A cheery flyer

I snapped this at the Liberation War Museum. It is an institution which is going through a transition and boy it needs to….do read my other posts on this museum ( just search for ‘liberation war museum’ in the search box).

As an avid collector of political posters, I have to say the stuff one finds in bangladesh is quite interesting. As a collector, it is interesting for me to see how design and art speak to people. It is interesting to draw out those aspects of design which have become established and to question why. ( I deal with some of these issues in my forthcoming book on ‘censorship’). Bangladeshi political posters don’t belong in galleries or your walls….they belong in the streets. And I dont mean that in a positive sense. In democratic struggles elsewhere one clearly witnesses the goal of the artists responsible - their goal is about transformation and to inculcate a radical consciousness. In Bangladesh it is to seek out vengeance, to fan the flames of hatred and carry out retribution on the streets. Creative cultural activists are clearly not involved, and one can heave a partial sigh of relief that that is the case. And so the graphic design is quite straightforward and done on a computer in those myriad little printing shops that exist and they consist of some text and gruesome images of death and mayhem. In the album above (click the picture) I give examples of the kind of images to be seen on these posters. In another post I will display a collection of posters.