and questioned him about his family’s influence on Bangladesh – and what effect the elite can have in relationship, or in tandem with, the country’s faltering democracy. Refaat Ahmed talked about “rising above all that is commonplace and forging a neutral and passive path through the polarities” and the idea of a Banyan tree was proposed by his mother who was drawn to its quality of endurance.
– Lisson Gallery, London
Photo © Carsten Eisfeld