'Ouponibeshik/Porouponibeshik [defunct tiger & colonial trade]

Firoz Mahmud’s mixed media on paperworks, wood carvings and oil layapa Stencil paintings of the ‘Legacies Project’ narrate about the history and legacy of South Asia. He also transforms the painterly and linear based paperwork into wood which is carved manually depicting aspects of cultural heritage that may have gotten devalued or undermined through the mechanisms of colonialism that affected many nations till the 20th century.

In this work, 'Ouponibeshik/Porouponibeshik [defunct tiger & colonial trade], he uses idioms such as here is the second Nawab of Dhaka Khwaja Abdul Ghani [Local emperor], his allies and support British Raj in India during Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, design motif of Ahsan Monzil as the official residential palace and seat of the Nawab of Dhaka in 19th-20th Century, roar of tiger surrounded by the Pink Palace and images of mutiny and all these are addressing the riches history of native land.
Mahmud juxtaposes themes of political culture, tradition, myths, history of Bengal and in the region that beg the question of how they existed, and what forces have created new visual territories in South Asia, impacting how these can be remembered as cultural histories and those of neighbors as legacies.