Farhana Akhter was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She migrated to the United States with
her family at the age of ten. Since then, she has traveled extensively around the world including various European countries,
Morocco, Egypt and visits to her homeland. She currently lives and works in New York City.
Her body of work is an eclectic mixture of techniques and diverse subject matter. Among her most recent work are series
of abstract paintings in which she explores color, texture and application techniques to convey the stages of motion, fusion
and stillness to represent interactions with the inner and external world and cyclic phases of nature and life. She
constantly experiments with mixed media added to oil and acrylic color base. Her color palette reflects the rich and vibrant
hues influenced by her native land and culture.
In her recent work, she combined cold wax with oil on canvas. She also uses texture
paste mixed and applied with found objects for her acrylic on canvas paintings. The found objects incorporated in to the paintings,
are symbolic of the transformative process, which combine organic elements such as moss, dried flowers, rice, lentil, with
inorganic materials such as plastic, glass and metal.
In her earlier work, she has a series of paintings that are neo-symbolic and figurative
which deal with existence and human interactions. She also has several paintings dedicated to nostalgic memories from
her childhood and experience in Bangladesh.
She has had numerous exhibitions in New York City, Washington DC area
and Winnipeg, Canada . Her work has been reviewed several times by Studio & Gallery magazine. The artist’s
work is in various collections throughout the United States. She has also curated exhibitions at the Broadway Mall Gallery
in New York City.
Her course of study at the University of Maryland was Psychology and Arts & Humanities.
