Art exhibition by autistic children opens@Dhaka , Bangladesh

A weeklong arts exhibition by children with autism has begun in capital Dhaka to give them a chance to nurture their latent talents and get them back to the mainstream of society.


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The exhibition at Dhanmondi’s Drik Gallery hosting 120 paintings by students of eight specialised schools in Dhaka was inaugurated on Saturday.

The paintings put up for the show cover various facets of the daily lives of the Bengalis, seasonal diversity, culture, Liberation War among others.

Professor Syed Abul Barak Alvi, Dean of Dhaka University’s Faculty of Fine Arts, praised the children’s creativity.

“They (autistic children) are not considered normal like other kids. But like normal children, they have a rich imagination, extraordinary observation power, and a tendency to scrutinise things,” he told bdnews24.com while evaluating the paintings.

Prof Alvi said paintings in the exhibition contained reflections of those qualities.

Autism is used in general to describe a group of complex developmental brain problem – autism spectrum disorders – caused by a combination of genes and environmental influences. It usually appears in the first three years of life and affects the brain's normal development of social and communication skills.

Autistic children cannot pick up self-care tasks – dressing, self-feeding, using toilet and others – by watching and imitating. They do not make eye-to-eye contact and have a single-track thought process.


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Prof Alvi said these children give shapes to their imagination in a different way.

“Children with autism create a world of their own within themselves as the society cannot accept them normally. This is why their suns are of green colour and parrots are of red,” he said.

He said the normal people should know how to identify this tone which in turn would pave way for reading the thoughts of these children.

Nasrin Ahmed, mother of participants ‘Ananta’ and ‘Duranta’, agreed with the Dhaka University teacher.

Ananta and Duranta study at the School for Gifted Children. Fourteen paintings from the institute made to the exhibition.

“They have been painting for past several years. Their connections with the outside world in this regard have helped them to become normal to some extent,” Ahmed said.

She emphasised greater opportunities for autistic children to interact with normal children.

“Duranta has won two awards for paintings and both of them are taking part in various national-level competitions,” she said of her children.

“Success teaches man to be self-confident. They (autistic children) earn this confidence through interactions and competitions with other normal children in the society,” Nasrin Ahmed added.

Many confine their autistic children at home to avoid ‘embarrassment’. Ahmed urged the parents to allow their children take part in programmes alongside normal children.

There is no official data on the official number of children suffering from autism in Bangladesh. A non-government survey shows 250 children in every one million suffer from these complexities in the country.

At present one in every 88 person in the US suffer from autism. An estimated 70 million people suffer from autism worldwide.

Organisers said Tk 3,000 has been fixed as the minimum price for each painting. The money from the sale will be handed over to the children.

Surf Excel is sponsoring the exhibition and English language daily New Age, Radio Today, and bdnews24.com are its media partners.

The exhibition will run till Jun 28 and is open from 3pm to 8pm daily.


Source : bdnew24 , 22nd June 2013