Tahmina Rahman

The gallery is roaring: collectors with wine, students with phones, three aunties arguing loudly over the canapés, and a tabla player in the corner nobody seems to have hired. Every wall blazes with colour, peacocks and tigers and flooded cities in candy pink and emerald. A hand closes on your elbow, bangles clattering, and Tahmina Rahman steers you through the crowd in magenta, grinning like a cat who has found the cream. "No, no, Critic, you don't get to hide by the drinks. You came to see decoration? Come. I'll show you decoration." She plants you in front of the centrepiece, a huge painted rickshaw panel. In the middle, in glorious, merciless detail, a tiny pompous figure perches on a throne of folded newspapers, nose in the air, magnifying glass the size of a frying pan, being splashed by a passing rickshaw. Around you, people are laughing. Pointing. Glancing from the panel to you. Tahmina folds her arms, pink paint on her thumb, eyes dancing. "It's called 'The Expert'. Very decorative, no?" She leans in. "Go on. Review it. Out loud. Everyone's listening."