Mural painting on the wall of rubbish dumps in Comilla, Bangladesh.

[ASMHasan]

Comilla, officially known as Cumilla, is a city in the Chittagong Division of Bangladesh, located along the Dhaka-Chittagong Highway. Comilla was clean, calm and green city. Almost every house had a translucent pond. Now, Comilla has become so crowded and the town is now a city of 1.70 million people.

Beautiful mural'Dharmasagar' the biggest pond of Comilla city

The city is growing rapidly. People throw their garbage here and there around the rubbish dump and make places stinky. It was very painful for Zonayed Mostafa, an artist of that city. Zonayed a Fine Arts background from Dhaka University shared an idea with his wife to use the walls of rubbish dump as his canvas. After getting verbal permission from city’s mayor he and his wife Janvi Tonni started painting murals on walls of street side rubbish dump. They used striking and vibrant colors in their murals hope to recall sweet past of Comilla: sparkling ponds, songbirds, aroma of blossoms. They hope their murals will take people closer to the nature and awaken the sense of people.

It’s not easy to complete a mural; they had to work beside stinky garbage for long time. Often they worked at night and sometimes it takes whole night to complete a mural.

To complete a single mural it costs at least 10,000 BDT (120 USD). Though the project is very expensive he dreams that this project can be replicated right across the country.

 #lestguides #Bangladesh #bangladeshlocalguides

[MortenSI]

Hello @ASMHasan,

Thank you so much for sharing this great story.

The murals are beautiful, and what a great way to make the city more lively and vibrant. Once in a while you simply can't fix what is broken, but you can use you talent to turn it into something good. 

I think it is great to see this type of art in a big city, and the fact that they got permission to make the murals is even greater. Most cities would see it as graffiti, and wouldn't allow it. 

It reminds me a lot about the German artist Jan Vormann, who used lego bricks to fix cracks in broken buildings.

Has the movement had an impact on the people living in Comilla?

[ASMHasan]

I am really grateful to you for your nice comment. You rightly said, 

'Once in a while you simply can't fix what is broken, but you can use your talent to turn it into something good."  

Yes, people living  around those rubbish dump showed love and respect to the artist couple and now they are more careful to use those rubbish dumping place. Thank you again for your well thought comment.  @MortenSI

[Sorbe]

Hi @ASMHasan, 

I am always curious to see the power and the impact on delicate social topic that street art has. 

Really pleased that this kind of healthy art is spreading worldwide nowadays. 

In the link you can find an example of what happened in Italy, my Country, where the street artist "Cibo" ( that literally means food) committed himself in covering racial abuses on the walls with images of food or vegetables. 

Hope you are going to like the video below regarding his operas, even if in Italian.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ9RYjmuTBU

[MortenSI]

That's good to hear @ASMHasan. 

It's great that the murals have actually had an effect on people. Imagine if one day all the trash is gone from the streets and the city is left with just the colorful murals. That would be the goal in my opinion. 

I would love to see something similar to this being done all around the world.