Dilara Begum Jolly

Jolly began her career as a printmaker. In 2014, she held an exhibition entitled "Threads of Testimony" at the Bengel Art Lounge in Dhaka looking at the condition of women in the garment industry in Bangladesh.

In 2011, Jolly and her husband were involved in a bus accident which killed internationally acclaimed filmmaker Tareque Masud, ATN News CEO Mishuk Munier, and three others. The group were traveling in a micro-bus traveling to Manikganj town to meet the deputy commissioner to seek permission for shooting Tareque's latest film, Kagojer Phool, after visiting a shooting spot in Shibalaya Upazila, when a passenger bus collided head on with their micro-bus on the Dhaka-Aricha Highway at Ghior in Manikganj. Jolly suffered a fractured hand.

Jolly has focused on a number of social issues in both specific to Bangladesh, and globally: beginning with Lalshalu in 1985, in 1996 she portrayed the tragedy of Nurjahan, a victim of ‘Fatwa’ who killed herself after she was pronounced guilty of adultery by the village council and publicly stoned, and including work on the tragic story of Rumana Manzur, teacher of the Dhaka University, blinded by her husband in 2011 because she wanted to continue her studies abroad against his wishes, and the young female garment workers of Tazreen Fashion who were burnt alive in a factory fire in 2012.

She studied painting and printmaking at Government Arts College, Chittagong (BFA 1981); then gained her Master of Fine Arts, Painting at the Institute of Fine Arts, University of Dhaka, in 1984. In 1991, she gained a Post Diploma in Print Making in Santiniketan, West Bengal, with a scholarship from the Indian Government.