Kaler Halkhata: An account of tyranny and time

Devilish human faces, crows standing on barbed wire, and thinly cut newspapers stuck on a red backboard—the art pieces combine to create an atmosphere that feels instantly eerie and sinister. 

As you move through the room, surrounded by sights of despair, brutality, and separation, you eventually circle back to the beginning of the gallery, where a standalone explanation anchors the exhibition.

A message from the artist—"An account of neo-timeline. In this neo-timeline, bloodsuckers devour the world. Genocide rages—imperialism, thugocrazy, profitcrazy, theorcrazy, brokercrazy—all feeding on the living. People have lost their humanity; mobs devour mobs. This chaos is a bloodsucker paradise! I have been working on genocides for four decades. My humble tribute to those sacrificed."

Kalakendra is currently hosting Saidul Haque Juise's exhibition, Kaler Halkhata, which opened on 25 April and will continue until 4 May. Known for his bold political commentary and distinctive mixed-media approach, Juise brings together four decades of his reflections on genocide, imperialism, and the breakdown of humanity through a new collection of harrowing, symbolic pieces.

"I wanted to talk about the injustice going on in the world in my own artistic way," said Juise. 

"The art pieces speak about injustice. The heads floating are the faces of tyrants with the blood they have spilt down under. There are barbed wires which show how we are separated from each other. There's so much tyranny going on in this world and sadly we are not even allowed to speak about it. The truth is censored," he further explained.

Among the many exceptional pieces in the exhibit, one of the most visually intriguing is a large installation that showcases a bright red board, layered with thinly sliced newspaper cuttings. 

At first glance, it looks like a collage, but upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the layout mimics a graveyard—each newspaper strip resembling a gravestone, each headline a marker of another buried truth. 

This red space serves as a haunting reminder of how mass media buries real stories beneath layers of filtered narratives.

Another chilling composition includes a series of metal barbed wires stretched across a narrow corridor. Perched on these wires are meticulously crafted crows, placed as though they are watching—or perhaps guarding. 

Their presence resembles the ominous quiet at national borders, where violence is often hidden behind a deceptive stillness. These borders, metaphorically and literally, are the lines that divide people, cultures, and, in this exhibition, even empathy.

A red book lies open at the corner of another installation, its pages covered with ghostly faces as if captured mid-scream. This book resembles a morbid registry—a ledger of lives lost every day to war, hunger, and displacement. 

The use of red, again, is not incidental—it marks both blood and bureaucracy, a gruesome pairing of violence and documentation.

Perhaps the most provocative work is a sculpture that, from afar, looks like a T-bone steak mounted on a wall, with a fork and knife stabbed into it. But as the viewer gets closer, the 'steak' reveals itself to be a topographical map of the world—carved, cooked, and consumed.

"The leaders are eating all the countries with every passing day," said the artist in a grim but potent summary.

Juise's Kaler Halkhata is a visual indictment. Through his work, he doesn't just display the horrors of a fractured world but insists that we confront them, head-on. This is not an easy exhibition to walk through, but then again, it's not meant to be.