Shutki (Schüchternfische)*
Edition
2022
(*Bengali: dried fish, also connotes dried, emaciated, unhealthily thin. German: ‘shy fish’ (malapropism))
2022, archival inkjet print, 40 x 33 cm, Ed. of 12 + 3AP
The work is a digital collage based on the installation of the same name. It is made of a video still from the pond next to Brishty’s nanubari (grandma’s house), and photographs of sculptures in iron and clay.
Shutki is a Bangladeshi speciality of dried fish or prawns; the kind of dish that can’t to be contained by English brick houses and one that announces if maybe you’re still a bit Bengali after all. It is part of an ongoing series where bodies of solid clay are shaped by their interaction with another material and left to dry. Schüchternfische emerged as a malapropism confusing Schuster (Schusterkarpfen, the Austrian cobbler carp) with schüchtern (shy).
– Edited excerpt by Kai Maier-Rothe, Memphis Editions, 2022.
Exhibited at GOMO, Vienna, (2023), Woman Life Freedom, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, (2023), Memphis Editions, (2022). Photo by Brishty Alam.