We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Homayra Adiba a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Homayra, thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
This year, 2022, I have finished an outdoor sculpture named “A Letter To My Father”(বাবার জন্য চিঠি) which was a tribute as well as a letter written to my father after his passing. I lost him this year in April and I was the only one in the room when he left. My father was very close to me and I knew that morning something was wrong. I had plans to go to Chicago which I canceled and went to see him in the old home three minutes away from my house. And that day, I listened to my instinct and was able to catch him one last time before he left. It’s a very difficult time to talk about but let me try. This sculpture was a tribute to my father who raised me and has a big influence on anything artistic that I do. My father raised me like a mother, the role of my parents was switched while I was growing up and I have a very intimate relationship with my Baba(my father). When I talk to Baba, I speak in a mixture of Bangla, which is my mother tongue, and English. This is why the letter is written in Bangla and English. There’s a line in Hindi because that’s my father’s favorite song. My grandmother’s first language was Hindi/Urdu and I sang him the song when he passed. I wanted to intact a little bit of the interconnection of different cultures of our family history, in the sculpture. If you think about it, it’s the story of a lot of us Americans, we often come from multiple backgrounds, many languages, and many cultures. In the letter, I wrote all the things that I told him many times and the things I couldn’t tell him, and the things I would tell him if I could get another chance. I made a paper plane with the letter and then tried in my best ability to replicate it as an aluminum outdoor sculpture. What was so overwhelming was that I have had people from all over the world write to me that how much this sculpture meant to them. People came to me and hugged me and shared their stories. I really understood then, how grief is shared and how people did see their loved ones while seeing this sculpture and I was able to start conversations. I don’t know if this is the most meaningful project I have worked on so far, it’s such a subjective topic! However, losing my father is the most intense emotion I have ever felt, while working on this sculpture I had so many conversations with him, and it was very difficult sometimes and very comforting other times. I have never experienced emotions like these while working on other projects.
The sculpture is currently showcasing at Schoolcraft College’s main/Livonia campus in front of The Bio Medical Tech Center and open for public viewing.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
I was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and raised there. As a little kid, I was always writing, mostly in journals and poems. My father worked around the clock to get my poems published in various kids’ magazines which encouraged me to keep writing. My mother wasn’t an art enthusiast. If my father was putting me in poetry clubs, my mother was taking me off of them. If my father was putting me in sports, she would take me off. She did put me in singing school, however, in the third year I wanted to graduate under Rabindranath Tagore (a genre for singing) and she wanted me to take Kazi Nazrul Islam (a genre for singing), I admired Kazi Nazrul Islam but was intrigued by Rabindranath more and didn’t want to go for Nazrul, so she stopped my singing lessons. I still do write poetry but back when I was a kid I did that professionally and I think it was all because of the encouragement of my father. After graduating High school, I had to face a serious challenge, my mother was the breadwinner of our family and now I had to convince her that I wanted to study art. I was able to convince her through negotiations, and she told me, I can study art but I have to afford my education. I took the challenge. I started school with graphic design and multimedia and got a couple of scholarships there, however by my second year, I understood I had a deeper love and passion for Photography. I dropped that school and joined a photography school named Pathshala South Asian Media Institute. I was fortunate enough to lock in a scholarship named the Sam Banks Scholarship which took the responsibility for my education in Pathshala. Choosing this school was one of the greatest decisions of my life, because, everyone besides my father in my family was against art and they would ask me questions that I didn’t have an answer for. Like what are you gonna do? How much you are gonna earn? It’s so funny now because you don’t ask these questions to someone who is studying business or science although most youngsters truly don’t know what they would do and how much they will earn. I personally, wanted to find myself, and find a way to understand the world and Pathshala did provide me with a lead. A good understanding of world politics, the craft of documentary, the power of art, the complications of being a female in the industry, the challenge of being an artist, and a way to find myself, all these were something I gathered from the community of Pathshala. While studying in Pathshala, I opened an agency through Facebook named Alo which provided service of photography for the wedding and fashion industry I was earning full-time from it and was able to provide jobs for a few people. I also worked as a cover photographer for a National Newspaper named Dhaka Tribune for their supplement named TMAG and Avenue T. I graduated in 2016 and the same year I had to migrate to the USA. My mother, who had tried for 14 years to migrate to the USA, the land of opportunities, couldn’t let this welcome call go, although when she applied, we (me and my brother) were little and when the invitation came I was already professionally earning as an artist. I was curious to know what happens in this next chapter, it was a very hard decision to make but I did pack my bags and came to the USA with my family. I am truly glad that I did because I was able to be with my father in the last years of his life whose health deteriorated drastically after migration. Although I lost my clientele and earnings as an artist because of the migration, I will trade everything to be with my father again. In the USA, for the first few years, I had to work 2-3 retail jobs to support my family and I felt that my life was over. I saw my future in front of my eyes, I was 65 with some severe illness and retired from a retail job with some time in my hand but my dream of becoming an artist is dead and I have nothing but retirement money, body ache, and regret. In those dark times when I experienced racism and depression, I started making comics and handmade blank books. Both of these mediums gave me an escape from reality and I opened a small business named Humri and Friends. Around the same time, I started practicing minimalism partially because of the realization when I migrated that I didn’t need a lot of belongings to survive and all the materials we own can be illusive and partially because as I was working retail jobs I saw how much paper and plastic trash retail industry can produce and how harmful it can be for the environment. I started making handmade recycled paper and offered them in book format to my clientele in the business. Since then, Humri and Friends made shows like Raw Detroit and offered new products such as print, phone cases, blank books, and T-shirts to the community and worldwide.
This little independence encouraged me to get back to the personal projects I left off, and the universe was conspiring to be by my side. My work “Where Blue Birds Fly” started to get recognition from around the world and was featured in Lensculture, Internazionale Magazine, Better Photography Magazine, F-STOP Magazine, The Floating Magazine, Voyage Michigan, and numerous others. ‘Where Blue Birds Fly’ was part of the Chennai Photo Biennale, Angkor Photo Festival, Objectifs’ Women in Film & Photography Showcase’, and ArtPrize and also received an Equity grant in 2021. I strategized that if I want to keep working on art, I need to go to school, I got admission to Schoolcraft College with a scholarship and started studying metal sculpture and ceramics among other subjects of fine arts. My sculpture “The Luggage” which is a sculpture about migration, was exhibited in the Vista Tech Center at Schoolcraft College and Artprize 2022. Currently, two of my outdoor sculptures are open for public viewing at Schoolcraft College, one is “A Letter To My Father/ বাবার জন্য চিঠি” which I talked about a little with you and the other is “The Flag of All Nation” which is a sculpture reflecting the covid 19 pandemic and the emotional, health and environmental conflict it brought. I am currently working as a mixed media artist learning new things almost every day and serving with storytelling, as a practicing minimalist helping myself and my community and also managing my business Humri and Friends providing little joys for people all around the world. My works are rooted in the idea of Home and I experiment with its definition, elasticity, and identity. Migration has challenged me to look at the idea of Home more politically than romantically. I am ever so grateful to my followers and community who supports me and also my teachers, my late father, my late mejho mama, and my husband who believes in me and the work I do. Also, my cat Mr. Moto is just freaking adorable and fills my heart with joy and my people love watching him grow and spill water on my artwork.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
Society isn’t functional without art. The pandemic is a great example of it. During the pandemic, the whole world had to limit their transportation and social engagement. Art came to the rescue, the movies, online exhibitions, conversations, awareness, short stories, paintings, Instagram reels, and thousands of other expressions of art helped. And people helped themselves also by singing, dancing, performing, making jokes, and writing journals in their safe spaces. Everyone is an artist and art helps build technology like technology help art to grow. All of these things are essential. In that aspect, society needs art to build a better society and art needs a society to make better art. Take your kids to the museum, to the library, and encourage them if they are interested in music, dance, painting, photography, sculpture, science, and whatnot. Shop local, not just for art but also for food and other essentials, try to shop local, this means the money of the community stays in the community to build the community stronger. Oftentimes, local shops, artists, and farmers are more generous towards the environment also. Find out who is your local artist and how can they serve you. Start a conversation, book an artist to provide you service, and if you can’t do all that, you can let an artist know if they inspire you, share their work with your friends and family. A lot of people don’t know that, but artists appreciate constructive criticism. Let them know what you think about their work and where you think they can make improvements. Bring them business ideas, and collaborate.
How did you build your audience on social media?
My audience in social media is personal, people I have crossed paths with over the years. They are my friends, my community, my neighbors, my teachers, and many more. In 2015, Instagram recognized that I have a specific pattern and coherence in my posts. I was taking black and white photographs of light at different times of the day. Instagram recognized my profile on their platform and I gained a lot of followers because of that. That was a sweet treat, something I didn’t expect, and came as a bonus. I don’t use any other platform much because I find social media platforms to be very consuming however it’s a very democratic tool to get your word out there. We don’t have to wait for curators, agents, big museums, or publishers to recognize us anymore. We can use the help of social media to be our own agents. Like anything worthwhile, this also comes with a lot of research, hard work, effort, and strategy. Try to find your niche and present it in front of the world in a coherent way. Figure out who your audience is and why they are here. Please make sure you love what you do on social media, be respectful, and never jeopardize your or anyone else’s privacy. Use Social media as a portfolio for potential clients to understand what you offer and be a little funny, why so serious? It’s funnily hypocritical of me that I said that, half the time I forget about all these and post impulsive pictures of my super adorable cat, Mr. Moto.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.homayraadiba.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/homayraadiba/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/homayra.adiba
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/homayra-adiba-94830845/
- Other: https://www.etsy.com/shop/HUMRIandFRIENDS