A five-day art exhibition, protesting child labour on the Jahangirnagar University (JU) campus and raising questions about social accountability, began on Wednesday. The event, held at the canteen of Al-Beruni Hall, will run daily from 10am to 10pm over the next five days.
The exhibition was organised by Asif Rahman, a student from the 53rd batch of the university’s Fine Arts Department.
Asif noted that many prominent campus leaders, representatives of the Jahangirnagar University Central Students’ Union (Jucsu), and hall union leaders reside at Al-Beruni Hall and regularly eat at the canteen alongside general students.
He added that the children serving them food were supposed to attend university to study, but are instead working due to personal obligations, making immediate layoffs an impractical solution.
Asif explained that he organised the exhibition to question who holds responsibility for this problem, how it can be resolved, and whether others share the sense of guilt he feels when taking food from canteen boys.
The exhibition uses visual contrast through different colours to highlight the disparity between two distinct social classes. Pictures of the canteen boys are drawn in blue to symbolise their gloomy condition, whilst those of students and student leaders are drawn in orange.
The orange colour creates visual discomfort for viewers, drawing their attention directly towards the pictures of the canteen boys and underscoring the lack of communication with them.
Highlighting the inhumane toil of children working in the canteen, Asif stated that these children have no fixed working hours, starting work in the morning until afternoon and working again from 7pm to 11pm or midnight.
In return, their daily wage is only Tk300 – an amount for which no one works a full day even in rural areas nowadays. He added that at an age when other children play in fields, these children work inside canteens or fetch groceries.
The organiser stated that alongside the exhibition, discussion sessions have also been arranged to address the negative impacts of such inhumane living conditions on the children’s psychology and physical and mental development, and to explore solutions through collective responsibility.
