ALL PROJECTS My Rhino is not a Myth, Art Encounters Biennial 19 May- 16 July 2023, Timișoara, Romania- Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury We are delighted to partner with the Art Encounters Biennial to support DAS 2018 Samdani Art Award winner Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury (Sakib) to further develop his practice as he prepares to create a new installation for Srihatta , our permanent space. The curator of the biennial, Adrian Notz shares: "I got to know Sakib in late 2021 in Zurich during his residency there, where I saw his installation “Fear of Social Bin” in real life. Immediately, I was triggered to write a small text about it. So much even, that I thought I need to be a bit poetic about it. On a skiing lift, where we went sledging in the mountains Sakib told me about how he mixes different realities and spiritualities in the research for his work. I like to call his works community based performative installations. For the 5th Art Encounters Biennial Sakib expanded the collaborative and performative community to the whole European cultural capital Timisoara. Using the eternally stretched time in his installations Sakib got to know Timisoara and its hidden stories and treasures in no time. Like a detective and forager, a hunter and gatherer he brought back small precious ingredients from different personal archives and stories around the town that composed his “Weltraum” (German for outer space, literally meaning “world room”) under the title “Waiting for the Becoming Song”. Ganda, the rhino we referred to in the title “My Rhino is not a Myth”, may have the same Bengali homelands like Sakib, but it is the subtitle “art science fictions” that describes best, what he was doing. He created a real world artistic and scientific fiction of our present and future world and reality. It was a great honour and pleurae to be working with Sakib thanks to the support of the Samdani Foundation."

ALL PROJECTS Performance Workshop by Nikhil Chopra, Madhavi Gore and Jana Prepeluh Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, 2 - 6 April 2015 The 2nd phase of Spring session of Samdani Seminars 2015 started with closed door performance conducted by leading Indian performance artist Nikhil Chopra, Madhavi Gore along with Slovenian artist Jana Prepeluh. 15 Bangladeshi artists were selected for the 5 days’ workshop that ran from 2nd till 6th April. The workshop worked as incubator for the emerging artists which would eventually lead to further performance workshop at the Heritage Hotel, Nikhil Chopra’s residency programme in Goa. On 8th open house performances were arranged as a final output of the workshop all day long.

ALL PROJECTS 9TH ASIA PACIFIC TRIENNIAL 24 NOVEMBER 2018 - 28 APRIL 2019, QUEENSLAND ART GALLERY, BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA The Samdani Art Foundation and Dhaka Art Summit 2018 are delighted with their partnership with the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial organized by the Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia, which facilitated the participation of Bangladeshi visual artists in this important regional and International platform for the first time. Tarun Nagesh, Associate Curator, Asian Art, QAGOMA, served as a DAS 2018 fellow and Diana Campbell Betancourt, Artistic Director, Samdani Art Foundation served as a curatorial interlocutor for APT 9, and Bangladeshi artists Ayesha Sultana (who won the 2014 Samdani Art Award) and Munem Wasif were commissioned to make new work for the exhibition. SAF also wishes to thank Artspace Sydney, the Australia Council for the Arts, and Australian Embassy High Commissioner Julia Niblett in Dhaka for being an integral part of this continuing journey of increasing artistic exchange between Bangladesh and Australia. Find out more about the exhibition, the artists, and their works here: www.qagoma.qld.gov.au The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT9) The hugely ambitious APT series brings significant art from across the Asia Pacific to Brisbane. Overflowing with colour and life, this free contemporary art

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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBLs3OliomTbRc803ghvpdR&v=Xf0DeQuXnrc Ogadha' Ekattata | তরঙ্গ by Akaliko- Condition Report 4 by RAW Material Company at DAS 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBLs3OliomTbRc803ghvpdR&v=xV2pHRxBI_8 Keynote by Elizabeth Povinelli -Condition Report 4 by RAW Material Company at DAS 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBLs3OliomTbRc803ghvpdR&v=OA8PFfehAOQ 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBLs3OliomTbRc803ghvpdR&v=Yo1dWSBTBoM 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBLs3OliomTbRc803ghvpdR&v=8lU9ZtQ4kv4 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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBLs3OliomTbRc803ghvpdR&v=hCLbTTqfnAA 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBLs3OliomTbRc803ghvpdR&v=UHIz0Ns4y7s 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBLs3OliomTbRc803ghvpdR&v=bcS0HSAPYRc 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBLs3OliomTbRc803ghvpdR&v=SIzTMGLc_ZQ 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBLs3OliomTbRc803ghvpdR&v=KuId3rQ8jYM

ALL PROJECTS Pasar Ilmu, Activation Programme by Gudskul Goethe Institut Auditorium, Dhaka, 5 Aug 2019 (It is to invent a learning space in where people participate in deciding what’s needed and learning material.)

ALL PROJECTS Visas to Happiness- Children's Workshop The children’s workshop 'Visas to Happiness' conceptualised by Mumbai-based artist Reena Saini-Kallat is primarily an instrument to spark dialogue and raise questions related to the notion of happiness and how we view the world. There is increasing political interest in using measures of happiness as a national indicator in conjunction with measures of wealth, and findings suggest that smaller countries tend to be a little happier because there is a stronger sense of collectivism. However, Bangladesh has recently slipped behind in its rankings on happiness. This workshop is the third in the series of short courses that were previously held in Chennai and Mumbai and involve specially produced mock-passports and arrival cards. The passports can be filled-in by children who bring their own understanding to the project from their personal and cultural values. As part of the project, Kallat, along with the children, will paint two ambitious murals with a large number of birds collectively forming a text in both English and Bengali, reflecting ideas about movement, flight and freedom. The text reads, “Happiness is not a station you arrive at but a manner of travelling.” Image: Reena Kallat, Visas To Happiness, Children’s Programme, 2014. Courtesy of the artist, the Dhaka Art Summit and the Samdani Art Foundation.

ALL PROJECTS Purposeful Goods Curated by Teresa Albor Social enterprises are businesses with a social or environmental purpose that prioritize transformative social impact-- entrepreneurship with a mission to change society. Socially engaged practice can involve social enterprise and a social enterprise can be considered process-based, socially engaged art. Bangladesh has played a revolutionary role in social enterprise. After the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, new ways of working collectively emerged including more socially viable and sustainable business strategies and organizational forms. Two internationally known examples are BRAC, the largest collaborative network of social business in the world, and the Grameen Bank, which paved the way for decades of micro credit initiatives. Purposeful Goods featured social enterprises, collectives and not-for-profit groups associated with DAS 2023, their stories and their products, most of which were for sale along with our book sellers (who operate with low/no margins). 100% of all purchases go directly to the groups represented. We are grateful to the Bangladesh Apparel Exchange for their in-kind support. AFIELD The impetus behind creating AFIELD (founded 2014) was the fundamental belief that artists are essential to the fabric of society, as thinkers, visionaries and changemakers. Despite changing the world in profound ways, there is not a support structure or advocacy platform for this kind of work. By providing resources and support, AFIELD supports them to lead transformational change in their communities and society as a whole. AFIELD was initially conceived as a fellowship for social initiatives for arts and culture. It is now a transnational network of practitioners from the creative, literary, scientific, academic and legal fields from 28 different countries . Every year, AFIELD provides resources to artists in the form of discussions, mutual aid, incubation and community building, to help members deepen and strengthen their work in their particular contexts. As a nonprofit organization AFIELD receives grants and donations from individuals and international foundations, starting with a pluri-annual grant of a private foundation and now expanding, thanks to a group of engaged collectors and philanthropists who support the program on an annual basis. AFIELD wouldn’t exist without the volunteer work of many members and advisors involved at different levels of the project. Resources are used to give fellowships to artists-led initiatives, to increase the visibility of their projects, to create educational programs in the form of events and workshops (online and irl). Every challenge is greeted as an invitation to align practices within AFIELD with their ethics: they are currently exploring horizontality in the decision making in their network, specifically regarding distribution of funds and programming, trying to find the right balance between consensus and efficiency, to advance projects and represent the voices of their communities. Finding a shared language to communicate and fostering cross-cultural understanding is critical to their work, as members are located all over the world. Out of practicality, AFIELD defaults to English as the lingua franca. This perpetuates the hegemony of the English language in arts practice. For this reason, it’s a necessity to develop common language groups, so people within the AFIELD network can meet and organize in ways relevant to their cultural and language contexts. AFIELD would also like to explore more opportunities for in-person gatherings. There’s a consistent schedule of online meetings (called “Kitchen Calls”) for their network, one-on-one calls, study opportunities, and regular contact by email. After meeting some of their members for the first time at documenta fifteen in 2022, they became aware more physical presence with their community was needed. Their biggest challenge is securing funding and ensuring accessibility for members of the network. Afield.org Artpro Artpro (founded 2016) is a group of artists who want to explore various forms of making art to engage a diverse public. Aware of the impact art can have for social good, one of Artpro’s first initiatives was to mobilize artists to help marginalized segments of Dhaka’s society through workshops and art projects hosted within their local communities. Keen to expand the impact of their work outside of Dhaka, in mid-2017, the group began conducting Weekend Art Works, a series of daylong public art projects which takes a group of selected contemporary artists to work within a rural village community outside of Dhaka for one day. The group continues to organize public knowledge-sharing workshops; these have included ceramics, image manipulation, performance art, and video art. The group also organizes festivals. Each year since 2017 they’ve hosted the Artpro Winter Performance Festival (AWPF) and, starting in 2019, the Artpro International Video Art Festival. Artpro does not focus on selling products made by communities, instead, they showcase the work when there is an opportunity to do so. This gives the people who have made the work a bit of cash and validation. In most cases Artpro splits the proceeds with the maker, using their share to cover their own costs for materials and running workshops. Sales are modest, what is more important to Artpro is the process. artpro.com.bd FRIENDSHIP FRIENDSHIP (founded 2002) began working with vulnerable communities in the most hard-to-reach, climate impacted areas (chars – riverine islands) of northern Bangladesh providing healthcare services via a floating hospital. It soon became clear that to make a lasting impact on people’s lives a holistic approach was needed to address other issues including education, human rights, and poverty. Among other initiatives, handicraft training as a response to the lack of economic opportunities soon followed. Establishing prefabricated training centers locally, women are taught traditional handloom weaving techniques, dyeing - using natural ingredients, and hand embroidery. Because the chars where they live are highly vulnerable to sudden and forceful flooding as well as erosion the centers can be moved in two days, reconstructed, and up and running in a new location in a month. Although the primary goal was and is to provide skills through which women develop their own social identities, enabling them to stand for their rights, it soon became clear the beautiful eco-friendly products made by the communities had real market potential. Following some small corporate orders, FRIENDSHIP moved beyond simply providing training, and established a brand, FRIENDSHIP Colours of the Chars. Women are paid by the piece, giving them total flexibility; FRIENDSHIP sets the retail price, using any profits to provide further services. There are many challenges and costs, the training and production centers are remote, making it difficult to get raw materials in and finished products out. But unlike a commercial enterprise, a social enterprise does not aim to maximize profits… more important are its social goals. In 2019, FRIENDSHIP opened its first retail outlet in Dhaka. Today there are two in Dhaka and a shop in Luxembourg, run under separate management, partly staffed by volunteers. 350 women work on a regular basis and over 1700 have been trained. There are eight rural production centers, and in Dhaka, a separate management team including specialists in sales and marketing, production, design, accounts and so on. Annual fashion shows draw large crowds. Having their own ‘bricks and mortar’ outlets provides a steady revenue flow and steady work for producers, which means they maintain their manual dexterity. FRIENDSHIP is committed to ethical practice and fair trade, fair wages, and creating healthy and women-friendly working environments, ethical sourcing of raw material, and overall responsible product offerings. friendship.ngo JAAGO Foundation JAGGO Foundation (founded 2007) is committed to eliminating poverty and social inequality through providing free, quality education to underprivileged children. Influenced by the new development paradigm, which puts people before things, JAAGO Foundation follows a participatory approach in every sphere of its work. For example, volunteer and youth groups are established to empower young people and others living in the communities where they work. Besides education, JAAGO also runs climate change, governance and women’s projects. Starting with 17 students and a chalkboard; today 4500 children are in education and 50,000 youth leaders operate in 64 districts of Bangladesh. JAAGO’s innovative Digital Schooling Program, brings quality education to remote areas and others with access challenges. Its alternative learning opportunities project reflects the special needs of children and adolescents. JAAGO also provides nutrition, hygiene and health programs for their students, families and the wider community. The products on sale as part of Purposeful Goods were made specifically for the Dhaka Art Summit by JAAGO students. Taking every possible opportunity to empower the children and young people they work with, JAAGO also worked with curator Sean Anderson as contributors to ‘To Enter the Sky’, another DAS 2023 show. jaago.com.bd Jothashilpa Jothashilpa (founded 2016) is a center for traditional and contemporary arts, which considers itself a melting pot where fine art, folk art, native art, and crafts are juxtaposed and create a new art language. The group questions the notion of ‘high art’ and believes art is an integral part of society which emerges from everyday art. They work with cinema banner painters, weavers, and ceramicists among others, and their priorities include fair trade, women’s empowerment, and community development. The concept of social enterprise is central to their vision. It was not easy at first. The team had no business experience and without any investment planning they spent over a million taka in six months and had no products or sales. They had the mistaken idea that if they could somehow work with artisans to produce products someone would buy them. They now say that having a marketing strategy is critically important along with the reality of understanding operational basics. Working with and supporting over five hundred artists, artisans, and craftspeople from across Bangladesh, the group makes sure their collaborators are paid fairly and acknowledged for their work. They maintain a showroom and small shop where work made by collaborating artists can be purchased, as well as an online shop. They believe that every artist produces something that is a product, and can be sold, whether it’s an expensive painting or a notebook. They believe that we are all just doing our work as producers and they have no problem leaning into the reality of the capitalist world if it means continuing traditions. Jothashilpa wants to be a bridge between the contemporary and traditional, urban and rural, grassroots and elite and the processes of creating and selling. They believe one can be an artist and an entrepreneur. jothashilpa.com Re/DRESS Re/DRESS (founded 2021) is a response to the fact that less than 1% of the world’s textile waste is recycled into new clothing. It’s an environmental non-profit disguised as a responsible fashion brand. It has three goals: to promote cotton recycling in Bangladesh, to make sure textiles made from a high percentage of recycled fibers are readily available at factories for buyers, and to promote responsible fashion to the Bangladeshi consumer. The first task was to work with factories to develop lightweight textiles made of 100% recycled fiber. This led to developing a clothing collection made from these textiles. The clothes are retailed in both Dhaka and London and all profits support responsible fashion. In collaboration with Reverse Resources the project tracks and makes information available about cotton recycling in Bangladesh. Since the project started there’s been considerable investment in this industry, and Bangladesh is poised to become a global hub for cotton recycling. Along the way, Re/DRESS has faced many challenges: how to make a robust new textile from recycled fiber, working within the limited availability of very busy research/development departments of factories and having an all-volunteer staff. In addition, Re/DRESS’s commitment to making technical successes (i.e., the ‘formula’ for new responsible textiles) freely accessible goes against the competitive nature of the textile/garment industry. This is further complicated since, on the other hand, Re/DRESS needs to protect its designs and brand to have impact. Re/DRESS has been able to take advantage of opportunities, especially the access to and the generosity and willingness of factories who participate in the project. redress-recycle.com Rohingya Cultural Memory Centre and Artolution In the world’s biggest refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, a cultural renaissance is in swing. Fighting back against the brutal violence and attempted cultural genocide inflicted on their people, who were forced to flee their homes in Myanmar, this renaissance is led by Rohingya artists, storytellers, musicians and artisans who create healing, hope and community, reviving tradition through art. The Rohingya Cultural Memory Centre (RCMC) and Artolution are at the movement’s forefront. A project of the International Organization of Migration (IOM), the RCMC is a community center, artist workshop, and safe space for cultural expression. Located in the heart of the Kutupalong-Balukhali megacamp, it is home to a collection of cultural artifacts made by Rohingya artists and craftspeople, including embroidered tapestries, model boats and houses, farming and fishing tools, recordings of folk songs, folk tales and proverbs, themed gardens, and more... Telling their stories in their own words and making these objects promotes positive cultural identity, challenges stereotypes, and reconnects Rohingya men, women and children to their ancestral language, land and traditions. A natural next step would be for the center to evolve into a social enterprise project, connecting skilled artisans to livelihood and market opportunities making them less dependent on humanitarian aid. However, despite initial hopes that refugee-made products could be sold on a small scale, this is now on hold: the Government of Bangladesh has not approved social enterprise projects for the Rohingya, and IOM policies prohibit staff from engaging in ‘business transactions’. Moving forward will require policy shifts at governmental and organizational levels. Also on display are works by Rohingya artists who have participated in community-based art programmes run in the camps by Artolution, a global organization that, in partnership with UNHCR, strengthens communities experiencing crisis through collaborative art-making. Although not a social enterprise, the RCMC team wanted to share the platform of Purposeful Goods with these artists, a good example of working collaboratively vs. competitively, a feature of social enterprise initiatives. More work by Rohingya artisans is on display in two other shows here at DAS 2023: ‘ Very Small Feelings’ and ‘ To Enter the Sky’. Rohingyaculturalmemorycentre.iom.int artolution.org Stools and mats This is the newest project participating in Purposeful Goods … so new, in fact, it is yet to have a name. This is the first time these products are available for purchase, and in part, their existence is the result of ‘To Enter the Sky’, another DAS 2023 show, which, amongst other considerations, looks at how architecture navigates notions of community. Architect Rizvi Hassan, whose practice explores the role of design professionals in unconventional fields, responded to the provocation of curator Sean Anderson, by seeking out artisans whilst in the field with the Institute of Architects on a flood response project in Sylhet and in Chittagong for a private client. He was intrigued by the process, planning and vision of the women who weave mats– from harvesting the inputs, to planning the design through to execution. He is currently working with less than ten artisans. The intention is to continue to explore how this work can be framed as an art form. Watch this space! TransEnd TransEnd (founded 2019) aims to support the marginalized and underrepresented hijra, non-binary, gender queer, transgender and intersex community in Bangladesh. Besides their focus on social and economic empowerment through skills development, they aim to sensitize society, providing visibility with the ultimate goal of achieving broader acceptance of these communities. TransEnd did not initially consider setting up a social enterprise. However, with economic empowerment as a goal it seemed an obvious option; secondly, as a small group with a young leader it was easier to set up a social-enterprise than register as a foundation or society. To date they’ve provided life skills such as cycling, basic computer, English Language, communication, leadership, and digital literacy skills. They’ve helped people find work as paid models, and with Pathao, FoodPanda, ChalDal, and Hyundai. Their public awareness campaigns are innovative using comic strips and animation. It is TransEnd's handicrafts project that is at the center of their social enterprise work. Making things and preferring more open-ended livelihood schemes (vs. having 9-5 jobs) appeals to many in these communities. In 2020, the first 40 tie-dyed T-shirts which were produced were featured on instagram and Facebook and sold out in five days. Profits went to a person who wanted to start poultry farming. The group immediately produced 200 more T shirts, only to discover that scaling up was challenging– sales, for some reason, slowed down. Most of TransEnd’s products are upcycled, eco-friendly and sustainable: macrame bags, beaded jewelry, tote bags, tie-dye, scented candles, and handmade soap and are featured on TransEnd’s social media and e-commerce platform. Customers can pay cash on delivery or through Bkash. They also showcase work at different craft fairs– but stall fees are going up and TransEnd is determined to pay fair prices to their makers. Without an office, and no regular core funding, everything operates on a temporal basis. One of the things TransEnd has learned is the value of a unique selling point. In their case it is their transparency about how they use their profits to uplift the communities they work with. Transendbd.org

ALL PROJECTS My Oma 8 December 2023 — 1 September 2024, Kunstinstituut Melly, Netherlands Sheelasha Rajdhandhari's remarkable piece, 'My great-great-grandmother’s shawl,' from the SAF collection was featured at Kunstinstituut Melly, Netherlands, as part of the 'My Oma' exhibition. 'My Oma' was curated by Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Rosa de Graaf, Jessy Koeiman, Julija Mockutė, and Vivian Ziherl. Its key producers were Shana Lewis, Pilar Mata Dupont, and Wendy van Slagmaat-Bos. Advisors to the research and planning process of "My Oma" include our Artistic Director, Diana Campbell, alongside Edward Gillman, Sun A Moon, and Manuela Moscoso. In the performative artwork titled 'My great-great-grandmother’s shawl,' Kathmandu-based artist Sheelasha Rajbhandari intricately weaves together the threads of change embedded in fabric and time. The three sets of photographs depict generations of women in the artist’s maternal family, tracing the evolving clothing preferences that mirror broader political and economic transformations within Nepal. The first image features the artist's great-great-grandmother, Purna Kumari Vaidhya, adorned in a Dambar Kumari Shawl, a 19th-century textile composed of a block-printed fabric sandwiched between fine muslin. The second and third portraits depict her grandmother, Chiniya Devi Bijukchhe, and the artist herself, both framed in the same posture and draped in a shawl. However, these two shawls are replicated by the artist, evident by the clothing tags. This visual narrative explores the growing influence of capitalism and ready-made items, prompting an interrogation on notions of authenticity and mimicry in the production of culturally significant items.

ALL PROJECTS Stitching Collective Envisioned by Gudskul, Jakarta Stitching Ecosystem Stitching Ecosystem is a mini-festival format comprised of a series of workshops, sharing sessions, and market spaces with a focus on five of Gudskul’s eleven ‘collective studies’ subjects: Collective Sustainability Strategy, Public Relations, Spatial Practices, Art Laboratory, and Knowledge Garden. Gudskul will connect and reconnect collective networks and foster inter-collectiveness in order to understand and collaborate across different themes and contexts. We take this opportunity to build a bigger ecosystem, while maintaining the valuable organic intimacy found in any collective praxis. Further, this series of activities will cultivate, foster and distribute knowledge among the participating collectives in DAS, while also expanding network and sharable resources with the general public. Collective as School Collective as School is a sharing session between over forty collectives participating in DAS 2020 from Africa, Australia, Central and South America, Oceania, and South and Southeast Asia. Each collective will share their respective stories about how and why their collectives were established, what their goals are, how their regeneration processes unfold, what they learned, what their structure looks like, how they have sustained and survived, how they self-evaluate, how knowledge gets distributed within the collective internally and externally to broader communities, and how their collectives support each member as an individual. This closed-door introductory session will produce a series of schemes/maps of potentials, strategies, and common understanding to prime the remaining nine days of DAS. Speculative Collective Speculative Collective is Gudskul’s latest iteration of a knowledge-sharing and mapping module that was conceived as a tool to explore forms of collectivising through direct practice, forming a kind of know-how. Compressed both spatially and temporally, the project extends from ongoing work within the context of Jakarta. In a loosely defined process, Gudskul invites strangers to meet and share what they consider to be ‘knowledge’ by playing the roles of both teacher and student in a quick reciprocal exchange. This newly formed pair must then couple with another pair, forming a temporary collective. Gudskul has designed a ‘tool’ to enable participants to record this process for themselves and carry it on past these random yet choreographed meetings. Gerobak Cinema Gerobak Cinema is a mobile screening station presented as part of The Collective Body curated by Diana Campbell Betancourt and Kathryn Weir. The Chattogram based collective Jog and the Jakarta based collective ruangrupa collaborate using a rickshaw, producing screening sessions in several spots around the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, taking the energy from inside the venue out into the streets of Dhaka. The equipment will be collaboratively designed by artists, designers, IT technicians and created by the community according to local aesthetics to screen their own videos/movies, or even particular Bangladeshi movies. With these activities, we are trying to strengthen the relationships and collaboration potentials with the local community who may have not arrived at the world of contemporary art. Printmaking Workshop A collaborative workshop and sharing session between Grafis Huru Hara (Jakarta) and Pangrok Sulap (Sabah) and Shunno Space (Dhaka) will explore and raise similar issues the collectives are facing through specific media: woodcut and linocut techniques. This workshop will be open to students. Loneless Market One of our central focuses in developing an ecosystem is how sustainability could be understood through different perspectives. Not only in monetary aspects, but also values and notions, network and regeneration. Loneless Market is a session designed by Gudskul to develop exchange activities in material and immaterial things, and also at the same time generating revenues to benefit all of the participants of this marketplace. This will be a celebration of the nine days of collective work built across DAS. DAS is a Non-commercial research platform that exists to support grassroots art ecosystems – and all proceeds go directly to the collectives involved in this platform. Cooking & Karaoke Tent For the last evening before DAS closes, Gudskul will collaborate with local collectives to imagine a big dinner through creating a fusion of Bangladeshi and Indonesian food recipes. A karaoke session will play some well-known Bangladeshi and Indonesian songs and the group will be open to song requests. Open to all participating collectives and artists in DAS, this event serves to strengthen the bonds and networks built up across DAS 2020.

ALL PROJECTS Solo Art Projects Curated by Diana Campbell Amanullah Mojadidi (b. 1971, Jacksonville, USA, lives and works in Paris, France) Untitled Garden #1 , 2015-2016 Neon, wood, stone and grass Commissioned and produced by the Samdani Art Foundation for the Dhaka Art Summit 2016. Courtesy of the artist. Dhaka Art Summit and Samdani Art Foundation. Photographer: Jenni Carter Untitled Garden #1 by Amanullah Mojadidi opens up a space to think about the role misunderstandings play in shaping history and the way we view our place in the world. Neon Katakana Japanese characters in this garden spell the word Mu, referring to a state of “nothingness” or “nonbeing” in Zen Buddhism. Mu, however, is also the name of what several pseudoscientists believed was the lost continent and civilisation of Mu, a white race civilisation that fell into the ocean but whose descendants became the great early cultures around the world, including in India. The neon crown in the garden refers to a sacred symbol of this lost Kingdom of Mu, representing "The Lands of the West." In this work, the Japanese definition of Mu is a place with an absence of desire; the second symbol of Mu illustrates what happens with the human desire to explain what they cannot understand. Mojadidi’s Zen Garden explores the hidden dangers of how Eurocentric institutions present themselves as “discoverers” of art from conflicted/developing countries, and creates parallels between the colonial anthropologist discovering the noble savage in exotic lands and the Western curator discovering the noble artist in equally exotic locales. Mojadidi takes a sarcastic approach toward the Afghan and American culture that he comes from, and stereotypes surrounding identity and the capitalism around conflict. “We are all at conflict,” shares Mojadidi, “Whether with others or ourselves, with our own ideas, thoughts, desires, history, present, future. We are all at conflict as we try and navigate ourselves through a life we understand only through our experiences, through our confrontation both internal and external with social, political, cultural, and personal strife.” Ayesha Sultana (b. 1985, Jessore, Bangladesh lives and works in, Dhaka, Bangladesh) A Space Between Things, 2015-2016 Iron, plaster, wire mesh, glass, glue, paint, concrete, aluminium, copper, wood, brass and fabric Commissioned by the Samdani Art Foundation. Courtesy of the artist, Samdani Art Foundation and Experimenter Photographer: Jenni Carter Ayesha Sultana’s newly commissioned solo project, A Space Between Things, is an ongoing exploration referencing the theme of landscape that threads much of her practice. Sultana works in intimate proximity to the material around her, sensitively reconfiguring it and adding to the potential energy that lies in the space between function and dysfunction. The artist playfully sculpts material culled from found and reclaimed objects, revealing the transitory and fragile nature of our natural and built surroundings, signifying and revealing distance, movement and space. She draws the viewer into the curiosity she has for the process of making and reconfiguring, and creates an enhanced sense of suspense relating to the possible changes the work could undergo over time through the hand of the artist or through the hands of time. Key ideas of transience, contact, balance, weight, and collapse manifest in gestural arrangements that Sultana creates with materials such as wood, metal, mylar, fabric, plaster, stone and glass. Sultana is interested in the duality and coexistence of the material and the immaterial. She strives to free her work from its very rooted and specific Bangladeshi context into a fluid and wide-ranging space, where the work can be set loose within its own parameters. For example, a vertical metal form could vaguely refer to early inspiration of viewing classical architectural structures such as columns and ancient obelisks. The individual works can maintain an interest in a nondescript condition even as particular references are apparent. This is a project that needs to be navigated spatially, and experienced in relation to the scale of the body, a space where transformation and understanding happen not from the description, but rather from experience, which the artist creates through the convergence of will and chance as she intervenes with found and made objects using time as a malleable medium. It is a celebration of what is possible when you allow experience to draw your mind to conclusions, rather than relying on the human tendency to come to a situation with preconceived definitions. Through sound, drawing, sculpture and photography, Jessore-born and Dhaka-based artist Ayesha Sultana considers the poetics of space and the relationship between material and process in notions of making. Within the context of drawing, her practice in the recent past has been an investigation into the rudiments of form through architectural constructions, often derivative of the landscape and attempting to peer into what is out of view. Counter tendencies of movement and stability are also evident as an attempt to generate emptiness by filling up the surface. Through other elemental gestures and implications of plotting, measuring and erasure, merging and filling-in, Sultana makes an otherwise fractured image. Sultana was the winner of the 2014 Samdani Art Award and was featured as one of ArtReview’s “Future Greats” in 2015. She is a member of the Britto Arts Trust and a graduate of Beaconhouse National University in Lahore. Christopher Kulendran Thomas (b. 1979, London, UK, lives and works in London, UK) (featuring drawings by Kavinda Silva & Prageeth Manohansa) When Platitude Become Form, 2016 Commissioned and produced by the Samdani Art Foundation. Courtesy of the artist and the Samdani Art Foundation. Photographer: Jenni Carter Christopher Kulendran Thomas is an artist who manipulates the processes through which art is distributed. He takes as his materials some of the cultural consequences of the economic liberalisation that followed the end of Sri Lanka’s 25-year civil war in 2009. Through what is now called terrorism and genocide, this civil war was waged between Hindu Tamil separatists (popularly known as Tamil Tigers) who wanted to establish a homeland called Tamil Eelam in the Northeast of the Island and the Buddhist Sinhalese Majority Sri Lankan government. ‘Peacetime’allows for tourism and aspirations of a comfortable future to flourish, and art galleries and design shops have been opening over the past six years and the cultural industries are growing with fashion weeks, biennales, and other festivals. Thomas purchases artworks from the island’s contemporary art scene and reconfigures or reframes them for international circulation. Incorporating these original artworks into his own compositions, Thomas exploits the gap between what's considered contemporary in two different art markets and the gap between his family's own origins and his current context as a London based artist with access to the global networks of the contemporary art world. Taking this idea a step further, the artist is launching a brand called New Eelam that imagines the future of citizenship in an age of technologically accelerated globalisation. It is a speculative proposal based on a reinterpretation of the political philosophies of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. How would history have unfolded if the Tigers had manipulated the mechanics of global capital better than their enemy? This proximal sci-fi proposition speculates on how a nation might be reimagined without a territory and on how a corporation might be constituted as a state. Dayanita Singh (b.1961, New Delhi) Museum of Chance, 2014 Book object, edition of 352 Courtesy of the artist. Photographer: Noor Photoface 'While I was in London I dreamed that I was on a boat on the Thames, which took me to the Anandmayee Ma ashram in Varanasi. I climbed the stairs and found I had entered the hotel in Devigarh. At a certain time I tried to leave the fort but could not find a door. Finally I climbed out through a window and I was in the moss garden in Kyoto." Dayanita Singh's Musuem of Chance is a book about how life unfolds, and asks to be recorded and edited, along and off the axis of time. The inscrutably woven photographic sequence of Singh's Go Away Closer has now grown into a labyrinth of connections and correspondences. The thread through this novel like web of happenings is that elusive entity called Chance. It is Chance that seems to disperse as well as gather fragments or clusters of experience, creating a form of simultaneity that is realised in the idea and matter of the book, with its interlaced or parallel timeless and patterns of recurrence and return. Haroon Mirza (b. 1977, London) The National Apavilion of Then and Now, 2011 LED, foam and sound Courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery, London. Photographer: Noor Photoface Haroon Mirza asks us to reconsider the perceptual distinctions between noise, sound and music, and draws into question the categorisation of cultural forms. The National Apavilion of Then and Now , 2011 lined with dark grey sound-insulating pyramidal foam, is an anechoic chamber in which neither light nor sounds is reflected. At the centre, hanging from the ceiling, there is a ring of white LED lights, reminiscent of nimbus effects. After a period of total darkness, the LEDs grow progressively brighter, accompanied by an also ever more enhancing buzzing sound, which abruptly stop, plunging the room in darkness once more, until the cycle starts again. The work evokes intense physical experiences of the perception of sound, light, space and time that seem to echo across the past and future of the universe. The light in this work is reminiscent of a halo, a form used to connote being outside or above the physical human realm. Like many of the other works in the exhibition, Mirza's work rejects recording or representation that limits its complexity; it must be physically felt to be experienced. The work draws parallels between the electrical wiring of circuits and the body; Mirza proposes a third space between seeing and hearing. where imperceptible waves of sound and light draw attention to the role of perception in shaping our view of reality and how we access knowledge. Lynda Benglis (b. 1941, Lake Charles, USA, lives and works in Santa Fe, USA, New York, USA, Kastelorizo, Greece, and Ahmedabad, India) Wire, Kozo paper, phosphorescent pigments and acrylic Courtesy of the artist and VAGA, New Work. Photographer: Jenni Carter Over the past fifty years, Lynda Benglis has divided her time between studios in New York and Santa Fe in the United States of America, Ahmedabad in India and Kastelorizo in Greece, with each diverse location having subtle, yet discernible, influences on her work. Reflecting on her over thirty year experience in India, Benglis shares that she was always exploring “how form is discovered through texture, through movement; form is movement… I felt very much at home [in India]… because there is a sense of the “spirit” of natural form and inspired texture, and it occurs in art, architecture, music and dance.” Benglis is known for her radical re-visioning of painting and sculpture in her innovative and prolific practice, seeking a more sensuous kind of surface. Benglis explores how what we see influences our body, a concept known as “proprioception”. “We experience something in our bodies that is proprioceptic; we experience it in our whole body – you feel what you see and you are ‘charged.’ It’s an exchange of energy.”2 Benglis presents seven new cast paper sculptures created especially for the Dhaka Art Summit, reference her wax and glitter works from the 1960s and 1970s. These handmade paper forms are sculpted over chicken wire, a common element in the visual landscape of South Asia, with glimpses of colour and sparkle that are informed by the artist’s formative years in Louisiana and her life in India: each with their rich festival cultures, such as Mardi Gras and Holi. Chicken wire has allowed Benglis to co-opt the grid harnessed by modernism and minimalism and transform it into a fluid and amorphous form that is fully her own. Walking further into the project, seven similar forms emerge from the dark in a second room, glowing from Benglis’s painterly work with phosphorescent materials. Through these fourteen works, Benglis creates a physical moment in a space, and writer Marina Cashdan draws connections between the phosphorescent work and the colours that people often experience in deep meditation, connecting physical movements of breath that become visual forms inside the body. Lynda Benglis is recognised as one of the most important living North-American artists. A pioneer of a form of abstraction in which each work is the result of materials in action — poured latex and foam, cinched metal, dripped wax — Benglis has created sculptures that eschew minimalist reserve in favour of bold colours, sensual lines, and lyrical references to the human body. But her invention of new forms with unorthodox techniques also displays a reverence for cultural references tracing back to antiquity. Benglis has received numerous awards and her works are held in leading institutional collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate, London and the Guggenheim, New York and she has recently exhibited in major career survey exhibitions at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; the New Museum, New York; Storm King, New York and the Hepworth Wakefield, UK. Munem Wasif (b. 1983, Comilla lives and works in Dhaka, Bangladesh) Land of the Undefined Territory, 2015 26 Digital Photographs and three channel HD black and white video with stereo sound, 20min 16 sec Project debut at the Dhaka Art Summit 2016 with partial production support from Samdani Art Foundation. Courtesy of the artist, Dhaka Art Summit and Samdani Art Foundation. Photo credit: Jenni Carter Munem Wasif’s haunting series of photographs and three-channel video of an undefined land elucidates the dialectic relationship between a land and its identity, an identity at risk given the relatively new concept of the nation state and of the environmental effects of man’s “progress” post the industrial revolution. Situated on the edge of a blurred boundary of Bangladesh and India, the mundane, almost extra-terrestrial land hides human interaction with its surface and exposes ever-changing curves with Wasif’s repetitive frames. It seems that frames rarely move from each other, slowing down time and motion and blurring the character of a land, disassociating it from its political and geographical identity. This Solo Project, entitled Land of the Undefined Territory questions the identity of a land that is tied to a specific political and geographic context, but which could also be anywhere, as Wasif displaces the viewer from space and time. Wasif’s dispassionate and systematic approach in this series mimics that of an investigation, topographic study, geological survey or a mere aesthetic query, however his technique of using look-alike frames and ambient sounds overcomes the optical unconscious of the camera and evokes elusive feelings and absurd sensitivity in the viewer. The chosen area of land in this series is a mere observer of nearly a hundred years of land disputes, which saw colonization, 1947’s divide of the Indian subcontinent and mass-migration with Partition, and 1971’s liberation war of Bangladesh which created the current border tension with the neighbouring country, India. Absence of any profound identity for its existence never diminishes its presence, and its body carries the wound of aggressive industrial acts, such as stone collection and crushing. This land belongs to no one, and is thus exploitable by anyone motivated to avail of the land’s unlikely riches. As hills and mountains are cut away to mine the material needed to build Bangladesh’s roads, the communities who have lived on the land for thousands of years become alien to it, as they can no longer identify their community by natural markers. In his video, Wasif captures suspended motions by not moving the camera and by recording predominantly still objects, enhancing the sense of timeless limbo that has now come to define this land, and potentially elsewhere in the future. Mustafa Zaman (b. 1968, lives and works in Dhaka, Bangladesh) Lost Memory Eternalised, 2015-2016 Digital Print on paper Commissioned and produced by the Samdani Art Foundation for the Dhaka Art Summit 2016. Courtesy of the artist, Dhaka Art Summit, Samdani Art Foundation and Exhibit320, New Delhi. Photographer: Jenni Carter Mustafa Zaman’s Solo Project Lost Memory Eternalised is an unauthorised retelling of the past, revealed after readjusting the lens to the events in the lives of human beings on Earth – where the human condition(s) shaped by history leaves us in awe of the events that make up our experiential domains, giving rise to moments of epiphany and other forms of awakening, which cannot be explained away. Images can be read in the context of their time and place and also in their relationship to eternity. The artist emphasises the latter relationship by overlaying found images with honey, enhancing the sense of transcendence/timelessness inherent in each image, but leaving a symbolic residue of dead ants that speaks to a collective disillusionment, citing a sense of loss which often colours our perception of time. With the intrusion of an additional substance (i.e. honey with dead ants), the historicity of the source images is destabilized. They now invite touching and enforce a renewal of vision. Each image serves as a cue to a larger universe or existential realm, consistently changing under the forces of creation and destruction. Each image primes us to look at how individual desire, and resulting disillusionment, shape both individual and collective history. Po Po (b. 1957, Pathien, Myanmar, lives and works in Yangon, Myanmar) VIP Project (Dhaka) 2014-2015 Photographs and video Commissioned and produced by the Samdani Art Foundation for the Dhaka Art Summit 2016. Courtesy of the artist, Dhaka Art Summit and Samdani Art Foundation. Photographer: Jenni Carter The self-taught pioneer in Burmese contemporary art, Po Po describes his photography not as a visual record, but as a means to reflect his thoughts regarding political, social and cultural concerns. In 2010, Po Po created his first “VIP Project” in Yangon, placing VIP signs in public bus stops across the city. South Asia has a deeply entrenched “VIP Culture” where certain individuals are given preferential treatment as “Very Important People” – even in the public sector with special entrances in airports, parking spaces, and other basic facets of daily civic life. Standing across the street from bus stops, Po Po took a series of photographs and videos documenting the reactions of people to the signs —in nearly all cases, the commuters saw the sign as more important than them, yielding their seats to the signs, demonstrating their thoughts of their place in society as not as important as anonymous and invisible others who may or may not arrive. Politics play a key role in shaping one’s view of their place in the world. Five years after his first VIP project, Po Po created the second chapter in Dhaka, a city with a similar social VIP culture and historically under the same British rule as Yangon, but with a different political history of over forty years of democracy as opposed to Myanmar’s over five decades of military rule. While the reactions of the public seem similar in the video and photographic documentation across Yangon and Dhaka, the Bangladesh political scenario opened up the possibility for a few members of the public to think of Po Po’s intervention as a joke. This reaction never occurred in the Myanmar intervention, as choice of interpretation of public signage was not an option. Prabhavathi Meppayil (b. 1965, lives and works in Bangalore, India) Dp/Sixteen/Part One,2015-2016 Wood, copper and gesso Commissioned and produced by the Samdani Art Foundation. Courtesy of the artist, Samdani Art Foundation and PACE, London Photographer: Jenni Carter Entering the central hall of the Dhaka Art Summit, Prabhavathi Meppayil unsettles the viewer by turning the room upside down, creating an immersive installation which displaces the negative space of the coffered ceiling outside the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy and placing it inside the floor of the building. Meppayil’s art practice draws on traditional cra and values the truth of materials and tools as well as simple forms, colours and shapes. Coffered ceilings are an ancient and universal element of architecture. In her installation dp sixteen (2015-2016) Meppayil creates movement between the floor and ceiling, outside and inside. She creates a subtle phenomenological experience of an architecture connected to an infinite grid of cubes. In his analysis of Meppayil’s work, Benjamin Buchloh points out that grids are possibly the most basic principle of modernist abstraction, and also panels for tantric meditation. He continues that “Meppayil’s paintings seem to be driven by a latent desire to leave behind the parameters of pictorial space and its supporting surfaces, reaching for an ultimate sublimation of the painterly rectangle in a numinous architectural space.” Meppayil transforms her “painterly rectangles” through meditatively applying white gesso, a material used in most of her work since 2009 that is traditionally used to prime wooden surfaces for later layers of paint. Through her choice of materials, the artist extends painting into the space of architecture, where wood, grids, layers, wiring, and primed surfaces create environments for us to inhabit. Her intervention simultaneously creates order and disorder in the exhibition space, and reminds the viewer to consider the seen and unseen elements creating our sense of being in the world. Sandeep Mukherjee (b. 1964, Pune, India, lives and works in Los Angeles, USA) The Sky Remains, 2015-2016 14 panels of acrylic ink and embossed drawing on duralene (wall) 1000 panels of acrylic ink and carved drawing on plywood (floor) Commissioned and produced by the Samdani Art Foundation for the Dhaka Art Summit 2016. Courtesy of the artist, Dhaka Art Summit, Samdani Art Foundation and Project 88, Mumbai. Photographer: Jenni Carter Possession and dispossession, displacement and debt—it seems that the stories that condition our present are inextricably born out of the stories that conditioned our past. The first of four special issues of South as a State of Mind, temporarily reconfigured as the documenta 14 journal, examines forms and figures of displacement and dispossession, and the modes of resistance—aesthetic, political, literary, biological—found within them. In essays, both literary and visual, as well as poems, speeches, diaries, conversations, and specially commissioned artist projects, the first issue of the d14 South considers dispossession as a historical and contemporary condition along with its connections to archaeology and the city, coloniality and performativity, debt and imperialism, provenance and repatriation, feminism and protest. To launch the inaugural issue of the d14 South, documenta 14 has organized a series of public events—in Athens, Kassel, Berlin, Dhaka, and Kolkata—that bring the disparate voices of the journal, as well as those outside of it, into conversation in cities across the world. This February, South goes to Bangladesh and India for two launch events. The first will be held in Dhaka on February 6, the second in Kolkata on February 10. For the Dhaka launch at the Dhaka Art Summit, in the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, documenta 14 Artistic Director Adam Szymczyk and Editor-in-Chief of Publications Quinn Latimer will present the first issue of the documenta 14 South as a State of Mind, reading from and expanding on its diverse explorations of both contemporary and historical forms of displacement and dispossession. In addition, they will elaborate on forthcoming issues of the d14 South, which are variously devoted to ideas of language and ecology, post-colonialism and neoclassicism, and the rich relationship among pedagogical, performative, and political processes. South as a State of Mind is a magazine founded by Marina Fokidis in Athens in 2012. Beginning in 2015, the magazine temporarily became the documenta 14 journal and will publish four semiannual special issues until the opening of the exhibition in Athens and Kassel in 2017. These special issues are edited by Quinn Latimer and Adam Szymczyk. The documenta 14 South is conceived as a medium for research, criticism, art, and literature that parallels the years of work on the d14 exhibition overall, one that helps define and frame its concerns and aims. As such, the journal is a manifestation of documenta 14 rather than a discursive lens through which to merely presage the topics to be addressed in the eventual exhibition. Writing and publishing, in all their forms, are an integral part of documenta 14, and the journal heralds that process. Through this collaboration with documenta 14, The Seagull Foundation for the Arts continues its multi-faceted role in actively supporting and disseminating arts and culture publishing, as well as critical theory. This launch event is hosted at Harrington Street Arts Centre, where Seagull has previously organized several events and exhibitions, including a forthcoming solo show by K. G. Subramanyan, titled Sketches, Scribbles, Drawings. Shakuntala Kulkarni (b.1950, Dharwad) Of Body, Armour and Cages, 2012-2015 Cane and four channel video with sound (Julus) Courtesy of the artist and Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai. Photo credit: Jenni Carter and Noor Photoface Walking into Shakuntala Kulkarni’s solo project, the viewer is confronted with an army of five figures sculpted from traditional cane weaving practices from the eastern part of South Asia. On closer inspection, references of Xi An Terracotta Warriors, Bollywood superheroes, hairstyles from Roman and Hellenic times, and Viking warrior plaits harness the imagination away from any one particular time and place to address the timeless issue of how to exist as an individual in a world that encroaches on individual rights, especially the individual rights of a women. These sculptures come to life through kulkarni’s newest work Julus, an immersive four channel video work where a procession of the multiple selves of the artist storm the space and demand attention, freedom, and respect. Shakuntala Kulkarni is a Bombay based multidisciplinary artist and activist whose work is primarily concerned with the plights of urban women who are often held back due to patriarchal expectations. By placing her sculptures over her body, the artist dictates where the viewer’s gaze will lie, reclaiming power away from the viewer and allowing herself to be looked at on her own terms. “The bodied self can be insulted, subjugated, incarcerated, curbed by religious decree, dictatorial whim or popular sentiment. It can be deprived of the rights of mobility and expression… An armoured body can extend its capabilities through the mailed fist, the spiked helmet, the radiation-proof bodysuit, or heightened fight/flight reflexes. But the body pays for this protection with its freedom. The armour becomes a cage. The self becomes prosthetic: protected by, yet trapped within, an exoskeleton,” writes Ranjit Hoskote. This tension between the power and the vulnerability of the body creates a powerful artistic statement, as does the social commentary when the artist takes her armour out into public space in india. If she can choose to wear a dress of velvet, why can she not choose to wear a dress. Shumon Ahmed (b. 1977, lives and works in Dhaka, Bangladesh) Land of the Free, 2009-2016 Video (looped), photographic print on archival paer, 30 sec VR goggles with extreme isolation headphones with sound and video, 1 min 30 sec Commissioned and produced by the Samdani Art Foundation for the Dhaka Art Summit 2016. Courtesy of the artist, Dhaka Art Summit, Samdani Art Foundation and Project 88, Mumbai. Photographer: Jenni Carter Shumon Ahmed’s Solo Project builds upon a prior body of work, Land of the Free, which immerses the viewer into the delicate continuum between sanity and madness that shapes an individual from within. “Reason, or the ratio of all that we have already known,” wrote William Blake in 1788, “is not the same that it shall be when we know more.” This ratio is delicate, and our minds naturally fight to keep equilibrium that anchors us to a sense of reality. Mubarak Hussain Bin Abul Hashem, or ‘enemy combatant number 151’, was flown back home to Dhaka in 2006 after having endured five years of torture and imprisonment at Guantánamo Bay. Through processes of humiliation, sensory overload and deprivation, Mubarak’s sense of self was broken down in an attempt to harvest information against his will, to sever his mind from reason. Ahmed’s project thrusts visitors into the grey spaces of the mind through harnessing torture techniques within the artworks, employing stereoscopic goggles, headphones, and powerful imagery and sound to transform his photographs into a physical experience for the viewer. This project investigates trauma that leads to insanity, and reveals processes designed to crack the human soul. It draws inspiration from W.J.T. Mitchell’s work on “Seeing Madness,” as Ahmed’s images draw us into Mubarak’s compromised senses. The idea of the ‘Land of the Free’ takes on a new meaning as viewers confront an aged Mubarak whose physical body finally finds freedom, but not without permanent mental fog and a lingering sense of displacement resulting from five long years of trauma. Simryn Gill (b. 1959, Singapore, lives and works in Sydney, Australia and Port Dickson, Malaysia) Ground, 2016 Thread and Paper Commissioned and produced by the Samdani Art Foundation for the Dhaka Art Summit 2016. Courtesy of the artist, Dhaka Art Summit, Samdani Art Foundation and Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai. Photographer: Jenni Carter Simryn Gill makes poetic links between art, paper, books, and nature in her work; all begin with seeds that grow roots. The idea of roots can be abstracted into square roots in mathematics, roots of language, roots of belonging, and seeds to seeding ideas and to the ability to traverse manmade ideas of border. Gill shares, “for me, plants and the plant work offer a powerful way to think about where we find ourselves now and how we grow into and adapt to our sense of place. There is a line from one of [William] Blake's poems in his Songs of Innocence, ‘and we are put on earth a little space'. That little space is not a bit of geography anymore, but it seems to be literally the physical room we occupy with our bodies as we carry ourselves around trying to make sense of how to stake claims on constantly shiing grounds.” Reflecting on the slippery concept of place years later, Gill elaborated that “I came to understand place as a verb rather than a noun, which exists in our doings: walking, taking, living.” In an unpublished text in 2012, she continues this train of thought, “If you are empty, nothing, you only exist through the things around you, and if these things shift in their qualities and values, in relation to you, each other and other things, then the sense of self is always moving too. And the other way around: when I am the vector that is moving, then the things around me change, and my relationship to them too, how I do or don't connect, comprehend, sympathise. These are the un-static beacons we use to navigate through daily being.” Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu (b. 1975, Ywalut, Myanmar, b. 1977, Yangon, Myanmar, live and work in Yangon, Myanmar) Ipso Facto, 2011-2013 6 paintings (emulsion on linen, net, 275 x 580cm each) and video (colour, with sound, 20 min. 54 sec.), approximately 7 x 16 x 3m overall. Work realised within the framework of the exhibition at the Atelier Hermès thanks to the support of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès. Courtesy of the artists. Photographer: Noor Photoface In traditional theatre in Myanmar, a simple twig on stage signified a forest scene; this idea was so recognisable that it could not possibly suggest anything else. Myanmar is rich with natural resources, and as the country was closed off to the rest of the world for over fifty years, there is little documentation of the vast changes in the natural landscape that occurred during this time as different parties in favour with the government devastated the land and amassed great riches. In their solo project Ipso Facto, Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu collaborated with traditional theatre backdrop makers (with Tun Win Aung as the painter) to set the stage to discuss the dramatic environmental changes that have dislocated national identity from the land. For example, the natural mud volcanoes that once existed both physically and as part of local myth are now almost entirely dry, and the next generation will no longer be able to relate their imaginations to the landscape. The UN has recognised Myanmar as one of the countries with the highest rate of forest loss on Earth (the total forest coverage area dropped from 51% in 2005 to 24% in 2008), and soon the next generation might not recognise the dramaturgical stick as the site of a lush forest. In theatre and in domestic life, curtains suggest a portal to another space. The world of theatre uses artifice to show the real, and excess to accentuates parts of reality that might otherwise be overlooked. Here, the viewer walks through a jungle of six backdrop paintings while confronting a seven channel video work that accentuating the sense of loss of the thought of losing one’s landscape. In addition to working individually as visual artists, this Yangon-based husband and wife duo Tun Win Aung and Wah Nu work collaboratively in a range of media including painting, video, performance, and installation. In 2009, the artists began the multicomponent work 1000 Pieces (of White), gathering and producing objects and images to assemble a portrait of their shared life. Their work often reflects politically inflected experiences and through their Museum Project, they collaborate with artists all over Myanmar and exhibit their work in rural contexts, imagining possibilities of what a museum in Myanmar might be. While Tun Win Aung’s practice frequently focuses on local histories and environments, Wah Nu is inspired by her interest in psychological states. They have showcased their work in international venues such as the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, the Singapore Art Museum and Guggenheim, as well as at art festivals including the Asia Pacific Triennial, the Asian Art Biennale, and the Guangzhou Triennial.

ALL PROJECTS To Enter The Sky Curated by Sean Anderson To Enter The Sky Curated by Sean Anderson (Associate Professor and Undergraduate Program Director at Cornell University’s Department of Architecture) Weather, when visualized, relies on the interaction of multiple forces enacting potential acts of benefit as well as destruction. Sometimes predictable, and even mapped, more often, spaces inherit weather in unpredictable patterns that suggest tumult, a conjuring or a question, in defiance of the unknown. For example, airplane pilots depend on degrees of turbulence to achieve lift, to enter the sky. Likewise, for architects and builders, turbulence presents a manifold of acts for the body and the landscape to confront, with which to bend and flex, and from which one may achieve improbable balance. With sea level rise and the increased intensity of unprecedented weather systems, the world has witnessed recent devastating floods in Northern Pakistan and Bangladesh, the ongoing strengthening of cyclones in the Bay of Bengal, and the anticipated disappearance of Maldivian atolls as well as those throughout the South Pacific. The invention of land for real estate development adjacent to the oceans and seas simultaneously destroys sensitive ecosystems while displacing vulnerable human and non-human settlements. A perpetuation of cataclysmic events tear at the definitions of geography, of fixed temporalities, for an architecture and urbanism subject to extremes continually redefined on the ground, in the water and the air. Recent years have also shown us that a global pandemic can challenge nearly every aspect of humanity and expressions of collectivity. Refugees and asylum seekers traverse the planet while confronting the fixity of imposed boundaries. Architecture can be reimagined to consider how and with whom we seek common grounds among spaces of repair, comfort and joy. With livelihoods unfolding over screens large and small, and those landless and nationless continue to seek refuge, the built environment presents itself as a backdrop, stage and as an agent for change. We all share one sky. Drawings by children situate both the vulnerability and strength of future selves who, in a spirited display of potential, of beauty, of imagined spaces and buildings, can also aspire to elevate and share possible futures. Just as we navigate the unknown, architecture must activate new encounters with economies of materiality, ecology, community, sovereignty, and citizenship. How do we design and build for the inevitability of conflicts, past and future? How does architecture establish belonging in landscapes of devastation and transit? This exhibition responds to those insecure conditions that allow architects, artists and designers to engage with the dimensioning of turbulence as a catalyst for addressing how we encounter each other. To Enter the Sky brings together examples of architectures and artworks of resilience, of trust, while not discounting fear, entropy, and destruction. The exhibition centers Bangladesh as part of a broader reckoning of what it means to be human in and of the built environment today. We know that various turbulences will persist. Architecture need not be resistant. Rather, the exhibition asserts how a spatial medium, with its multitudes of hope and chance, can begin to disseminate radical stories of becoming to help us understand our own fragile inheritances as individuals, communities, nations. LOCATION: FIRST FLOOR SOUTH PLAZA Sumayya Vally Ceramic vessels activated by performance Performance 7pm daily Commissioned by Samdani Art FoundationCo-curated by Diana Campbell and Sean Anderson as an overlay of “To Enter the Sky” and “Bonna” Pavilion and performance conceptualisation by Sumayya Vally Sound in collaboration with Shoummo SahaChoreography in collaboration with Arpita Singha Lopa oletha imvula uletha ukuphila Translation: “They who brings rain, brings life” IsiZulu proverb Wielding the comings of rain is a tradition practiced by cultures across geographies. To possess the power to command rainfall is by inference possessing the power to dictate the flow of the natural cycle and climatic conditions. Across Southern Africa, rain-making rituals are directed towards royal ancestors because they were believed to have control over rain and other natural phenomena. One of these rare and powerful individuals is the Moroka of the Pedi tribe in South Africa: the traditional rain-making doctor. Here, a series of fired and unfired clay vessels are assembled as a temporal space to hold gatherings. Over the course of DAS, a series of performances which draw on the traditions of rain-making and harvest are performed in the space where the hands that formed the pots also work to un-form them. The rituals include the use of water, which allows the un-fired pots to dissolve over time, revealing areas and niches of gathering contained by the pots, as well as rhythmic drumming that evokes the sound of thunder at the end of each day. Vally’s design, research and pedagogical practice is searching for expression for hybrid identities and territory, particularly for African and Islamic conditions. Her design process is often forensic, and draws on the aural, the performative and the overlooked as generative places of history and work. b. 1990, Pretoria; lives and works in London LOCATION: SECOND FLOOR Ali Kazim Untitled (Cloud Series) 2018 In his 1949 novel, A Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles writes about the precarities of individuals: “How fragile we are under the sheltering sky. Behind the sheltering sky is a vast dark universe, and we're just so small.” The sky, that which envelops us, is an arbiter of all life on the planet. It is that which comforts or destroys and always reminds us of where we are and where we can be. While the horizon is a measure of the sky, clouds, as condensations of molecules, are signs of life and its potentials; they signal transformations. The cloud is a sky’s signature. Detached from the ground and horizon, the clouds presented in these drawings suggest both movement and stasis. Caught in a moment of change, the clouds are suggestive of temporary presence, just as the weather conditions that they indicate and the individual lives that may be affected among spaces below. What may be discovered behind these scaleless formations? They are emboldened by forces large and small while also having the capacity to reveal new worlds. The works of Ali Kazim are embedded in the spatial histories of Pakistan’s landscapes and the civilizations that once inhabited the region. In works that use a variety of materials and techniques to evoke bodily and emotional experiences, Kazim’s work reimagines multiple narratives that are at once metaphors for human connectivities that may be hidden among unexcavated remains, long-abandoned cities, and the spaces that may be exposed or still buried. Ali Kazim b.1979, Pakistan Agnieszka Kurant Risk Management Commissioned for the New York Times 2020 Post-Fordite Fossilized automotive paint, epoxy resin, powdered stone, steel 2021-22 Sentimentite Digital NFT and physical sculpture Various pulverized objects, powdered granite stone, resin 2022 How can we redefine methods for understanding and responding to precarity at multiple scales throughout the world today? Materials extracted from the ground are but one illustration of how natural resources are continually pillaged in order to support unsustainable population growth and unfair labor practices, which is coupled with environmental devastation. The works in this exhibition speculate about the consequences of economies in parallel with digital capitalism, in which entire societies have become distributed factories of data production and exploitation, where everyone is a worker producing digital and carbon footprints. Risk Management presents a geographical map of a history of outbreaks of social contagions based on fictions spanning the last thousand years. The work draws on the inability of risk-prediction models to consider irrational human behavior and other largely impactful social phenomena. Post-Fordite takes up a recently discovered hybrid, quasi-geological formation created as a natural-artificial byproduct, through fossilization of thousands of layers of automotive paint accumulated and congealed on production lines at automobile factories since the opening of the Henry Ford Motor Company manufacturing plants in the early 20th century. Recently, these fossilized-paint configurations , named Fordite or Detroit Agate, by the former workers of now defunct factories, began circulating online and accruing value. Since Fordite can be cut and polished, it is often used like precious stones to produce jewelry. Post-Fordite embodies more than 100 years of amalgamated human labor and the collective footprints of workers, past and present, translated into geology. S entimentite is a speculative mineral-currency investigating the relationship between digital capitalism and geology in which a future mineral could become more precious than gold and become a currency. Kurant collaborated with computational social scientists who used Artificial Intelligence sentiment-analysis algorithms to harvest data from hundreds of thousands of Twitter and Reddit posts related to recent historic seismic events, including the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Brexit, the Arab Spring, Black Lives Matter, the pandemic global lockdown, and Bitcoin’s meteoric rise. These aggregated emotions of millions of people shaped the forms of 100 sculptures, which were cast in a new mineral created by pulverizing 60 objects used as official and informal currencies throughout the history of humanity: shells, Rai stones, whale teeth, corn, Tide detergent, electronic waste, soap, beads, mirrors, batteries, playing cards, phone cards, stamps, tea, and cocoa pods. Invested in exploring how “economies of the invisible” bolster fictions about humanity’s survival in the face of such destructive socio-political and economic processes, Agnieszka Kurant’s sculptural and mapping works speculate on how value is translated and can transgress conventional definitions. Her work challenges how objects today are mutated through their global circulation and production while also questioning modernist conceptions of aura, authorship, production, and hybridity. Many of her works emulate nature and behave like living organisms and self-organized complex systems. b.1978 Łódź; lives and works in New York Aziza Chaouni Projects Rehabilitation of Modern Public Buildings in Africa Sidi Harazem, Morocco Old Fourah Bay College, Sierra Leone (1827) CICES, Dakar, Senegal (1974) Throughout the world today, modern architecture, especially those examples in rapidly developing areas of the Global South, remains at risk of demolition due to economic, political, and societal forces that consider its buildings not worthy of preservation. Modern buildings are often judged unattractive, too far removed from “traditional” architecture and building types while overlaid with memories of a traumatic colonial past. How do contemporary architects reimagine the ways in which modernism is understood today? How can spaces imbued with societal traumas be rewritten with the goal of transforming their value to communities and publics? These three rehabilitation projects are actively engaging with and responding to the design of community-centered spaces that are envisaged as cooperative, reparative and responsive for all that participate in their making. In Morocco, Sierra Leone and Senegal, like in other areas subject to the simultaneity of post-colonial transition meeting neoliberal economic drivers, buildings and landscapes are continually being questioned as productive zones for living today. Designed between 1959 and 1975 by prominent Moroccan architect of Corsican origin, Jean-François Zevaco, the Sidi Harazem Thermal Bath Complex, located near the city of Fez, is the first example of public post-independence leisure architecture designed for Moroccan inhabitants. Unfortunately, villagers whose ancestors had lived on the same land for generations were forcibly moved several miles away to accommodate the new tourist destination.Deploying a long-term phased masterplan that accounted for the memory of these historical events while also attending to environmental sensitivities with the use of water in a drought-prone area of the country, the Complex moves beyond the rehabilitation of the buildings themselves to adaptively reuse the spaces for the local population. Since 1827, Old Fourah Bay College was a laboratory and educational setting in which western ideas of governance, political organization and public service were shared as experiments with populations across Sierra Leone and West Africa. The onset of conflict throughout the 1990s radically altered this building and it was occupied by displaced families fleeing a brutal ground war. Working with local school and university groups to rethink what a “dream school” might look like, new methods of design centered in active conversations and designed interactive spatial exercises have established new shared narratives from which the College can once again return to being a space of civic and educational learning. Designed by the architects, Jean-François Lamoureux and Jean-Louis Marin, the CICES was commissioned by the first president of Senegal Léopold Sédar Senghor, who sought a universal African architectural language, shed from Western referents. The CICES complex uses Modernist principles in its circulation and layout, and simultaneously embraces Senghor’s ‘asymmetric parallelism’ theory, that he defines as "a diversified repetition of rhythm in time and space,” which allows for unique spatial experiences. Working with local stakeholders to reconsider what a “masterplan” for such an iconic complex affected by environmental and economic issues will be, ensures its continued use as a productive site for international exchange and commerce into the future. Aziza Chaouni was born and raised in Fez, Morocco and is trained both as a structural engineer and as an architect. Through the integration of users and stakeholders across the design process, Chaouni’s office, Aziza Chaouni Projects, offers alternative processes for imagining and designing empathetic spaces that move past staid aesthetics to articulate human and material-centered approaches to sensitive areas throughout North and West Africa. b.1977 Fez; lives and works in Fez and Toronto Coral Mosques of Maldives Mauroof Jameel and Hamsha Hussain Among the Maldivian atolls and islands, there are at least 26 documented mosques and compounds that have been constructed using coral stone. Assembled from porite coral stone ( hirigaa ) hewn from the reefs and integrated with interior structures fashioned from timber and crafted by lacquer work, itself a unique Maldivian artform, these buildings represent an architecture of resilience found nowhere else on the planet. Akin to other monumental structures found in India and Southeast Asia, the mosques coalesce building, material and artistic practices that point to the transit of ideas and typologies. While historical uses of coral in building construction have been discovered among the Mayan communities of Central America between 900-1500 BCE and among the coastal communities of the Red Sea between 146-323 BCE, among the Maldives, the coral used is both unique to the islands while the building conveys spatial and spiritual resonances found across the Indian Ocean and its sub-continent. These buildings illustrate how the use of localized materials at any scale can maintain long standing spaces for communities. The continued use of the coral mosques today is emblematic of a nation’s peoples and their unwavering faith in the face of environmental calamity. The images of six primary coral mosque compounds included in this exhibition are in use across the islands today and were nominated for UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 2013. Each example embodies architectural forms that are both specific to their island location while also expressing discrete art practices including exterior coral carving, calligraphy, and lacquer work that speak to the movement of Islamic artistic practices across the ocean. With carpentry techniques in the mosques no longer extant and coral mining forbidden for environmental sensitivities, these buildings are recognized for their integration of construction techniques and artforms that speak to the Indian Ocean realm as a space for visual, material, and spatial exchange. Ihavandhoo Old Friday Mosque Miskiy Magu, Ihavandhoo, Haa Alifu Atoll6º 57' 17.33" N and 72º 55' 38.33" EIhavandhoo Old Friday Mosque was completed in 16 December 1701 CE (15 Rajab 1113 A. H.) during the reign of Sultan Ibrahim Muzhiruddin (1701-1705). Meedhoo Old Friday Mosque Hiyfaseyha Magu, Meedhoo, Raa Atoll5º 27' 27.80" N, 72º 57' 16.41"EAccording to local oral history, the mosque was probably built during the reign of Sultan Muzaffar Mohamed Imaduddin around 1705. It is the only surviving coral stone mosque with Indian clay roofing tiles. Malé Friday Mosque Medhuziyaaraiy Magu, Henveiru, Malé, Kaafu Atoll4º 10' 40.77" N, 73º 30' 44.57" EMalé Old Friday Mosque and its compound comprise one of the most important heritage sites in the country. It is also the biggest and one of the finest coral stone buildings in the world. The present mosque was built in 1658 during the reign of Sultan Ibrahim Iskandhar I, replacing the original mosque built in 1153 by the first Muslim sultan of the Maldives. Fenfushi Old Friday Mosque Hiriga Goalhi, Fenfushi, Alifu Dhaalu Atoll3°45′15″N 72°58′35″EFenfushi Friday Mosque was built during the reign of Sultan Mohamed of Dhevvadhu (1692-1701) on the site of an earlier mosque. It is a well-preserved compound with a unique coral stone bathing tank, coral stone wells, a sundial, and a large cemetery with grave markers of fine quality. Isdhoo Old Mosque Isdhoo, Laamu Atoll2° 7′ 10″ N, 73° 34′ 10″ EIsdhoo Old Mosque was built prior to a renovation in 1701 during the reign of Sultan Mohamed of Dhevvadhoo (1692-1701). This is the mosque where the 12th century royal copper chronicles 'Isdhoo Loamaafaanu' was kept in a special chamber. The mosque is built on a pre-Islamic site and analysis of the architectural details of the mosque indicates that the stonework could be even older. Hulhumeedhoo Fandiyaaru Mosque Koagannu, Hulhumeedhoo, Addu City0º 34' 51.6" S and 73º 13' 42" EHulhumeedhoo Fandiyaaru Mosque located in the Koagannu area in the island of Hulhumeedhoo (Addu City) was probably built around 1586 during the reign of Sultan Ibrahim III. The Koagannu area is the largest and the oldest cemetery in the Maldives with more than 500 coral grave markers, a sheltered mausoleum and 15 open mausoleums. It had six small mosques but now four small mosques remain. They are Koagannu Miskiy c.1397, Boadhaa Miskiy c.1403, Athara Miskiy c.1417 and Fandiyaru Miskiy c.1586. Felecia Davis and Delia Dumitrescu Computational textiles are textiles that are responsive to cues found in the environment using sensors and microcontrollers for the making of a textile that uses shape-shifting properties of the material itself to communicate information to people. In architecture, these responsive textiles are transforming how we communicate, socialize, and use space. For instance, they can be used in making temporary and more permanent manifestations of shelter in conflict and environmentally devastated areas. Davis, a trained engineer and architect, with Dumitrescu, a textile designer, asked with this project, ‘How can we design lightweight textiles for use in architecture that can translate responses to their environment? Further, how might we make textiles that dilate if the temperature surrounding the textile becomes hot, or if one wants more transparency in that textile to see the view?’ With her experimental lab, SOFTLAB@PSU, Davis creates responsive textiles that defy conventional structural and representational modes for the material itself and its applications. At the Smart Textiles Lab in Sweden, Dumitrescu has been developing responsive artistic effects in textile design that reshape an understanding of textile as a material that operates at different scales. In this project they consider ‘how’ and ‘what’ textiles can be ‘when’—much like individuals and communities. The first typology of material developed for this work was pixelated, designed with yarn that melts at high temperature; accordingly, the fabric opens or breaks when it receives current. Openings allowed the designers to ‘write’ upon the fabric making apertures, collecting foreground and background through the qualities of the material. The second material has been designed with yarn that shrinks or closes into solid lines in the fabric when it receives current. Shrinking is activated by the material while also revealing more opaque patterning in the textile closing parts of that textile off, transforming the material and the quality of space framed by that material. Davis’ work bio responsive textiles questions how we live while she re-imagines how we might use textiles in our daily lives and in architecture. Davis and her lab are interested in developing computational methods and design in relation to bodies in locations that simultaneously engage specific social, cultural and political constructions. Her collaborative lab is dedicated to developing soft computational materials and textiles alongside industry and community partners to establish a culture of hands-on making and thinking through computational materials not only as a future but also as a holistic approach to living within uncertain circumstances. Central to Dumitrescu’s research is the topic of material and textile design, focusing on new materials expanding from computational textiles to biodesign and biofabrication. Through the notion of textile design thinking, her research expands the textile methodology; it includes systematic work with: colour, materials, texture, structure, pattern, and function to explore and propose new design futures for sustainable living from material to spatial design. b. United States and Romania; Lives and works in State College, Pennsylvania and Borås Marshall Islands Navigation Charts Beijok Kaious The Marshall Islands in eastern Micronesia of the Southern Pacific Ocean consists of thirty-four coral atolls composed of more than one thousand islands and islets spread out across an area of several hundred miles. The islanders have mastered an ability to navigate between and among the almost-invisible islands—since the land masses are all so low that none can be seen except from a short distance away. In addition to closely observing wave and swell patterns, the Marshallese used the celestial constellations to navigate the ocean. They also determined the locations of the islands by observing the flight of the birds that nested on them. Song was also used to estimate the distance that the navigators traveled. Navigation is a form of storytelling and placemaking. For thousands of years Marshall Islanders used complex navigation techniques with charts made from coconut midribs and seashells. There are three kinds of Marshall Island “stick charts”: the Mattang , the Rebbelib , and the Meddo . The mattang was specifically designed to train individuals in the art of navigation while the Rebbelib covered a large section or the entirety of the islands. The charts consisted of curved and straight sticks. The curved sticks represented ocean swells and the straight sticks represented the currents and waves around the islands. The seashells represented the locations of the islands. Marshallese navigators memorized the charts and did not take them with them on their canoes. Each chart was unique and could only be interpreted by the person who made it. Today, different configurations of the charts are still being produced across the islands and used by young navigators learning to “read” the ocean. Beyond maps, the charts are thus built stories that speak to the past, present and future simultaneously. The examples of charts ( meddo ) presented in the exhibition, while made as souvenirs on the island of Majuro by Beijok Kaious and facilitated by others, still speak to the continuities and difficulties of navigating across oceans and territories that are rapidly disappearing with the onset of global climate crises. Olalekan Jeyifous How can one envision and design potential? Rather than observing historically overlooked areas of cities such as Crown Heights, Brooklyn or within megacities such as Lagos, Nigeria as impoverished, exclusionary, and open to demolition, as is commonly depicted for underserved areas throughout the world, Jeyifous’s immersive images and spaces speak to the potential for questioning present conditions and future possibilities. Many of the spaces in such locations are also subject to the extremes brought about by environmental instability. Such alternative futuristic visions are simultaneously based in real spaces and conditions while also shifting the gaze of top-down “development” efforts in the same cities that gentrify, displace and erase. These works recenter individuals and collectives as plural complex communities understood as fundamental contributors to the forging of the built environment. The politics of architecture is presented as an extension of how people build themselves as much as their communities. Recognizing that architecture can be built and imagined by these communities, buildings and infrastructures are configured not in opposition to each other but appended to and effectively built among existing real estate projects, socially-constructed spaces and historical monuments. Trained as an architect, and now working at the intersection of art, spatial practices, and public art, Nigerian-born Olalekan Jeyifous explores how the conventions of immersive digital renderings, collages and videos open spaces for critique and revelation of the contemporary built environment. b.1977 Lagos; lives and works in New York Rizvi Hassan Collaborators: Minhajul Abedin, Khwaja Fatmi, Prokolpo Shonapahar, Rohingya Artisans: Kamrunnesa & Jaber, Khairul Amin, Aminullah, Hosna Akhter & Shofiq, Nurul Islam, Shahabuddin, Imam Hossain, Ali Johor, Faruk, Artisans from Sylhet & Shonapahar: Rehana Akhter, Khatun begum, Rita akther, Nikhil Architecture, for Rizvi Hassan, has the capacity “to connect life, to strengthen mental health, to enhance culture, to mitigate conflicts, to enrich the ground, or just to ensure the basic but very important needs to have a better quality of life.” Among the sustainable structures constructed in the world’s largest refugee camps housing Rohingya refugees in and around Cox’s Bazar, Hassan approached these community-centered designs that amplify quality of life for both non-human and human beings. Each of the buildings is responsive to regional climate and environmental precarities, including cyclones, while also establishing safe spaces for vulnerable women and children. Collaborating with members of these communities as well as those building the structures often without the aid of technical drawings, Hassan deploys tools and processes that may be considered antithetical to conventional Western-based architecture practices. His work is as much a facilitator as a designer. Rather, utilizing regenerative materials such as bamboo and thatch, but also overlooked products including mattresses for insulation, Hassan’s buildings emphasize how the use of non-extractive materials alongside minimal industrial intervention encourages sympathetic design processes, dynamic interior spaces, and much-needed shelter and respite for countless individuals. Rizvi Hassan and his collaborators established their practice to work in precarious zones including camps as well as flood-prone districts in Bangladesh. He has stated that “the nation didn’t prepare me to be just an architect, but to be an educated person who can contribute to society. For that, it is important even just to be present, in places where people will need us.” His work reimagines buildings and spaces that empower all community stakeholders while also creating inclusive spaces for the perpetuation of beauty, belonging and survival. b. 1993 Dhaka; Office based in Dhaka and Cox’s Bazar Rohingya Cultural Memory Centre (RCMC) Camp Life, 2022-2023 Hand-embroidered tapestry with stories of Rohingya refugee camp in BD. Participating Artisans: Yasmin, Shobika, Shomima, Roshida Facilitator: Sadya Mizan, Khurshida Permanent collection of RCMC Future Life, 2022-2023 Hand-embroidered tapestry with dream of future life of Rohingya refugee’s in BD Participating Artisans: Yasmin, Shobika, Showmima, Fatema, Ajida, Hosne Ara, Setara, Shamsunahar, Rokeya Facilitator: Rowson Akter, Asma Permanent collection of RCMC British physician and geographer, Dr. Francis Buchanan-Hamilton, published an article in 1799 that states, “the Mohammedans, who have long settled in Arakan, call themselves ‘Rooinga’, or natives of Arakan… the other are Rakhing … who adhere to the tenets of Buddha.” This early description not only establishes that there was an indigenous Muslim minority in the Arakan province of present-day Myanmar with the name Rohingya, but it further distinguishes them from the majority Rakhine Buddhist population. In 1982, the Burmese government enacted the 1982 Citizenship Law with a document that identifies 135 ethnic groups, which the government asserts had settled in Burma prior to 1823. The Rohingya, however, are not included as one of them. Subsequent decades of displacement and discriminatory policies incited by military coups and political brinkmanship has led to more than a million Rohingya refugees settling across numerous camps in Cox’s Bazar. Underlying their mass exodus into a country and spaces that are not their own, is the risk of negative psychosocial impacts stemming from, among other factors, a loss of cultural identity. Rohingya people have many stories, knowledge and wisdom that are rooted in mutual cooperation and care. “There is a dominant narrative that the Rohingya are poor and simple village people who don’t really have art or a developed material culture, and we want to show the world that this is not true,” describes Shahirah Majumdar. In 2022, the estab lishment of the Rohingya Cultural Memory Centre (RCMC) in Camp 18 was designed in tandem with extensive community participation and led by architect Rizvi Hassan. The RCMC is a Rohingya-led institution that collects, preserves, and disseminates the importance that knowledge narratives create goodwill among displaced communities. Even in the most unsettled conditions, cultural practice expressed through art is a significant mode through which generations of displaced communities can maintain their identity. The RCMC encourages empowerment across gender and social lines. Embroidery workshops provide an essential outlet for women artists, who gather to share personal experiences that are subsequently then stitched into tapestries. These are stories of being and becoming that further confer Rohingya histories into tangible forms. Women are trained by Bangladeshi artists who have helped them expand their artistic repertoire beyond traditional floral and faunal motifs, to even include human depictions. The embroidered tapestries presented here are powerful evocations that move past fear, anguish, and insecurity to illustrate stories of building that cannot be erased or forgotten. Sarker Protick jxb, OF RIVER AND LOST LANDS 2011 – 2023 [Ongoing] Inkjet Prints on Archival Paper ‘Of River and Lost lands’ is a series of photographs that surveys the River Padma (Ganges) and the waterborne land of Bangladesh. Made over a period of 12 years and continuing, the series describes a complex relationship of intimacy and ruthlessness between nature and humans on the margins. The life and ecology of rural Bengal, like much of both non-urban and urban worlds, have seen a continuous slow decay. It is a story of loss which begins with a hostile river resulting in devastating frequent erosion. With these occurrences, the landscape disappears and along with it, its many ways of life. Residents witness the river making abrupt changes in its course, drowning their villages, and resulting in forced migrations to other parts of the banks which too can erode without warning. Overnight, a stretch of land, and with it houses, farmlands, and livestock, will collapse and flow off in different directions. As uncontrolled sand mining proliferates, erosion increases at a fast pace. Now the River is not only a potential source of hostility, but also of casualty. Masses of land vanish and the river’s ecosystem changes in ways that cannot be undone. Shallow mud banks (chars) will emerge along with the influx of new sediments. The shore forms new land with the possibility to restart and build new communities for environmental and ecological refugees. Most places seen in these photographs have ceased to exist. As a result, the photographs survive as visual documents of these vanished and vanishing lands. Protick's works are built on long-term surveys rooted in Bangladesh. To make decaying memory tangible, to define the disappearance of a place without confining it, Protick’s often minimal, suspended, and atmospheric photography, video, and sound, explore how form and materiality often morph into the physicality of time. Accompanying its raptures and our inability to grasp or hold time, the process of image-making is a way to expand time, to make space for more subdued moments, or hint at the possibility of an embodied life. b. 1986, Dhaka; lives and works in Dhaka Storia Na Lugar / [un]Grounding NarrativesPatti Anahory and César Schofield Cardoso Among the islands that comprise the nation of Cabo Verde in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, increasing territorial segregation, socioeconomic disparities, a general lack of quality of the built environment, are all present despite development indices for the country indicating one of the best performances in Africa. Ongoing phenomena including the rapid and asymmetrical growth of cities, large investments in mass tourism, the lack of alternatives of materials and construction techniques, are having an irreversible effect on people’s lives throughout the world. Coupled with an increasing desire to build tourist resorts on already environmentally sensitive areas of the archipelago, this video work explores how both sea and sky are becoming compromised in the pursuit of unsustainable, destructive economies. Given this, [un]Grounding Narratives focuses on communities facing exclusion, insecurity, or marginalization, while engaged with various forms of negotiation that reflect how social and natural environments can be repaired through cultural practices of affirmation and belonging. Storia Na Lugar merges the analytical visual languages of an architect and a visual artist alongside a joint pursuit of social and environmental ethics with multidisciplinary art and architectural works that explore forms of environmental and structural precarity in West Africa. Through engaging an international network of researchers, social activists, artists and professionals to engender action, Anahory and Schofield Cardoso seek to influence policy makers and promote a more inclusive development approach for the world’s cities and islands. Patti Anahory b. 1969 aboard a ship at Latitude 26o 50’ N Longitude 17o 05’ W; Based in New York City and Praia César Schofield Cardoso b. 1973 Mindelo; Based in Praia, Cabo Verde Suchi Reddy Reddymade Architects Between Earth and Sky Experiences found within architecture and the (built) environment play an essential role in shaping our capacity to engage with agency, equity, and empathy. Suchi Reddy’s guiding principle is “form follows feeling,” privileging human engagement as a mode for conceiving, designing, and building architectures that invite wonder and discovery. While working toward broader yet critical notions of “design justice,” alongside investigations of machine learning, the holistic design of spaces is recognized as an asset for the benefit of all and not just for some. Reddy considers how we, as individuals and collectives, encounter space as both a constructed and imagined phenomenon. The “mirages” installed as part of this exhibition are an exploration of how belief and the reimagining of boundaries through architectural intervention may contain limitless possibilities. Mirages become metaphors for societal rupture and repair. What is a building or space but an extension of who we are and who we wish to become? Uniting the architect’s wide-ranging portfolio of architecture and artistic work is a multidisciplinary approach guided by a belief in the power of architecture and spatial experience to impact how we feel, how we shape society, and the positive contribution we can offer through design. Interested in the complexities of uniting scientific studies of neuroaesthetics with overt spatial and haptic experiences found in building, the experiential works of Suchi Reddy and her office Reddymade, are at once built manifestations of extensive research of the interplay of human behavior with the material, metaphysical and structural forms that build us. b. Chennai; lives and works in New York We Are From Here Collective Conceived with the collective We Are From Here based in the Slave Island (Kompannaveediya) area of Colombo, Sri Lanka, this work highlights how deeply interconnected communities continually find their homes threatened by gentrification for State and corporate interests. Focused on Slave Island, a rapidly developing location in the center of Colombo where Rahman grew up and now resides, the ongoing project explores the threat of socio-political intersections that are gradually being erased for inequitable economic and political drivers that subsequently are displacing residents. While many residents are of Malay origin, the suburb has been home to multiple cultures, languages, and religions for generations. The area was first described under British Colonial rule as a holding area created by the Portuguese to hold slaves from the African continent. Such historically rich yet seemingly overlooked areas are not only disappearing throughout Colombo but also across cities throughout the world due to the misalignment of definitions of value based on land and property and not for humans. The collective’s multi-media work spotlights how entangled threads of multiple narratives that offer both sources for and representations of intimacy, precarity and memory. The project focuses on mobilising a creative peace-making movement that would help participants and beneficiaries alike to socially engage in their own unique realities through artistic and spatial production. We Are From Here is a multidisciplinary artist’s collective formed by Firi Rahman in 2018 including Parilojithan Ramanathan, Manash Badurdeen (and earlier including Vicky Shahjahan) whose work includes drawing, photography and sculpture, considers the threatened codependent relationships that people and endangered species have with their natural, lived and built environments. Their work has questioned the rise of endangered species in Sri Lanka. The collective and Rahman are particularly interested in the interactions between animals and urban environments, and the responsibility societies share in protecting biodiversity. b. 1990(Firi Rahman), Colombo; Collective established in 2018; lives and works in Slave Island (Kompannaveediya), Colombo Jaago Foundation One Thousand Futures Drawing has been a universal language that both children and adults share since time immemorial. From one’s first attempts at drawing, including the random marking with lines and scratches, and even after the first representations of the world around them, individuals are communicating to establish reciprocal meanings through images. Children of all ages use drawing to express their individual interpretations of experiences near and far. Yet, drawings, as language, can also be “read” and translated. For architects in particular, drawings are tools with which to imagine, capture and define ways of inhabitation. They possess scale, contain volumes, indicate varying temporalities, relay environmental considerations and “speak” to multiple audiences through commonly accepted forms. Our eyes and bodies can occupy the spaces found in a drawing. The project at the heart of this exhibition relies on drawing, as both an artform and as perhaps the most widespread language in the world, to transcend age, gender, background, culture, and other markers of identity. One thousand school-age children from schools across Bangladesh were asked by the Curator to respond to one question with their drawings: What might the future look like? According to governmental agencies in 2022, with around 98% of Bangladeshi “children of primary school age” enrolled in school, many students still have difficulty with basic reading skills. While education is essential to improving the economy of any nation, many people lack foundational lessons for living if they do not receive proper schooling. But all children, when provided with the materials, can draw—or at least create a visual means by which to communicate and thus establish complex meanings for both themselves and others. The drawings presented here are not fictional as they are responsive to an individual’s personal experience and vision while also sharing in multiple images of hope, of joy, of the possibility for becoming and living without the fear of environmental catastrophe. The drawings are active reminders that beyond the structures and boundaries that continually define us, we can draw a future for and about ourselves. JAAGO Foundation began in a single room in the Rayer Bazar slum area of Dhaka. In April 2007, Korvi Rakshand and a group of friends rented a room in Rayer Bazar, with a vision of improving the lives of the local youth. Rakshand and his friends began teaching 17 local children from the area. The first project of the JAAGO Foundation was born from providing relief supplies in response to a flood that destroyed part of the Rayer Bazar in 2007. Since then, the JAAGO Foundation has expanded to actively work toward the integration and participation of all youth in nation building through activities that support inclusion, transparency, and accountability. More than 50,000 volunteers today are working across the country in 11 schools and other sectors to ensure the participation of youth to support and ensure equitable access to education, environmental stability, and women’s rights throughout Bangladesh. Neha Choksi Sky Fold 2, 2013 Sky Fold 8, 2013 Folded paper and light cyanogram Collection of the Samdani Art Foundation What might be the dimensioning of the sky? Across time and geography, the sky has been both a backdrop and a foreground for countless civilizations. Centuries of song and poem have accessed the sky as an arbiter for the faithful and is never complete. It can be made invisible and while at other times, it is a preface for events to come. For some, the sky is a limitless expanse, continuous, open. And yet, for many others, the sky cannot be accessed, it is felt as the origin of sorrow, or even imminent danger. These works at once suggest the fragility and difficulty to contain the sky, its temporalities, and its power. While the grid may be understood as an ordering system, a mathematical invention that is supposed to relay equanimity while also potentially demarcating both economic and political conditions upon the ground; when imposed upon the sky, one is confronted with the possibility of its boundaries, both real and imagined. Choksi’s interest in forging temporary presence is, for the artist, “an affirmative act of destruction.” The Sky Fold cyanograms are photographic works that are embodiments of the means of their own production, folded paper, and light. Like a blueprint of the sky, these photographic prints capture those creases in time—perhaps moments of rupture—when the sky which we all share is made a reflection of the multiple worlds in which we live and dream. Neha Choksi deploys interdisciplinary approaches including performance, video, installation, and sculpture to redefine the poetics and transience of everyday life. Often reflecting on absence, her works employ an uncertain gravity that suggests an uneasy groundedness. Centered among logics that respond to the dialectics of socio-cultural contexts and their variable scales, Choski’s interdisciplinary multi-format works are both interventions into and responses to intersections of time, consciousness, and context. b.1973, USA and India

Nadia Samdani MBE CO-FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT Nadia Samdani MBE is the Co-Founder and President of the Samdani Art Foundation and Director of Dhaka Art Summit (DAS). In 2011, together with her husband Rajeeb Samdani, she established the Samdani Art Foundation to support the work of Bangladesh and South Asia’s contemporary artists and architects and increase their exposure. As part of this initiative, they founded DAS, which has since completed six successful editions under her leadership. She is a member of Tate’s South Asia Acquisitions Committee, Tate’s International Council and Alserkal Avenue’s Programming Committee, one of the founding members of The Harvard University Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute’s Arts Advisory Council, a member of Asia Society’s Advisory Committee, a member of Delfina Foundation’s Global Council, a member of Art SG, a member of Art Basel Global Patrons Council and advisory board member of Neela Asmaan Residency. In 2017, with her husband Rajeeb, she was the first South Asian arts patron to receive the prestigious Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage Award. She was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2022 Birthday Honours for services to global art philanthropy and supporting the arts in South Asia and the United Kingdom. She has also received the Knight of the Order of the Arts and Letters by the Cultural Ministry of France in 2023. Since 2015 she has been on the ArtReview Power 100 list, recognizing her contribution to developing the art scene of Bangladesh and connecting it with the wider world. A second-generation collector, she began her own collection at the age of 22. She collects both Bangladeshi and international art, reflecting her experience as both a proud Bangladeshi and a global citizen. She has written about collecting for Art Asia Pacific and Live Mint and has been a guest speaker at art fairs and institutions including the Royal Ontario Museum, Art Basel, Frieze and Harvard University among other institutions. Rajeeb Samdani CO-FOUNDER AND TRUSTEE Rajeeb Samdani is a Co-Founder and Trustee of the Samdani Art Foundation, and Managing Director of Golden Harvest Group - one of the leading diversified conglomerates in Bangladesh. Together with his wife Nadia Samdani MBE, he established the biannual Dhaka Art Summit, and Srihatta- Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park. Rajeeb is also known for his modern and contemporary art collection. He is a founding member and Co-Chair of Tate’s South Asian Acquisitions Committee, a member of Tate’s International Council and Tate Advisory Board and Alserkal Avenue’s Programming Committee, a founding member of The Harvard University Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute’s Arts Advisory Council, Delfina Foundation’s Global Council member, a member of Art SG and a member of Art Basel Global Patrons Council. In 2017, with his wife Nadia, he was the first South Asian arts patron to receive the prestigious Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage Award. He has been a guest speaker at art fairs and institutions including the Royal Ontario Museum of Art, UC Berkeley, Harvard University and the Private Museums Summit. Diana Campbell ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Diana Campbell is a Princeton educated American curator and writer whose work supports artists, architects, and designers from around the world to develop new work that challenges existing dominant geopolitical frameworks. Institution building and creating forums for interdisciplinary cultural convenings are a core part of her curatorial practice, which builds off of her life experiences working in South and Southeast Asia. Since 2013, she has served as the Founding Artistic Director of Dhaka-based Samdani Art Foundation, Bangladesh and Chief Curator of the Dhaka Art Summit, leading the critically acclaimed 2014-2023 editions. Campbell has developed the Dhaka Art Summit into a leading research and exhibitions platform for art from South Asia, bringing together artists, architects, curators, and writers from across South Asia through a largely commission-based model where new work and exhibitions are born in Bangladesh, also adding a scholarly element to the platform as well as laboratories for new methodologies of audience engagement. In addition to her exhibitions making practice, Campbell is responsible for developing the Samdani Art Foundation collection and drives its international collaborations ahead of opening the foundation’s permanent home, Srihatta, the Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park in Sylhet, Bangladesh. Campbell’s practice specializes in building and amplifying networks. Concurrent to her work with Samdani Art Foundation and Dhaka Art Summit, she is Head of Global Initiatives of the Hartwig Art Foundation in Amsterdam working on expanded notions of collecting, commissioning and collaborating, and is also part of the facilitation group of AFIELD, a global network of socially engaged artistic initiatives. She has curated exhibitions in Austria, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States of America, and her writing has been published in Bangla, Chinese, English, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. Mohammad Sazzad Hossain HEAD OF ADMINISTRATION Mohammad Sazzad Hossain is the Head of Administration of the Samdani Art Foundation. Sazzad has worked for the Samdani Art Foundation since 2012 and has been a key member of the management team from the first edition of the Dhaka Art Summit, now moving into its 7th edition. He is responsible for the artistic production of DAS, along with the management of all the teams on site, as well as the production for Srihatta and its artistic program. From the outset, Sazzad has managed the production of major international artist’s projects, such as Rana Begum, Afrah Shafiq, Antony Gormley, Shilpa Gupta, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Nilima Sheikh, Damian Ortega and Antonio Dias to name a few. He was one of the key members of the Srijan Abartan, a cross-disciplinary sustainable exhibition design research programme introduced in 2020. Sazzad Hossain completed his M.A. and B.A. from Stamford University Bangladesh majoring in English Literature. Ruxmini Reckvana Q Choudhury CURATOR Ruxmini Choudhury is a curator, art writer, researcher, and bilingual translator based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She has been working as a Curator of the Samdani Art Foundation and has been part of the core curatorial team since 2014. Among the many initiatives she has introduced and developed for Dhaka Art Summit are its art mediation program and the Samdani Artist Led Initiatives Forum, part of her ongoing interest in exploring ways to make art more approachable and interactive to the public. Her research has supported the growth of curatorial knowledge about Bangladesh through her collaborations assisting many international curators on shows in Dhaka such as Dhaka Art Summit, but also in Hong Kong, India, Austria, Norway, Dubai, among others. She was one of the participants of MAHASSA in 2019-20 and a CIMAM Grantee for the 2023 conference. She founded the 'Singularity Art Movement' in 2021, a platform which acknowledges social stigmas that impact gendered, social, political, religious, cultural, and racial oppression. This platform acts as a safe space for artists and non-artists to discuss and share these issues, which may or may not result in an exhibition. She completed her BFA in Art History from University of Dhaka in 2014 and previously interned at the Dhaka Art Center, a Dhaka based non-profit art center. Her research on the crafts of Kushtia, Jhenaidah and Magura districts of Bangladesh has been published in Setouchi Catalogue: Bangladesh Crafts, 2014. She is also an alumna of Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES) programme and was previously involved in many social service and youth empowerment activities. Swilin Haque CURATORIAL ASSISTANT Swilin Haque is an art researcher based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She joined the Samdani Art Foundation in 2022 as a Curatorial Assistant, where she works closely with the Artistic Director and curatorial team on exhibition research, artist liaison, and production coordination. Her work spans year-round research support for collaborative projects at the Foundation and its permanent home, Srihatta–Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park, assisting visiting curators and artists, and contributing to the Foundation’s digital and institutional infrastructure, including the care of its collection. Trained in painting at the University of Dhaka, she continues to maintain an engagement with artistic practice. She completed her postgraduate studies in Art History and Aesthetics at The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda with the support of an ICCR scholarship, with a particular interest in political discourses found in art history. Swilin founded the Whoyait Art Space platform, through which she has organized several independent art initiatives and online talk programs between Bangladesh and India, with a focus on performance-based practices. Currently, she contributes to the Foundation’s research and archival development as part of Asia Art Archive’s “Archiving for the Future” workshop. Iftekhar Noor Shaon COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST Iftekhar Noor Shaon is the Communications Specialist at the Samdani Art Foundation. Previously, he worked as an art mediator during the Dhaka Art Summit 2023. Iftekhar holds the Excellence scholarship from IFA Paris and is currently pursuing a BA in Fashion Design. With a keen interest in fashion extending beyond mere aesthetics, he aspires to create garments that resonate not only with the body but also with the mind. Known for his multilingual proficiency, Iftekhar effortlessly communicates in Bangla, English, French, Hindi, and his dialect, Sylheti. Meet The Team