Md Faim Islam, Curator & Artist
Curating Serenity of Soul has been an exploration as much of my own inner landscape as of the artists’ practices themselves. In this exhibition, I invited four extraordinary voices—my own work included—alongside Ruhul Amin Tarek (printmaker), Nabila Nabi (tapestry artist), Shafiqul Kabir Chandan (painter), and Sinthia Arefin (performance artist)—to come together in a shared meditation on memory, identity, and resilience in our contemporary moment.
The works in Serenity of Soul are not answers; they are echoes. Echoes of inherited trauma, cultural dislocation, and social injustice; echoes of loss, resistance, and the quiet, persistent search for clarity amid the chaos of today. As a curator and practitioner, I approach these questions not from a distance, but from within. I am drawn to the spaces where remembrance wrestles with rupture, where belief becomes an act of quiet rebellion, and where the fragility of the human spirit meets its capacity for hope.
In my own work, I explore the fractures of time and the weight of memory through painting. The pieces I contributed as part of this exhibition confront the fading voices of a brutal past, the slow erosion of cultural identity, and the tension between memory and manipulation. Each form, each texture, is shaped by these reflections, seeking to hold space for a light that persists even beneath the noise of contemporary life—a serenity that is fragile, flickering, but undeniably present.
The artists I invited to participate share, in their own ways, this philosophical concern. Shafiqul Kabir Chandan’s woven compositions speak through thread and knot, translating migration, identity, and memory into a tactile language that demands presence and reflection. Nabila Nabi’s tapestries embody folk traditions, spiritual reflection, and cycles of life, inviting viewers to consider continuity, transformation, and the metaphysical journey of existence. Ruhul Amin Tarek’s prints navigate temporal and philosophical complexities, mapping the interplay between permanence and impermanence, past and present. Sinthia Arefin’s performance Inconvenient Truth confronts the silence surrounding systemic violence, making visible the stories often buried by societal indifference, and challenging audiences to reflect on their own complicity and awareness.
Serenity of Soul is, in many ways, an invitation. It asks viewers to traverse the spaces between memory and imagination, chaos and clarity, presence and absence. It encourages reflection on what is seen and what is ignored, on how art can serve as both a mirror and a lamp—illuminating unseen truths, holding space for contemplation, and offering a quiet resistance against the erosion of empathy and understanding.
Curating this exhibition has reaffirmed my belief in the enduring power of art to shape our perception, to hold our attention, and to nurture resilience. Each work, each gesture, each material speaks to the persistence of hope beneath turbulence. Serenity of Soul is not a conclusion; it is a shared meditation, a dialogue between artists, viewers, and the unseen energies that shape our world. It is an acknowledgment that while the fractures of our time are profound, the search for serenity, reflection, and truth remains a vital, collective act.
Through this exhibition, I hope to offer a space where audiences can pause, contemplate, and engage with the delicate balance between rupture and reflection, presence and memory. In doing so, Serenity of Soul becomes more than a display of artworks—it becomes a philosophical inquiry into the ways in which art sustains the human spirit.
Serenity Of Souls Brochure:
https://www.legacy-wm.org/sites/default/files/2025-08/Serenity%20of%20Souls%20Brochure.pdf