Visit Dhaka Samdani Art Foundation Level 5, Suites 501 & 502 Shanta Western Tower, 186 Gulshan- Tejgaon Link Road Tejgaon I/A, Dhaka- 1208 Visit Samdani Art Foundation Applying for a VISA The Bangladeshi Government provides a visa-on-arrival (VOA) service for citizens of the following countries: United States of America, Canada, New Zealand, Russian Federation, China (excluding Hong Kong passports), Japan, Singapore, South Korea, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia (KSA), Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Malaysia, and all European countries If applying for a VOA, you will need to provide a photocopy of your passport, two passport-size photographs, a printed copy of your hotel reservation (including a full address and contact number), a copy of your return flight ticket, and a completed arrival card and visa application: copies can be obtained on arrival at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport. The VOA fee is approximately $52 USD (other currencies are accepted) and must be paid in cash (debit and credit cards are NOT accepted). If you need to apply for a visa before you fly, please contact the nearest Bangladesh High Commission/Embassy. For more info, visit the Bangladesh Ministry of Foreign Affairs . Our VIP team is there to assist you with visa letters or any queries. Please contact our VIP team here: vip@dhakaartsummit.org The Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport is served by numerous international and domestic airlines. Flight options from most international destinations are easily searchable through popular travel sites and travel search engines. Getting to Dhaka 01 Samdani Art Foundation is based in the Gulshan-Tejgaon link road, closer to the industrial and commercial are of Dhaka. Dhaka Art Summit, produced by the Samdani Art Foundation take place at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, in Segun Bagicha, Dhaka. Suitable hotels can be found through popular travel sites and hotel search engines. Due to the heavy traffic situation in Dhaka, we recommend international visitors to stay closer to the venue during the Dhaka Art Summit. For hotel options, download the recommended list Accommodation 02 The best way to move around on the streets of Dhaka is in a car. The best way to arrange a rental car is through your hotel concierge. In case, you decide to go and book a rental car by yourself here is what we recommend the followings: App-based ride share: Uber Pathao For pre-booking visit: RentalCarBD Sheba.xyz Bdcabs.com Getting around in Dhaka 03 The official currency in Bangladesh is the Taka: known as Bangladeshi Taka or BDT. The Taka is a restricted currency and you will only be able to obtain cash currency on your arrival in Bangladesh. Taking money out at an ATM is the quickest and easiest means of currency exchange, but don’t forget to tell your bank that you are travelling before you leave. There are also several money exchange available at the airport If you require further assistance, please email info@dhakaartsummit.org For press enquiries, please email press@dhakaartsummit.org or visit our press page Currency Exchange 04

Contact Us Don't hesitate to reach out to us. Use the form below to say hello, ask questions, or share your thoughts. First name Last name Email* Phone Message* Submit Location Tel: +8802 8878784-7 Fax: +8802 887 8204 info@samdani.com.bd Level 5, Suite 501 & 502, Shanta Western Tower, 186 Gulshan – Tejgaon Link Road, Tejgaon I/A, Dhaka-1208, Bangladesh. SAF Office 01 sazzad@samdani.com.bd +8801777763430 Sazzad Hossain Head of Administration Press Contact 02

ALL PROJECTS Bearing Point 3 - An Amphibious Sun Curated by Diana Campbell Bearing Point 3 - An Amphibious Sun The Bay of Bengal once supported an amphibious life. Water was not a force to keep at bay, but an entity to live with, and through. In Ursula Biemann’s film Deep Weather , mud connects the ends of the Earth: Alberta, Canada and the Sundarbans Delta of Bangladesh that has soaked in the sea of the Bay of Bengal for centuries. Mud complicates the relationship to liquid, which is no longer delineated, discrete. The attempt to extract oil from the muddy sands of Alberta by multinational corporations leads to displacement: of indigenous people in the Athabasca basin in Canada, and of local populations in southern Bangladesh who have been transformed into climate refugees as a result of the resulting effects of global warming. Only lines of sacks filled with mud stand between these people, and the sea that swells with rising global temperatures, as global capitalism churns the insides of the earth to burn the remains of long-dead life forms. Rotating around the same sun, Canada and Bangladesh, as well as everywhere else on the globe, are linked by the oceans and atmospheres connecting them; a catastrophe on one hemisphere inevitably impacts the other. With colonialism came the attempted erasure of muddiness as condition – amorphous zones became hardened into coastlines; lines were even drawn in the muddy space between the human and the non-human. The time of stones, of tides, of swamp, of earth, became subsumed to the relentless measure of the clock. Omer Wasim and Saira Sheikh’s drawings and text in The Impossibility of Loving a Stone (2017) reconstitutes the human in geological time, where the present stretches back two million years – they soil the skin between the Earth and us, slowly moving us like shifting mud through the present. Ho Tzu Nyen restages the first recorded colonial encounter between a white man and a Malayan tiger in Singapore which occurred in 1835, harnessing CGI technology to bring the story into the 21st century. He transforms the historical tiger attack into a metaphor for resistance against colonial exploitation of past and present; the 19th century colonial surveyor morphs into today’s corporations that are exploiting nearly the same forests. The human, animal, spirit, and machine become entangled in the suspended moments of this haunting essay film. Moving further away from the generation of knowledge as mere data, Neha Choksi turns her attention to the sun, both as planetary sustenance and a point of reference for dialogue across generations and within the self through multiple modes of narration. The artist’s obsession with the sun is related to her long-standing interests in absence, loss, memory and nature. Choksi invited ten Bangladeshi children to embody a fictive dream of a child obsessively drawing suns, and to consider the multiplicity of the sun as a powerful magic orb and a cursed ball of fire, both energising and overheating life on earth. They considered the sun’s power from their point of view as children, but also from the vantage point of other human and non-human entities. They imagine how the sun might consider us within its dominion of power as it shines down on our planet. Each day of the Dhaka Art Summit 2018, Choksi invited a different adult professional to interact with the now-embodied dream child through the lens of their skill sets as an archaeologist or a meteorologist, among others. The psychological process of animating nature drawing the visitor back to their primal yearning to reconnect with the cosmos across species and generations as they morph from atoms into beings and back. Artists Ho Tzu Nyen (b. 1976 in Singapore, lives and works in Singapore) 2 or 3 Tigers, 2015 2 Channel CGI Video, 10-channel sound courtesy of the artist and Edouard Malingue Gallery Technology supported by Sharjah Art Foundation. Presented here with additional support from the National Art Council Singapore and Edouard Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong/Shanghai Taking inspiration from 19th Century wood engraving, Ho Tzu Nyen restages the first recorded colonial encounter between a white man and a Malayan tiger in Singapore which occurred in 1835, harnessing CGI technology to bring the story into the 21st Century. The wood engraving chronicles the story of George Dromgoole Coleman, the then Government Superintendent of Public Works in Singapore who was surprised by a tiger who was determined to attack not Coleman and his entourage of convict laborers, but rather the theodolite (surveying instrument) they were using to conduct a survey on the unexplored forests of Singapore. Post-colonial historians have noted that the imperial methods of data collection, through census reports, and land surveys, were directed at the control of the lands and bodies of subjugated populations. The creation of these data sets belied the complex inter-relationship between human and non-human inhabitants of a place. Village folklore from South and Southeast Asia describes a symbiotic relationship between humans and tigers, where tigers assume roles of ancestors, gods, protectors, and even estranged brothers of man. The powerful figure of the were-tiger, or a person who can become tigers, and a tiger who can become a person and live in the village, points to the strong bond between man and animal. Contemporary versions of these tales often use the trope of the colonial census taker who asks about the number of tigers in a particular area. In myths such as that of Haru’r Pishima (Haru’s grand-aunt) in the Sunderbans and of Tsaricho in Nagaland, the villagers respond “sometimes 5, and sometimes 6”, alluding to the presence of the were-tiger in their midst, to the bafflement of the census taker. Producing confusion through untranslatable knowledge becomes a weapon of resistance against colonial control. Introducing the were-tiger into Coleman’s story, Ho Tzu Nyen transforms the historical tiger attack into a metaphor for resistance against colonial exploitation of past and present; the Coleman of the 19th Century morphs into today’s corporations exploiting nearly the same forests. The human, animal, spirit, and machine become entangled in the suspended moments of this essay film. Ghosts and spirits can often move easily across lines drawn by man, and by transfiguring the agent of colonialism (Coleman), the tiger collapses the gap it attempts to create between man and nature. Neha Choksi (b. 1973 in New Jersey, lives and works in Mumbai and Los Angeles) Every Kind of Sun, 2017-2018 Installation activated with daily live performance involving 10 children and 10 adults Interaction from 1-2pm on February 2, 6:30-7:30pm daily Commissioned and Produced by Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2018 Courtesy of the artist, Samdani Art Foundation, and Project 88 Neha Choksi’s obsession with the sun is related to her long-standing interests in absence, loss, memory and nature. Her latest salutation to the sun, Every Kind of Sun (2017-2018) debuts as a Solo Project, bringing to life her emotional piece of short fiction, which starts: Now and then…I have a repeating dream of me as a child coming home from school and sitting down to draw. And I draw suns. I use every crayon in the box. I draw every type of sun…A rainbow sun, a hollow sun, a scared sun, a new sun, a neat sun, a dirty sun, a magic sun, a spinning sun, a poem sun, a danger sun, a boss sun, an open sun, a tired sun, a breathing sun, a clapping sun, a mirror sun, a funny sun, a sour sun. Choksi invites ten Bangladeshi children to embody these dreams, drawing suns daily in the exhibition space, considering the multiplicity of the sun as a powerful magic orb and a cursed ball of fire, both energising and overheating life on earth. They consider the sun’s power from their point of view as children, but also from the vantage point of other human and non-human entities (such as a rock, the wind, or even a lizard). They also imagine how the sun might consider us within its dominion of power as it shines down on our planet. Venturing deeper into the fictive dream that inspires this work, the mother worries about the obsessive nature of her child’s drawings, and consults an ayurvedic doctor to interpret the meaning of these stacks of suns. Choksi invites a different adult professional each day to interact with the now-embodied dream child through the lens of their skill sets as an archaeologist or a meteorologist, among others. The psychological process of animating nature draws us back to our primal yearning to reconnect with the cosmos across species and generations as we morph from atoms into beings and back. Omer Wasim (b. 1988 in Karachi lives and works in Karachi ) & Saira Sheikh (b. 1975 in Karachi, d. 2017 in Karachi) The Impossibility of Loving a Stone 2017 Drawings on paper Courtesy of the artists This work situates the makers amidst the changing peripheries of the ocean. Once porous, continuous, the coastline—carved over millions of years by the love of water for land and stone—is ravaged, pushed out, to make room for concrete. The mother—sea and adjoining land—and/or bearer is continuously mined for animate and inanimate beings. Hence, The Impossibility of Loving a Stone is indeed, or signals, the impossibility of loving the land, water, and other beings, hinting at colonial and neocolonial modes of knowledge construction and production, value, consumption, and bio-power. The desire to decipher, to fully understand, to grapple with the physicality of the stone is also informed by the need to get closer to the father—a geologist, a displaced body. His didactic words directed at deconstructing the physicality of the stone, allow the makers to traverse through boundaries, both permeable and impermeable, and make them visible on paper. And in this manifestation, with the original text next to its Bangla translation, the work comes full circle. A little part of the father returns home, albeit only as words and lines on paper for a short while. The father in this work is also a biographical reference, as Wasim’s father is a geologist and was born in Bangladesh. He lived there until November 1971—and has not been able to go back since. Ursula Biemann (b. 1955, Zurich; lives and works in Zurich) Deep Weather, 2013 Video Essay Courtesy of the artist Presented here with additional support from Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council In Ursula Biemann’s film Deep Weather (2013), mud connects the ends of the Earth: Alberta, Canada and the Sundarbans- the deltaic regions of Bangladesh that have soaked in the sea of the Bay of Bengal for centuries. The attempt to conjure oil from the muddy sands of Alberta by multinational corporations leads to massive displacement: of indigenous people in the Athabasca basin in Canada, and of local populations in southern Bangladesh who have been transformed into climate refugees. Only lines of sacks filled with mud stand between these people, and the sea that swells with rising global temperatures, as global capitalism churns the very insides of the earth to burn the remains of long-dead life forms. Rotating around the same sun, Canada and Bangladesh, as well as everywhere else on the globe, are linked by the oceans and atmospheres connecting them and naturally environmental catastrophes on one side of the earth impact the other.

ALL PROJECTS Performance Workshop Tour by Myriam Lefkowitz 20 - 21 March 2015 Myriam Lefkowitz continued her Walk, Hands, Eyes (Vilnius), a performance project she has been doing for more than seven years, but in the form of a workshop. The performance project is a perceptive experience, weaving a relation between walking, seeing, and touching, for one person at a time, lasting one hour, in a city. Over the course of two days in March of 2015, sixteen participant artists took this guided tour with Lefkowitz through Old Dhaka and University of Dhaka.

ALL PROJECTS Condition Report 4: Stepping Out of Line; Art Collectives and Translocal Parallelism Envisioned by Koyo Kouoh, Marie Helene Pereira, and Dulcie Abrahams Altass of RAW Material Company, Dakar Su sanxleẽn booloo wot wer / Ants come together to find wellbeing Béy, bu àndul ak béy, ànd ak cere / Goats who leave the herd, find themselves in the company of couscous Wolof proverbs Above our heads, this very second, thousands upon thousands of birds are flying in flocks. From the lightest shift in the incline of feathers is born a collective moment that allows for protection and efficacy whilst flying over great distances. From the ground, there appears to be perfect synchronicity within these flock movements, a marvel that scientists are still trying to understand. A flick of a wing, banal on its own, is the genesis of significant impact when performed with other, similar winged beings. This fascinating and naturally occurring activity is a useful starting point for Condition Report 4: Stepping out of line; Art collectives and trans-local parallelism, which exists as a forum for addressing practices and forms of production that take the cooperating, non-hierarchical group as a guiding principle. The fourth edition of RAW Material Company’s biannual symposium program exploring the artistic landscape in Africa and beyond, CR4 delves into examples of collectivity both historic and contemporary to assess the scope of change possible through the ignition of our interconnectedness. Dreams of cooperation are not always fulfilled, and we acknowledge that the same spirit of resistance, survival, or predation that facilitates collective action can wane or backfire, leaving members out of formation. Yet the aesthetic, physical, and social fields of intervention that are the focus and fodder of collectives merit attention, particularly given the role they play in the seismic movements that are the focus of DAS 2020. This symposium, through its form and content, opens up the different lines of inquiry that emerge from collective practice, with a particular focus on webs of international solidarities. Writers and curators are in dialogue with members of collectives, allowing both critical analysis and historical production to sit side by side with practice. We begin with an investigation into the formal aesthetic of the collective and the forms, structures, and shapes that emerge both organically and strategically when we flock together. Drawing on both traditions of Bengali ensemble music and the Senegalese Penc – a structure for community dialogue – allows us to enact collective forms and give shape to this coming together. Moreover, the space we use in Dhaka is designed to let the outside in and vice versa, an acknowledgment of the large number of collective practices that are currently threatened by the displacement of entire communities for economic or climatic reasons, who are thus separated from the material space that plays an active role in the affirmation of collective existence. Moving from concerns around form, the conversation will unpack different propositions for making histories of collective practice and collective practices of making histories. Polyphonic in their very nature, collective movements have proven complex to anchor in any one narrative. Members may tell different and contradictory stories, highlighting aspects of particular relevance to their own journey or the wider circles within which they move, beyond the sphere of the collective itself. And yet we know that these stories must be told. If we accept this reality, can we think of the generative space between the swarm behavior of two neighboring bees? What historiographical approaches are necessary for unearthing and learning from gossip, witness accounts, and inconsistency? As articulated by Elvira Dyangani Ose, how can we ‘claim history as a participatory experience’? International collectivism can at times be even harder to map, across linguistic lines and countries with differing relationships to the archive, and yet we must learn to become more supple and more creative in our historiographical methodology if we want to do justice to these histories. Engaging in a more frontal manner with the contemporary moment and the crescendo of interest within both the art world and the fields of social sciences and humanities in collectives and collectivism – indeed as a fully-fledged ‘ism’ – we will also ask questions related to the relationship between collective practice and economy. Are visions of commons and non-hierarchical labor structures purely utopian within a global, late-capitalist order? Must collectives shun capitalism completely to be legitimate, or is it that collective practice must fall on either side of a state/ private dichotomy? How do collectives create models of institutions that disrupt this opposition? How do collectives engage with informal and bartering economies to survive, produce, and endure, and what lessons can be learned from these strategies? Challenging traditional notions of authorship and therefore ownership, artist collectives also challenge and reject the vision of the mythical, singular, and historically male artist, drawing attention to the plurality of skills and efforts needed to generate and support a project. Continuing in this vein, it is worthwhile to pause on how collective practice can influence how formal institutions function, and to consider to what ends and through which channels we can create new alliances of support across domains. Many collectives also tend to have a shorter lifespan than formal institutions, and we will consider the death and dispersal of collectives as key moments in their existence. When birds disband from the flock formation, it signifies that the need that brought them together is no longer relevant; a danger has passed, or the aerodynamic support they provided one another has given sufficient time for rest. To be cognizant of how to collectively separate, shift energies, and acknowledge the end of a mission is a skill that will also be discussed; what happens after the seismic movement? Fundamentally, CR4 is an invitation to think about the ‘we’ and the forms of our relationships with one another. We will question and map strategies that allow the flock to fly and get the job done, and then to leave formation without injury, in a bid to open up this prescient field of study while learning and practising how we can live better together. Featuring Akaliko Centre for Historical Reenactment (Kemang Wa Lehulere) Chimurenga (Zipho Dayile) Cosmin Costinas Depth Of the Field (Emeka Okereke) Elizabeth A. Povinelli Gidree Bawlee (Salma Jamal Moushum) Green Papaya (Merv Espina) Hong Kong Artist Union – KY Wong Jatiwangi (Ismal Muntaha) John Tain Joydeb Roaja & Hill Group Laboratoire Agit’Art (Pascal Nampemanla Traoré) Luta ca caba inda (Sonia Vaz Borges) Marina Fokidis Mustafa Zaman Pathshala (Taslima Akhter) ruangrupa (Farid Aditama Rakun) Shawon Akand Shomoy Group (Dhali Al Mamoon) Shoni Mongol Adda (Tarana Willy) Somankidi Coura (Raphaël Grisey and Bouba Touré) The Otolith Group Opening Speech of Diana- Condition Report 4 by RAW Material Company at DAS 2020 Ogadha' Ekattata | তরঙ্গ by Akaliko- Condition Report 4 by RAW Material Company at DAS 2020 Keynote by Elizabeth Povinelli -Condition Report 4 by RAW Material Company at DAS 2020 Indigenous Resistance and Gender in South Asia and the Pacific History- CR 4 by RAW at DAS2020 Joydeb Roaja, Hill Artist Group, Greg Dvorak, Mata Aho Collective, Taloi Havini Forms of Collectives- Condition Report 4 by RAW Material Company at DAS 2020 Jatiwangi (Ismal Muntaha), Laboratoire Agit’Art (Pascal Nampemanla Traoré), Pathshala (Taslima Akhter)- Moderated by Marina PENC on Forms of Collectives- Condition Report 4 by RAW Material Company at DAS 2020 Moderated by Mustafa Zaman, the PENC reflects on the forms of collectives and the future of them. Making (Collective) History-Condition Report 4 by RAW Material Company at DAS 2020 Luta ca caba inda, Guinea Bissau – Chimurenga, South Africa – Gidree Bawlee, Bangladesh – Moderated by Shawon Akand Collective Practice and Economy- Condition Report 4 by RAW Material Company at DAS 2020 Somankidi Coura, Mali – Hong Kong Artist Union, Hong Kong – Shoni Mongol Adda, Bangladesh – Moderated by ruangrupa The Death of the Collective- Condition Report 4 by RAW Material Company at DAS 2020 Green Papaya, Philippines – Depth Of Field, Nigeria – Shomoy Group, Bangladesh – Moderated by Cosmin Costinas PENC Writing Collective History- Condition Report 4 by RAW Material Company at DAS 2020 The PENC open forum discussion session on writing collective history is moderated by Otolith Group

ALL PROJECTS World Weather Network Formed in response to the climate emergency, the World Weather Network is a constellation of weather stations set up by 28 arts agencies around the world and an invitation to look, listen, learn, and act. From June 21, 2022, to June 21, 2024, artists, writers, and communities shared observations, stories, reflections, and images about their local weather, creating an archipelago of voices and viewpoints. Engaging climate scientists and environmentalists, the World Weather Network brought together diverse worldviews and different ways of understanding the weather across multiple localities and languages.

ALL PROJECTS COSMOPOLIS #1.5: ENLARGED INTELLIGENCE 2 NOVEMBER 2018 - 6 JANUARY 2019, CHENGDU, CHINA Cosmopolis #1 .5: Enlarged Intelligence , opened November 2 in Chengdu, Sichuan Province in south-west China, presented artworks and programs by almost 60 artists and groups, exploring ecology, technology and the commons, and envisioning how we today may draw on intelligent technologies, as well as on ecological intelligence, to advance social values—rather than leaving capital to largely define the uses of these techniques and knowledge systems. Fostering a speculative approach rooted in conceptual thinking and creative experimentation, the project includes artist residencies, concerts, talks, and educational programs taking place across multiple venues in Chengdu and in nearby Jiajiang County. Cosmopolis #1 .5 was curated by Kathryn Weir, with associate curator Ilaria Conti and curatorial advisor Zhang Hanlu. Samdani Art Foundation was pleased to support Kathryn Weir's research into Bangladesh via her Dhaka Art Summit 2018 fellowship and her engagement with our artist led initiatives forum. Her research resulted in Bangladeshi artists Munem Wasif, Yasmin Jahan Nupur, and Samdani Art Award 2016 winner Rasel Chowdhury's participation in the exhibition Cosmopolis 1.5: Enlarged Intelligence. Find out more about the exhibition here: https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/210447/cosmopolis-1-5-enlarged-intelligence/

ALL PROJECTS A BEAST, A GOD, AND A LINE | PARA SITE HONG KONG CURATED BY COSMIN COSTINAS 17 MARCH - 20 MAY 2018 | PARA SITE, HONG KONG Dhaka Art Summit 2018 exhibition, A beast, a god, and a line travelled to Para Site in Hong Kong for its second iteration, featuring many works commissioned by the Samdani Art Foundation as part of exhibition's the initial edition during DAS 2018. This exhibition was organised by the Samdani Art Foundation in collaboration with Para Site, Hong Kong and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Installation image of A beast, a god, and a line at Para Site, Hong Kong. Photo credit: Eddie Lam, Image Art Studio.

ALL PROJECTS Safina Radio project With the subtitle Not as Far as it Seems, the Dhaka edition of Safina Radio Project took questions of belonging and home as its departure point. Responding to the practices, curatorial premises and work on show at the Dhaka Art Summit 2016, Safina explored common grounds within historical contexts, providing a cross-section of origins and their interpretations. Preprogrammed and commissioned pieces opened up a broad cultural context for Dhaka; literature, architecture, art, and music content brought to the fore the rich cultural undercurrents of one of Asia’s most complex cities, drawing listeners closer to Dhaka as a centre for cultural discourse. From 5–8 February, Safina Radio Project broadcasted conversations and performative pieces created with artists, writers, and curators during their time at the summit, drawing on their encounters with the city. safinaradioproject.org Contributors include: Shumon Ahmed Nabil Rahman Ronni Ahmmed Mustafa Zaman Ayesha Sultana Yasmin Jahan Nupur Sarker Protick Munem Wasif Reetu Sattar Mehreen Murtaza Rahel Aima Kashef Chowdhury Mariam Ghani Chitra Ganesh Sharmini Pereira Belinder Dhanoa Safina Radio Project Quinn Latimer Salima Hashmi Paul B. Preciado Katya García-Antón Firoz Mahmud Lynda Benglis Director: Anabelle de Gersigny Commissioned by Alserkal Avenue

ALL PROJECTS Raqib Shaw: Whitworth Art Gallery Co-Curated By Diana Campbell Betancourt, Chief Curator Of Dhaka Art Summit And Artistic Director Of Samdani Art Foundation, Dr Maria Balshaw, Director Of Tate, And The Artist, As Part Of The New North And South, A Network Of Eleven Arts Organisations From Across South Asia And The North Of England In A Three-Year Programme Of Co-Commissions, Exhibitions And Intellectual Exchanges A solo exhibition by contemporary artist Raqib Shaw at Whitworth Gallery, Manchester from 24 June- 19 November, 2017 which examined the real and imagined spaces between the East and West. Shaw ’s opulent paintings of fantastical worlds were combined with historic textiles, furniture and drawings from the Whitworth's collection. The exhibition takes the form of an installation, drawing on influences of renaissance and baroque imagery, combined with theatrical extravagance, nature and poetry, to echo the mythic space Shaw creates in his paintings. New wallpaper designed by Shaw, commissioned specially for the exhibition, created an extraordinary backdrop for his work. The exhibition was reimagined for the South Asian context, during the Dhaka Art Summit 2018. A new network of eleven arts organisations from across the North of England and South Asia announced a three-year programme of co-commissions, exhibitions and intellectual exchange to celebrate shared heritage across continents and develop artistic talent. The New North and South network, supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England’s Ambition for Excellence programme, will bring prominence to the work of leading Bangladeshi, Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan and UK artists and include new artistic commissions, exhibitions and performances in Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool and in Colombo, Dhaka, Lahore, Karachi and Kochi.

ALL PROJECTS Critical Writing Ensembles- Sovereign Words Curated by Katya García-Antón 2-10 February 2018 | Dhaka Art Summit The Office of Contemporary Art Norway returned to the Dhaka Art Summit 2018 with ‘Sovereign Words. Facing the Tempest of a Globalised Art History’: a platform of panel discussions, lecture performances, group debates and readings during DAS 2018. ‘Sovereign Words’ is a new iteration of the ‘Critical Writing Ensembles’, committed to the strengthening of critical writing within and across communities of the world. This edition was focused on writing by peers from Indigenous communities around the world contesting the Western canon. ‘Sovereign Words’ was conceived by OCA, and organised in partnership with DAS, Artspace Sydney and the Australia Council for the Arts. Keynote Lecture by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Date: 9 February 2018, 6.00 – 7.15pm Venue: 3rd Floor Auditorium, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Dr Spivak’s presentation addressed the precarious situation of the Rohingya people in relation to Indigeneity in the world today, with a special emphasis on the languages of the Bengal region. Rohingya are stateless people who are Indigenous to nowhere, and who speak a different language from Bengali; Spivak connected their current situation to the history of the region. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is one of the world’s foremost literary theorists. She is a University Professor at Colombia University and a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. Spivak is best known for her essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” and for her translation of, and introduction to, Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976). In 2012, Spivak was awarded the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy as a critical theorist and educator speaking for the humanities against intellectual colonialism in the face of the globalised world. In 2013, she received the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian award given by the Republic of India. She has published a number of articles and books, including Readings (The University of Chicago Press, 2014); An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalisation (Harvard University Press, 2012); Other Asias (Blackwell Publishing, 2008); A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (Harvard University Press, 1999); The Post-Colonial Critic – Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues (Routledge, 1990); and In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (Routledge, 1987). She will be the 2018 recipient of the Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award from the Modern Language Association of America. She has received eleven honourary doctorates and the Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Government of France. Presentations: Máret Ánne Sara Session Date: 5 February 2018, 11.00am - 4.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy In the afterword to her debut book Ilmmiid gaskkas (In Between Worlds), Máret Ánne Sara writes “People say they don’t believe in such things anymore. Still, they don’t dare to deny it either.” Ilmmiid gaskkas explores Sami beliefs vis-à-vis contemporary reality through the voices of teenagers and their experience of Sami worlds. In her presentation, Sara read sections of her book that speak about the traditions of Sámi storytelling, the use of this philosophy in modern literature and in a political settings. She also made use of her artwork to showcase how she addresses the same topics through different artistic forms and approaches. Máret Ánne Sara is an artist whose work deals with political and social issues affecting the Indigenous Sámi people and their reindeer-herding communities. Sara has created posters, CD/LP covers, scene visuals and fabric prints for numerous Sámi artists, designers and institutions and has exhibited in the field of visual arts since 2003. Furthermore, she is an editor, journalist and published novelist. Her first book Ilmmiid gaskkas (In Between Worlds, 2013), was nominated for the Nordic Council’s Children’s and Young People’s Literature Prize in 2014. She is one of the founding members of the Dáiddadállu / Artists’ Collective Kautokeino. Sara’s ongoing project Pile o’Sápmi was showcased, amongst others, as part of the documenta 14 exhibition at the Neue Neue Galerie, Kassel 2017. Djon Mundine Session Date: 5 February 2018, 11.00am - 4.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy The exhibition To Strike – To Leave My Mark (2017–18), celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative through the work of its ten founding members: Michael Riley, Bronwyn Bancroft, Arone Meeks, Euphemia Bostock, Fiona Foley, Brenda L. Croft, Jeffrey Samuels, Tracey Moffatt, Avril Quaill and Fern Martins. The exhibition's curator, Djon Mundine, explained; “The group is interesting from several angles in that the group was across all genders, ages, and training –all had, or were attending, Western art courses or art schools, most members were women (7/10), almost half were refugees from Joh Bjelke-Peterson’s Queensland (4/10), the other half were from New South Wales (NSW), most weren’t teenagers anymore, and the two ‘gay’ men members had been ‘out’, proud and well known nearly all their lives. I really, first met several of this group who were in the Koori Art 84 exhibition at Sydney’s Artspace in 1984. I was living and working as an Art and Craft Advisor in central Arnhem Land then and had just curated an exhibition of the Art Gallery of NSW’s bark painting collection in 1983. Following the Koori Art 84 show, several artists started to correspond with me and wanted to visit. They were travelling to the Tiwi Islands as part of their Western style art courses to be exposed to ‘real’ Aboriginal art. About half of the ten visited and worked and formed relationships with Ramingining or Maningrida communities.” A number of the original ten members moved on to great achievements in terms of global art world recognition, as much as they left their mark in establishing the co-operative that has influenced and provided openings for so many Aboriginal artists: Tracey Moffatt presented a solo exhibition within the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2017. In this presentation, Mundine honoured both her and the rest of the ten for their struggle and triumph. Djon Mundine, OAM (Medal of the Order of Australia), is a curator, writer, artist and activist. He has held prominent curatorial positions in many national and international institutions, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane. In 1993 he received the OAM for service to the promotion and development of Aboriginal arts, crafts and culture. Between 2005 and 2006 he was Research Professor at The National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku) in Osaka. He is a member of the Bandjalung people of northern New South Wales, and currently an independent curator of contemporary Indigenous art. Léuli Eshraghi Session Date: 5 February 2018, 11.00am - 4.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy In Léuli Eshraghi’s words, “This piece reflected my many journeys in recent years connected with relations across the coasts and inland mountains rimming the Great Ocean. A third of our planet’s surface, home to millions of Indigenous and migrant beings, including plants, fish, animals, birds, spirits and humans: this is a continent rendered invisible in dominating Euro-American military and economic endeavours." Eshraghi aimed to approach diasporic yearning for homelands / waters / intergenerational trauma and mourning for repeated genocides / epistemicides / ecocides / linguicides, alongside the development of contemporary Indigenous sovereignties as part of responsible belonging, caring and visiting. This presentation brought sensual lessons and languages to the fore in understanding how curating / artmaking / writing by Indigenous peoples of the Great Ocean are practices of leadership through service, and healing through cleansing. Léuli Māzyār Luna’i Eshrāghi (Sāmoan, Persian, German, Chinese ancestries) is an uninvited guest in unceded Kulin Nation territory, and a PhD candidate at Monash University Art Design Architecture (MADA). Hailing from the Sāmoan villages of āpia, Leulumoega, Si’umu, and Salelologa, his work centres on ceremonial-political renewal, languages, embodied futures, and diasporic and local indigeneities. He has undertaken residencies at Para Site, Hong Kong; the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity; the University of British Columbia, Okanagan; and the Tautai Pacific Arts Trust, Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland in English). He serves on the board of the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective / Collectif des commissaires Autochtones; the editorial advisories for Broadsheet, Tardanyangga (Adelaide in English) and un Magazine in Narrm (Melbourne in English); and the Pacific Advisory Group for the Melbourne Museum. Megan Cope Session Date: 5 February 2018, 11.00am - 4.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy This presentation of Cope's artistic practice, focused on the transition from mapping practices to her most recent sculptural work. Looking into mapping practices as colonial tools, and mining industries which both alter Indigenous landscapes and their economic, relational and ecological systems, she discussed the impact of Australia’s colonial settlers on the artist’s traditional Quandamooka country and offered a snapshot of an industry that has relied heavily on both Aboriginal aqua-cultural systems and labour in the region. This presentation explored the role that contemporary art has in the promotion of Indigenous culture and provided legal documents to challenge the notion of the hegemonic state. Megan Cope is a Quandamooka woman from North Stradbroke Island in Southeast Queensland. Her site-specific sculptural installations, video work and paintings explore the myths and methods of colonisation. Her diverse practice also investigates issues relating to identity, the environment, and mapping practices. Most recently Cope’s large scale sculptural installations have been curated into three major national survey exhibitions: The National, Art Gallery of New South Wales (2017); Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial, National Gallery of Australia Parkes (2017); and Sovereignty at ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art), Melbourne (2016). Her work has been exhibited widely, in exhibitions at Next Wave Festival Screen Space, Melbourne (2014); Incinerator Gallery, Sydney (2013); My Country: I Still Call Australia Home, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2013); Para Site, Hong Kong (2013); Tony Albert Wellington City Gallery, New Zealand (2010); and the ARC Biennial, Brisbane (2009). In 2014 she was selected for the Victorian Aboriginal Art Award, in 2011 she won the Churchie National Emerging Art Prize, and in 2009 was a finalist for the Clayton Utz Travelling Scholarship and won the Sunshine Coast Art Prize. Her work is present in many national public art collections, including: Australian Parliament House, Canberra; Mater Hospital, Brisbane; Gold Coast University Hospital, Gold Coast; Redlands Art Gallery, Redlands; and the NEWflames Anne Gamble Myer Collection, Brisbane. Santosh Tripura Session Date: 5 February 2018, 11.00am - 4.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Indigenous people’s survival and existence are associated with the lands where they have lived since time immemorial. The importance of lands is the very survival of Indigenous cultures and their articulated ideas of communal stewardship over land, as well as their deeply felt spiritual and emotional nexus with the Earth and its fruits. Hence the claiming of land rights means ensuring the security of land ownership which guarantees the economic viability and development of such communities. Land is the central issue when discussing Indigenous peoples’ empowerment as it is the basis for the enjoyment of their cultural rights and ensures their basic rights while respecting their distinct identity. The Indigenous notion of the ownership and management of land is based on the customary laws which are considered more or less a collective property. This presentation offered a brief glimpse into the status of Indigenous peoples’ land rights in Bangladesh. Sontosh Bikash Tripura is a scholar and researcher, working in the field of development studies. He studied Anthropology for his BSS Hons and MSS degrees at the Dhaka University. He also received a M.Phil. in Indigenous Studies from UiT (Arctic University of Norway), Tromsø, under the Norad fellowship programme. His M.Phil. thesis is titled Blaming Jhum, Denying Jhumia: Challenges of the shifting cultivators land rights in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Between August 2009 and February 2017 he worked for UNDP (United Nations Development Programme). Belonging to the Tripura Indigenous community in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh, his research interests explore Indigenous peoples’ rights, land rights and development. Irene Snarby Session Date: 6 February 2018, 11.00am - 4.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy For many Sámi people, duodji (commonly translated as Sámi handicraft, the word was used extensively to define the community’s creative activities) is one of the strongest indicators of Sámi identity. Their relationship with their traditions signify deep collective values and norms. Intangible knowledge is an important part of both the process and the experience of duodji. Consequently, Sámi traditions and the practice of duodji are subject to varying degrees of knowledge and understanding. Iver Jåks stressed the importance of duodji as not being exclusively associated with memories, keepsakes and the past, and was concerned with giving his art relevant content as contemporary art. In this presentation, Snarby elaborated on how a deep and specific notion of duodji and ancient Sámi thinking incorporated with avant-garde art practices informs Iver Jåks’s three-dimensional works. Through his practice, which was closely associated with a broad, holistic understanding of duodji, he gave a voice to Sámi methods, traditions and experiences in an arena that had previously rejected Sámi art as ethnology rather than art. Irene Snarby is a Doctoral Research Fellow in Art History at SARP: The Sámi Art Research Project at UiT (Arctic University of Norway), where she is carrying out research into the works of the artist Iver Jåks for her PhD thesis. Snarby has worked as a curator within the Art Department of Riddo Duottar Museat (Sámi Museums of Western Finnmark) in Kárášjohka (Karasjok in Norwegian) and has been a member of the Sámi Parliament’s Art Acquisitions Committee for Contemporary Art. For the last 20-years, she has written essays, given lectures and been an editor for several publications of Sámi art. Snarby has also been an advisor on important art projects such as the International Indigenous Art exhibition Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada, in Ottawa, and There is no, at the Sámi Art Museum at Northern Norwegian Art Museum. Daniel Browning Session Date: 6 February 2018, 11.00am - 4.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Decolonisation is at least intellectually and aesthetically possible, even though the power structures of colonialism persist. However, colonialism transmutes; it shifts and rebalances, forever finding a way to maintain its power and hegemony. Post-colonial thinking, the process of re-imagination, is evident in public artworks in Australia and the impetus to challenge historical amnesia is being driven at a superficial level by arts funding bodies, with philanthropic money from urban development sectors and such resources. This presentation attempted to outline the ways in which public memory is being challenged to rethink the colonial meta-narratives: that of discovery, the terra nullius and White Australia. Daniel Browning is an Aboriginal journalist, radio broadcaster, documentary maker, sound artist and writer. Currently, he produces and presents Awaye!, the Indigenous art and culture programme on ABC RN, a specialist radio network of Australia’s national broadcaster. Awaye! surveys contemporary Indigenous cultural practice across the arts spectrum. A visual arts graduate, Daniel is also a widely-published freelance arts writer. He is a former guest co-editor of Artlink Indigenous, a publication produced regularly since 1990 by Artlink Magazine, a quarterly Australian contemporary arts journal. He is the curator of Blak Box, an immersive sound installation in the newly-redeveloped precinct on the western foreshore of Sydney Harbour. He studied English and Art History at the University of Queensland before graduating with a degree in visual arts from the Queensland University of Technology. Daniel is a descendant of the Bundjalung and Kullilli peoples of far Northern New South Wales and Southwestern Queensland. Santosh Kumar Das Session Date: 6 February 2018, 11.00am - 4.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy From a personal perspective, Santosh Kumar Das’s presentation gave insight into his practice: “I focused mainly on the freedom that being a speaker of the folk or Indigenous language of Madhubani has given me as an artist and as a human being. It is like when an idea comes to me, in the mind it has a certain language, a certain form. I watch it for some time carefully and realise it is in the language or form which I have known so intimately all my life. It is always in the folk language (read visually as ‘form’) of my place. At times, the source of the idea may be quite diverse and strange. Maybe a film poster or maybe the figure of a bridge seen from a distance. But ultimately as it begins to solidify, it starts to take on the form of Madhubani. It is like a mother tongue; speaking in it comes more naturally to a child. We don't think much while speaking in our mother tongues. We feel and express. There is no strain and risk. It is the same for me as painting in the style of Madhubani. It is the language of my thought. And the form itself has been a rewarding experience for me. All these years, I have just tried to be honest to the medium, i.e., that of the lines drawn with a pen nib on paper.” Santosh Kumar Das is an artist from a village in the Madhubani region. His work draws inspiration from the traditional folk language of Madhubani, using various iconological figures and symbols, and creating a unique artistic language. Kumar Das has a BA Fine Arts in Painting from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. During the 1980s he conducted a research project on folksongs of Mithila, together with the ethnomusicologist Naomi Owen from the USA, and assisted Dr. Raymond Lee Owens on a film about Mithila painters. In 2017 Tara Books published Kumar Das’ Black: An Artist’s Tribute, a memoir of his growth into art and a tribute to his personal muses that transformed him into an artist. Between 2003 – 2008 he served as the First Director of the Mithila Art Institute in Madhubani. In 2005 he travelled around several universities in the USA where he gave a number of artist talks. His work has been exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally, and is included in the collections of the Oberlin College and Conservatory, Oberlin, and the Ethnic Arts Foundation, Berkeley, among others. Kimberley Moulton Session Date: 6 February 2018, 11.00am - 4.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy In this presentation, Kimberley Moulton looked at the past seven years of her research into ancestral belongings in international and national collections. Through imagery, journal entries and critical engagement with the history of collecting and institutions, in Moulton’s own words this presentation “highlighted the personal effect working within these spaces has had on me as a Yorta Yorta woman and looked at how the intersection of First Peoples’ contemporary art practice and cultural material work can decentre the white paradigm.” This presentation also reflected on the legacy of Captain James Cook’s maiden voyage to trace the path of Venus and the mission of Terra Australis 250 years ago, which resulted in the very first cultural objects to be stolen from Australia. Kimberley Moulton is a Yorta-Yorta woman with a curatorial and writing practice which has engaged with many museums and contemporary art spaces. She is Senior Curator of South Eastern Aboriginal Collections for Museums Victoria at Melbourne Museum, focusing on the intersection of contemporary First Peoples art and cultural material in museums. Prior to this, Moulton was Project Officer and Curator at Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre, Melbourne Museum between 2009 and 2015, and Assistant Curator for First Peoples exhibition at Melbourne Museum in 2013. Alongside her institutional curatorial roles, she has independently curated: where the water moves, where it rests: the art of Djambawa Marawili, Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, Charlottesville (2015); State of The Nation, Counihan Gallery, Brunswick (2016); A Call From The West: The Continuing Legacy of Mr William Cooper, Footscray Community Arts Centre (2016). She was also co-curator for Artbank Sydney Social Day 2016, RECENTRE: sisters, City Of Melbourne Gallery (2017); and co-curator with Liz Nowell of Next Matriarch, ACE Open Adelaide and TARNANTHI Festival (2017). Kimberley is an alumna of the National Gallery of Australia’s Wesfarmers Indigenous Arts Leadership Programme 2010, British Council ACCELERATE programme (2013), National Gallery of Australia International Curatorial Fellow at Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Collection (2015), and a Victorian Curatorial Representative for the First Nations Exchange Programme at the Venice Biennale and First Nations Exchange Canada (2017). Kimberley’s current project is lead curator on Mandela: My Life at Melbourne Museum and guest curator of the Gertrude Contemporary, Octopus, exhibition (2018). Hannah Donnelly Session Date: 7 February 2018, 2.30pm - 7.30pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Hannah Donnelly asked: “How would our art histories be archived in Indigenous Futures?” This presentation explored future tense methodologies used to interview artists about the imagined collective representation of their work. Hannah Donnelly (Wiradjuri) is a writer and artist. Renowned for her ‘cli-fi’, she works with text, sound and installation exploring Indigenous futures and responses to climate trauma. Hannah is the creator of Sovereign Trax, a record label promoting First Nations music through energising decolonisation conversations and community in music. She is currently working as an associate producer at Next Wave, a biennial festival based in Melbourne, Australia, which promotes and showcases the work of young and emerging artists. Donnelly recently held the solo exhibition Long Water, at the Yirramboi Festival, Arts House, North Melbourne (2017). Her recent group exhibitions include: The Future Leaks Out, Liveworks, Sydney (2017); Future Eaters, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne (2017); Feedback Loop, Blak Dot Gallery, Melbourne (2017); and State of the Nation, Counihan Gallery, Melbourne (2016). Kabita Chakma Session Date: 7 February 2018, 2.30pm - 7.30pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy This presentation traced the emergence of Indigenous cinema in Bangladesh, particularly in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), positing it into the framework of the global Indigenous cinema movement: known as the Fourth Cinema. Chakma linked CHT cinema with a wider discussion of representation of Indigenous subjects as ‘others’ in the mainstream media, and discussed critical questions raised against this representation by intellectuals of the Global North and the Global South, highlighting what might be considered sovereignty in relation to CHT’s Indigenous Cinema. Kabita Chakma comes from the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh. Chakma is the largest indigenous group in Bangladesh. She belongs to the clan of Raange goza, Bhudo guttthi on her maternal side and Borbo goza, Phoraa daagi on her paternal side. Kabita is a freelance researcher, architect, writer and occasional guest lecturer and teacher at the School of Design, part of the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). She is a Coordinator of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Indigenous Jumma Association Australia (CHTIJAA), and a Community Adviser to BODHI (Benevolent Organisation for Development, Health and Insight) Australia, a charity organisation. Kabita’s interests include the history, culture, art and architecture of disadvantaged communities, particularly Indigenous peoples of the CHT, Bangladesh, and environmental sustainability. Prashanta Tripura Session Date: 7 February 2018, 2.30pm - 7.30pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Is there, or should there be, something called ‘Indigenous art’? Or is ethnicity a necessary or sufficient criterion for a practitioner of art to be categorised as an ‘Indigenous artist’? Tripura explains: “I wanted to explore such questions by talking about how I have dealt with them personally, such as when I once found myself resisting being labelled as an ‘Indigenous poet’, though I have also written a lot in support of the contested category of ‘Indigenous peoples’ in Bangladesh.” In this context, this presentation focused on how Tripura came to be interested in, and started writing about the identities and struggles of the self-identified ‘Indigenous peoples’ of Bangladesh: “My personal account was meant to serve as a window to the larger questions that concern academics, artists and activists alike in the contemporary world, e.g. how can art and literature help the Indigenous peoples assert and establish their identities and rights?” Prashanta Tripura is an academic anthropologist who currently teaches part-time at the Department of Economics and Social Sciences at BRAC University, Dhaka. Previously he was an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka, where he taught for ten years before switching over to the development sector, where he worked for over a decade. He received his academic training in the USA, majoring in anthropology at Brandeis University, Waltham, and went on to pursue graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his MA. He has contributed many articles – in both Bangla and English – that have been published in academic journals as well as magazines and dailies. A collection of his essays – in Bangla – titled Bohujatir Bangladesh (Bangladesh of Many Peoples) was published in 2015. He also expresses himself in Kokborok, his first language, which is spoken by the Tripuras, an Indigenous people of Bangladesh and India (he is from the Bangladesh side, but was born and brought up in the Khagrachari hill district of the Chittagong Hill Tracts region). He is also the principal author of a research monograph which has been published as a book in Bangla, titled Shifting Cultivation in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Biung Ismahasan Session Date: 7 February 2018, 2.30pm - 7.30pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy This presentation explored the ethno-aesthetic nature of Taiwanese Indigenous performative arts and the works of Truku performance artist and activist Don Don Houmwm, Rukai sculptor Eleng Luluan, and Bunun curator Biung Ismahasan (Truku, Rukai and Bunun belong to three of Taiwan’s sixteen Indigenous groups). They are examined as a contribution to the discourse of Indigenous and cultural sovereignty. This presentation examined their performative approaches, practices and curatorial strategies relevant to Indigenous artistic practices, particularly those pertinent to cultural loss, recovery and activation. It firstly questioned how Houmwm performs Indigeneity, sorrow and solitude, exposing hybrid identities; then demonstrated how Luluan uses her Indigenous minimalist installations to explore multiple social discrepancies between intrinsic and extrinsic performativity amid material objects and soft sculptures; it finally showcased how Biung Ismahasan himself structures a performative encounter of Taiwanese Indigenous contemporary art by curating an off-site and culturally resonant space. Biung Ismahasan is a curator and researcher, currently working on his PhD in Curating at the University of Essex’s Centre for Curatorial Studies. Belonging to the Bunun Nation of Taiwanese Indigenous groups, he is awarded PULIMA Art Award (the first national art award dedicated to Indigenous contemporary art), and exhibited at Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in Southern Taiwan. His research involves issues of contemporary Indigenous curatorial practice and aesthetics, focusing on the curation of Taiwanese Indigenous contemporary art. His current research emphasises the issues of participation, performativity and the historiography of Indigenous curation and exhibition design. His most notable curatorial projects includes, Anti-Alcoholism: an Indigenous performative encounter 2014-2018, an international performance art exchange of Indigenous artists from Taiwan. David Garneau Session Date: 8 February 2018, 5.30pm - 7.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy ‘Indigenous’ is not just a term that attempts to corral thousands of local identities but one that announces a new way of being Native. Indigenous is a collective identity in formation that includes, but goes beyond, traditional identities. While it is the form through which local communities are mostly known, championed, and advanced, it can also be co-opted and distorted by dominant, non-Native cultures and discourses. How do Indigenous writers, thinkers, artists, curators, activists and other cultural workers negotiate the complex identity called Indigenous? In this presentation, David Garneau offered suggestions that have arisen from his own experience and recent projects. David Garneau (Métis) is Associate Professor of Visual Arts at the University of Regina. His practice includes painting, curation, and critical writing. With Kathleen Ash Milby, he recently co-curated Transformer: Native Art in Light and Sound, at the National Museum of the American Indian, New York; Moving Forward, Never Forgetting, with Michelle LaVallee: an exhibition concerning the legacies of Indian Residential Schools, other forms of aggressive assimilation, and (re)conciliation, at the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina; and With Secrecy and Despatch with Tess Allas: an international exhibition about the massacres of Indigenous people and memorialisation, for the Campbelltown Art Centre, Sydney. Garneau has given numerous talks in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and throughout Canada. His work is part of a five-year SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) funded curatorial research project, ‘Creative Conciliation’, and he is working on a commissioned public art project in Edmonton, Alberta. His paintings can be found in numerous public and private collections. Ánde Somby Honouring National Sami Day Session Date: 8 February 2018, 5.30pm - 7.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Ánde Somby is a writer, yoiker (yoik is the Sámi way of singing or chanting; and the musical modus of yoiks differs from what is commonly known in Euro-American music) and Associate Professor of Law at UiT (Arctic University of Norway) where he specialises in Indigenous rights law. Somby was born in 1958 in Buolbmat in the Deatnu (Tana in Norwegian) municipality on the Norwegian side of Sápmi. He is the former Chair of the Centre for Sámi Studies at UiT and former leader of Sámiid Nuoraid Searvi (Sámi Youth Association in Kárášjohka, 1976–78). Somby has performed extensively as a yoiker since 1976, and has occasionally also lectured on the subject. His writings include: “How to recruit Samis to higher education and to research, items on an agenda of actions” (Sin neste som seg selv: Ole D. Mjøs 60 år 8. mars 1999, ed. by Arthur Arntzen, Jens-Ivar Nergård, and Øyvind Norderval, 1999) and “The Legal situation of The Nordic Indigenous Peoples” (paper presented at the 35th Nordic Jurist Assembly, 1999) and “Yoik and the Theory of Knowledge” (Kunnskap og utvikling, ed. by MagnusHaavelud, 1995).

ALL PROJECTS JOG and ruangrupa Dhaka Art Summit 2020 Jog Art Space is based in Chattogram, in south eastern Bangladesh. Unlike Dhaka, Chattogram has no commercial galleries and no network of contemporary art collectors, leaving artists to find alternative ways to sustain themselves. Jog Art Space provides the local visual arts community with mentoring support, exhibition opportunities, platforms for exchange and discussion, and access to international artistic exchange programmes. Some members of the group are teachers at the Institute of Fine Arts and see themselves as a bridge to experimental ways of working outside the confines of the academy, thus the name Jog, which translates as ‘connect.’ They advocate taking art out of the gallery, and into public spaces, which they refer to as ‘the emancipation of art.’ Since its establishment in Jakarta in 2000, ruangrupa has founded a video art festival, an online newspaper, music festivals, a library, a radio station, and an art school, among numerous other projects. ruangrupa also create installation works and other devices to investigate how the population of a city of more than 10 million people and lacking in infrastructure can appropriate the public space. ’Ruang‘ means ’space‘ in Sanskrit and Bahasa Indonesia, and ‘rupa’ means ’visual form‘. The collective includes artists, curators, architects, and writers, varying in number from 6 to 50 according to the project. Through programmes and interventions in urban space, ruangrupa exposes how knowledge is produced and shared through informal social situations — in line with their motto ‘Don’t make art, make friends’. Gerobak Cinema is a mobile rickshaw screening station created through a collaboration between Jog and ruangrupa, producing screening sessions in several spots around the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy on 14 February, taking the energy from inside the venue out into the streets of Dhaka. The equipment was collaboratively designed by artists, designers, IT technicians and created by the community according to local aesthetics to screen their own videos or selected Bangladeshi films.