ALL PROJECTS Kamruzzaman Shadhin at Delfina Foundation Spring Residency 2026 Tondra artist and long-term Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) collaborator Kamruzzaman Shadhin participated in the Spring Residency 2026 at the Delfina Foundation, developed around the theme Making and Materiality. Working across sculpture, installation, and collaborative practices, Shadhin's research is rooted in process, labour, and the transformation of locally sourced materials. During the residency, he continued his exploration of material knowledge and making, expanding conversations around the social and cultural histories embedded within everyday materials. Samdani Art Foundation, a long-term institutional partner of the Delfina Foundation, supported Shadhin's participation in the residency as part of its ongoing commitment to enabling international exchange and supporting artists from Bangladesh in developing sustained relationships with global arts institutions.

ALL PROJECTS A BEAST, A GOD, AND A LINE | TS1 YANGON CURATED BY COSMIN COSTINAS 6-24 JUNE 2018 | TS1, YANGON Dhaka Art Summit 2018 exhibition, A beast, a god, and a line travelled to TS1 in Yangon for its third iteration, featuring many works commissioned by the Samdani Art Foundation as part of the exhibition's initial edition during DAS 2018. This exhibition was organised by the Samdani Art Foundation in collaboration with Para Site, Hong Kong and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Installation image of A beast, a god, and a line at TS1, Yangon. Courtesy of TS1. Photo credit: Pyinsa Rasa.

ALL PROJECTS Art Mediation Programme 2023 Dhaka Art Summit The 2023 Art Mediation Programme, led by Ruxmini Reckvana Q Choudhury and assisted by Swilin Haque, was a remarkable success. Artist, art educator, and art mediator Tarana Halim played a pivotal role in managing the programme, which brought together an impressive team of 123 skilled art mediators. With an audience exceeding half a million over the course of just nine days, the mediators expertly guided visitors through a vibrant and inclusive Dhaka Art Summit experience. Their efforts ensured that the diverse range of activities offered at the summit was accessible, engaging, and enriching for all attendees.

ALL PROJECTS Art Mediation Programme 2018 As part of our commitment to creating new strategies to open up our programme to a diverse audience, the Dhaka Art Summit 2018 launched a new Art Mediation programme, led by Ruxmini Reckvana Q Choudhury. With the generous support of Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council, and in collaboration with the Hochschule Luzern, this programme was designed to engage and expose a network of local creatives and students to new methodologies of mediation, who in turn helped the local audience navigate and access the exhibitions and programmes. Aware that the space of contemporary art was, for many members of DAS’s extremely diverse audience, quite daunting, we set out to create a series of new strategies to open up our programme. These strategies strengthened our commitment to accommodate many forms of thinking and provided space for them to flourish – to create a space where different audiences were encouraged to engage with artworks on their own terms. Creating an effective mediation programme was central to this agenda and crucial in achieving DAS’s goals in the South Asia region. This edition of DAS aimed to become completely bilingual, with all printed material presented in both Bangla and English, fostering ease of access for our Bangladeshi audience, which included the Exhibition Guide. Also included in the Guide were a series of ‘Mediation Pages’ that suggested particular tools which visitors could use to help them navigate DAS’s exhibitions. These tools were developed over the course of workshops at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (Cochin), the Hochschule Luzern (Lucerne), and in Dhaka, through dialogues between DAS’s curatorial staff, Dr. Rachel Mader and Lena Eriksson of the Hochschule Luzern, and DAS 2018’s team of 25 Art Mediators. This dedicated team of Mediators was stationed throughout the Summit’s exhibition spaces, easily identifiable by their ASK ME ABOUT THE ART t-shirts. Trained through intensive workshops, they engaged the public in conversations around the artworks, and ran tours each day for both DAS’s general audiences and visiting school groups. You cam read a post from MoMA's education department referencing our Art Mediation and other educational initiatives here .

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

The Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) is an international, non-commercial research and exhibition platform for art and architecture related to South Asia. With a core focus on Bangladesh, DAS re-examines how we think about these forms of art in both a regional and an international context. Nadia Samdani 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, with 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, she founded DAS, which has since completed five 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 and member of Asia Society’s Advisory Committee. 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.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. Works from the Samdanis’ collection have been lent to institutions and festivals including: Kiran Nadar Musem of Art, New Delhi (2023); Hayward Gallery, London (2022); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2019); Para Site, Hong Kong (2018); Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2018); documenta 14, Kassel and Athens, (2017); Shanghai Biennale (2017); Office for Contemporary Art Norway, Olso (2016); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015); Kunstsammlung Nordrhein, Düsseldorf (2015); Gwangju Biennale (2014); and Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2014). 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. DAS 2012 Team Guest Curators Others CHAIRMAN Farooq Sobhan DHAKA ART SUMMIT, BANGLADESH Nadia Samdani MBE SAMDANI ART FOUNDATION, BANGLADESH Rajeeb Samdani DELFINA FOUNDATION, UK Aaron Cezar Organising Comittee Members

Partners The Samdani Art Foundation is proud to have partnered with the following organisations and institutions on its various initiatives.

ALL PROJECTS Geological Movements Curated by Diana Campbell We may think of ‘land’ as fixed but it is constantly shifting: below us through erosion, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes; swirling above us as dust clouds. The earliest signs of life, the impetus of cellular movement, as well as aeons of extinction are inscribed in stone and fossils. Fossil fuels, created from the remains of life from the deep geological past, power much of our way of life and threaten our collective future through the violent process of extracting and burning them. Geological and political ruptures often overlap, and the artists in this movement excavate metaphors to consider our past, present, and future on this planet beyond human-bound paradigms. Their works challenge us to find commonalities and to emerge from this sediment to heal, imagine, design, and build new forms of togetherness. What will coalesce and fossilise our presence on this planet for lifetimes to come? Adrián Villar Rojas New Mutants, 2017–2020 Moroccan marble floor tiles encrusted with Devonian period micro Ammonite and Goniatites fossils; blue chroma key paint; spices (turmeric, chili powder, garam masala powder); plant-based pigments (indigo, sindoor, alta), gouache; sand; potatoes and coal, on aggregate rammed earth walls Commissioned and produced by Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2020 Courtesy of the artist, Samdani Art Foundation, Marian Goodman Gallery, and kurimanzutto Realised with additional support from kurimanzutto and Marian Goodman Gallery New Mutants is a new immersive installation by Adrián Villar Rojas where visitors enter DAS by walking over a marble floor encrusted with 400-million-year-old ammonite and orthoceras fossils. These now-extinct species of undersea creatures thrived for 300 million years, swimming across the super-ocean Panthalassa and witnessing the creation and breakup of the single continent Pangaea. A painting of a burned-out fireplace emerges from the rammed-earth walls that rise from the fossil floor, tracing the seismic shift that occurred in the evolution of humanity and our planet when we learned to control fire, invented agriculture, and began to settle and build civilisations. This work serves as a metaphor to think outside of human-bound time, and to consider common ground on which to come together. Villar Rojas creates site-specific installations using both organic and inorganic materials that undergo change over time. Tied to their exhibiting context, they generate irreproducible experiences relying on a ‘parasite-host’ relation. His team-based projects that extend over open-ended periods allow him to question the aftermath of the normalised production of art in the Capitalocene era. Fragments of this installation will be permanently on display at Srihatta, the Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park in Sylhet in a dedicated pavilion designed by the artist. b. 1980, Argentina; lives and works nomadically Elena Damiani As the dust settles, 2019–2020 Watercolour on handmade Lokta Barbour grey paper. Commissioned for DAS 2020 Courtesy of the artist and Revolver Gallery ‘There is a strange sympathy between the atmospheric particles that float through the sky and the human beings who migrate across the ground and then across the sea. Each body sets the other into motion – a pattern of movement and countermovement.’ Adrian Lahoud Elena Damiani has created a collage of watercolour renditions of storming dust particles in the atmosphere as captured by NASA. Several hundred million tonnes of dust unsettle and travel through the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans from deserts to the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. We imagine land to be static, but deforestation, desertification, and climate-change-related storms distribute dust across vast distances in our planet’s atmosphere. The handmade Nepalese paper beneath the layers of paint making up this work is a surface that could be read as stone tiles, an aerial view of a desert, or even a microscopic view of human skin. Damiani creates installations, objects, and works on paper that focus on the politics of space and memory. She portrays landscapes and geological processes to reinterpret natural stages and their generative processes. Her work draws inspiration from collage techniques and historical science books, while the stone and metal in her sculptures recall the environments she studies and refracts. b. 1979, Lima; lives and works in Lima Jonathas de Andrade b. 1982, Maceió; lives and works in Recife Pacifico, 2010 Super8 transferred in HD, 12 min Courtesy of the artist and Vermelho Through the process of animating a styrofoam board model with maps and paper, Jonathas de Andrade proposes a fictional geological solution for the political turmoil and violence that normally accompanies changes of borders. A massive earthquake erupts over the Andes, detaching Chile from the South American continent. As a consequence, the sea returns to Bolivia, restoring its lost coastline, Argentina gains coasts with both the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans, and Chile becomes a floating island adrift in the seas. The aesthetic approach of the film allows the artist to touch upon topics such as the notion of truth as an ideological construction and the fabrication of mass commotion/emotion as political artifice. De Andrade works predominantly with installations, videos, and photo-research. Addressing those overlooked in the dominant cultural narrative of Brazil, the artist ponders on the relationships between different social milieus. In collaboration with labourers, indigenous tribes, the disabled, and others, de Andrade commonly points out the inequality stemming from the discourses of colonialism and neo-imperialism. The artist co-founded the artistic collective A Casa como Convém in 2007. Karan Shrestha b. 1985, Kathmandu; lives and works between Kathmandu and Mumbai in these folds, 2019 Ink on paper, three-channel HD video Commissioned for DAS 2020 Courtesy of the artist Within Nepal’s contained geography, the landscape presents possibilities for adversity to spring from any fissure: be it a decade of revolutionary upheaval, political instability, natural disasters, economic ruptures, repressed social edifices, or perpetual state violence. Through the installation of a three-channel video and an ink drawing, in these folds addresses the resulting precariousness that has characterised Nepal’s recent past. Incorporating documentary and fiction, Karan Shreshta questions the rhetoric of progress prescribed for paving the way forward and considers how transcendental practices that have endured over time are attempts at grappling with the everyday. Shrestha’s works overlay encounters in physical landscapes on mental maps of people and spaces he comes across so as to examine and restructure notions of the present. His practice – incorporating drawings, sculpture, photography, text, film, and video – seeks to blur the oppositions that build and define our individual and collective identities. Matías Duville b. 1974, Buenos Aires; lives and works in Buenos Aires Untitled, 2019 Sanguine on paper My red way, 2019 Sanguine on paper Levitating in red, 2019 Sanguine on paper, sandpaper Courtesy of the artist and Barro Gallery Matías Duville’s earthy mud and iron-oxide-infused sanguine drawings call to mind landscapes in transition from natural disasters and also from human interference from the extraction and clearing processes needed for infrastructure development. Similar to these methods, Duville’s drawings pulse with expressive brutality, trying to represent what the end of the world might look like both in a geographical and psychological sense. These works are inspired by the mental landscapes that are created inside our heads when we look directly at the sun and close our eyes to recover from its blinding light. The artist takes us along on his journey deep into the mind, trying to connect us with the idea of a universe out of control. Duville works with objects, videos, and installations, although he predominantly employs drawing. His works evoke scenes of desolation with rarified, timeless atmospheres like those that precede a natural disaster: hurricanes, tsunamis, or situations of abandonment in the forest that act as a dreamlike vision of a wandering explorer, like a mental landscape. Omer Wasim b. 1988, Karachi; lives and works in Karachi In the Heart of Mountains, 2019 Charcoal on canvas, lacquer, wooden armatures Commissioned for DAS 2020 Courtesy of the artist In the Heart of Mountains situates us amidst Omer Wasim’s journey in the mountains of the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan, a contested terrain that he scaled with queer friends and friendships. The work, as well as his action, denounces romantic visions and imaginaries of the area perpetuated by the state, and instead relies on charcoal to make visible the mountains as witnesses to state violence, colonial and neo-colonial rule, and as sites where many death-worlds arise. These mountains anticipate their own demise, foreshadowing capital interests in the region that are in diametric opposition to nature, ecology, and people. Queer bodies and community enable this mode of inquiry, becoming, in the process, insurgents that counter state-sponsored redaction and violence. While it also stands alone as an installation, the work also becomes an environment for new readings into the future. Wasim is an intermedia artist whose practice queers space, subverting the frames of development and progress that shape human relationships to the city and nature. His work bears witness to the relentless erasure, violence, destruction of our times by staying with queer bodies as they hold space and enact desire. Otobong Nkanga b. 1974, Kano; lives and works in Antwerp Landversation, 2020 Site-specific installation and conversations from Dhaka Commissioned and produced by Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2020. Courtesy of the artist, Samdani Art Foundation, and Mendes Wood DM. Realised with additional support from Unilever Bangladesh. Project coordinator Helena Ramos Land extends beyond mere soil, territories, and earth. It relates to our connectivity and conflicts in relation to the spaces we live in and how humans try to find solutions through simple gestures of innovation and repair. As relationships with nature and people become affected, how can we find a platform to share, learn, exchange and heal? A series of tables forming a circular structure serve as the basis for an exchange between visitors and a group of people who all have close – professional, caring, vital – relationships with the earth. Otobong Nkanga weaves together strands of landversations realised in Beirut, Shanghai, and São Paulo in this project’s newest iteration in Dhaka, and her collaborators have included geologists, housing and land rights activists, farmers, and many others who transform the land itself into other realities. What is ordinarily constructed through their contact with land now forms the foundation for new situations of exchange and transmission, activating interpersonal networks that come together in DAS with the power to move the world outside the exhibition. Nkanga’s drawings, installations, photographs, sculptures and performances examine the social and topographical relationship to our everyday environment. By exploring the notion of land as a place of non-belonging, Nkanga provides an alternative meaning to the social ideas of identity. Paradoxically, she brings to light the memories and historical impacts provoked by humans and nature. Raphael Hefti b. 1978, Biel; lives and works in Zurich Quick Fix Remix, 2015/2020 Sculptures created from performance with thermite powder and sand Courtesy of the artist. Realised with additional support from Pro Helvetia Raphael Hefti uses the language of material to communicate a fascination with the behaviour of liquid metals, a material history which is part of the epic story of human civilisation across vast geographies. This performance, a spectacle between blunder and precision, is a conversation with the world of heavy industries and iron casting. The artist misappropriates thermite welding processes typically used to repair high-speed train tracks, transforming liquid steel through a blazing landscape of incisions that leaves behind a bed of solidified metal debris. Just as volcanic eruptions make visible the hidden energy properties of the molten rock and liquid metal moving deep within the earth, Hefti’s ‘artistic alchemy’ makes visible the hidden industrial practices and processes that form the machine-made landscapes powering our way of life. Working across sculpture, installation, painting, photography, and performance, Raphael Hefti explores how humans transform materials in the everyday urban landscape by pushing and testing material limits, while removing these materials from utilitarian obligations. He often works with teams of industry technicians to modify and misapply routine procedures and construction methods to open up new possibilities and unexpected beauty through guided accidents that he documents in his work.

ALL PROJECTS MAHASSA Modern Art Histories in and across Africa, South and Southeast Asia The Dhaka Art Summit, Institute for Comparative Modernities (ICM) at Cornell University, and Asia Art Archive, with support from the Getty Foundation’s Connecting Art Histories initiative, launch a new research project entitled Modern Art Histories in and across Africa, South and Southeast Asia. The project brings together a team of leading international faculty and emerging scholars to investigate parallel and intersecting developments in the cultural histories of modern Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. These regions have been shaped by shared institutional and intellectual developments during the twentieth century, including the rise of modern art practices associated with the withdrawal of colonialism and the consolidation of nationalism, the founding of institutions such as the art school and the museum, and increasing exchange with international metropolitan centres via travel and the movement of ideas through publications and exhibitions. Viewing them in terms of statist and national art histories obscures their analysis in a comparative framework. By contrast, this programme emphasises a connected and contextualised approach to better understand both common developments as well as divergent trajectories. The curriculum will cover both core concepts and emerging perspectives from postcolonial, decolonial, transnational, transcultural, and global discourses, with seminar topics that range from art and social difference, creolisation, exhibition histories, postcolonial nationalisms, media and popular culture, multiple modernisms, pedagogy, and transnational networks, among others. Participants will be actively engaged in the sessions as experts in their own respective disciplines. By presenting two papers during the course of the programme, early career scholars will be encouraged to pursue their research informed by the theoretical and art historical contexts of this project. By integrating presentations by participants with core faculty lectures, the programme is envisioned as a reciprocal process of learning exchange. Presentations will also take place at peer institutions in Hong Kong and Bangladesh, as well as at the Dhaka Art Summit. Field trips such as collection, museum, and modernist architecture visits and guest lectures will be organised during both the Hong Kong and Dhaka sessions. With the goal of optimising the impact of in-person workshops, virtual meetings will be held in addition to the respective Hong Kong and Dhaka sessions. Emerging scholars from and with connections to Africa, South Asia, and/or Southeast Asia currently enrolled in a graduate programme in Art History, Architectural History, or Cultural Studies, or who have finished their graduate training in these fields in the last three years, were encouraged to apply. Twenty-one scholars were selected from a competitive international applicant pool. The scholars and their research proposals can be found on the right-hand column. Building on the initial convening at AAA in August 2019, the MAHASSA curriculum in February will focus on methodologies and specific histories, through seminars, panels, guest talks, and field trips with core and invited faculty. Working closely with host and partner, Dhaka Art Summit, topics such as architecture, art schools, and the place of collectives will be explored in depth from a conceptual and practical approach. This was a closed-door event. The open call for participation ended on 28 Feb 2019. Image: Muzharul Islam, College of Arts and Crafts, Dhaka. Photo: Randhir Singh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYnQJm-CPlw Afropolitan: Contemporary African Art as Paradox Fri, 7 Feb 2020 Respondents: Simon Soon and Sanjukta Sunderason, Diana Campbell (mod.) Art historian and curator Salah M. Hassan (Cornell University) delivered a keynote on contemporary African art and its global significance. Respondents art historian Simon Soon (University of Malaya) and historian Sanjukta Sunderason (University of Leiden) engaged with Hassan in a discussion on parallel developments that emerged in South and Southeast Asia since the 1980s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc3ZBekwXRM Art and Hunger: Transnational Frames Sat, 8 Feb 2020 Art and Hunger: Transnational Frames Panelists: Elizabeth Giorgis and Sanjukta Sunderason, Noopur Desai (mod.) This panel by art historian Elizabeth Giorgis (Addis Ababa University) and historian Sanjukta Sunderason (University of Leiden) explores the politics of famine in the context of anti-colonial and antiauthoritarian struggles in South Asia and North Africa, and how competing narratives of nationalism were articulated through social realism and abstraction in response to Bengal (1943), Vietnamese (1945), and Ethiopian famines (1984–85). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHhEE02o-gk Modern Architecture Sun, 9 Feb 2020 Modern Architecture Panelists: Sean Anderson, Farhan Karim, Simon Soon, Nurur Rahman Khan, Sneha Ragavan (mod.) This panel by architectural historians Sean Anderson (Museum of Modern Art), Farhan Karim (University of Kansas), architecture historian and architect Nurur Rahman Khan (Muzharul Islam Archives) and art historian Simon Soon (University of Malaya) examines modernisms as they played out in the built environment of the Global South. Panelists will discuss how innovations in domestic and urban life engendered hybrid building typologies and visual motifs that simultaneously resonated with universal modernist tropes, while incorporating local vernacular traditions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqmff02k-kA Rise of the Art School Mon, 10 Feb 2020 Rise of the Art School Panelists: Ming Tiampo, Sneha Ragavan, Chuong-Dai Vo, Shaela Sharmin, John Tain (mod.) This panel investigates the role of art schools as important sites of transcultural encounter, knowledge sharing, and art production during the modern period. By discussing case studies such as Santiniketan, Baroda, Dhaka and Chittagong Charukala, and Slade, among others, panelists will explore the relationship between pedagogy and community. Panelists include art historian Ming Tiampo (Carleton University), researchers Sneha Ragavan and Chuong-Dai Vo (Asia Art Archive), artist collective The Otolith Group, and Dean of Visual Arts at University of Chittagong and artist Shaela Sharmin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWxAnLgpCkM Collectives from the 1950s to the Present Fri, 14 Feb 2020 Collectives from the 1950s to the Present Panelists: Melissa Carlson, Samina Iqbal, Dana Liljegren, Dhali Al Mamoon, Michelle Wong (mod.) By reviewing four case studies: Pakistan in the 1950s, multiple sites in the 1960s, Bangladesh in the 1980s, and presentday Senegal, panelists will examine how artists fashioned modes of resistance and solidarity through new forms of collectivity. Here, formal and informal artist groups created frameworks for negotiating between international, national, and local agents. Panelists include MAHASSA participants Melissa Carlson, Samina Iqbal, Dana Liljegren, and artist and art historian Mustafa Zaman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GalLxai6pys Reflections on Modern Art Histories in and across Africa, South and Southeast Asia Thu, 25 Jun 2020 Reflections on Modern Art Histories in and across Africa, South and Southeast Asia Panelists: Iftikhar Dadi, Diana Campbell Betancourt, Elizabeth W Giorgis, John Tain (mod.) Organised by Asia Art Archive in America, this panel gather four of the MAHASSA faculty members, Dr. Iftikhar Dadi, Diana Campbell Betancourt, Dr. Elizabeth W Giorgis, and John Tain, who provide an overview and share their thoughts on the impetus behind and outcome so far of this evolving project. Programme Partners: Sponsor: THIS PROJECT IS MADE POSSIBLE WITH THE SUPPORT OF THE GETTY FOUNDATION THROUGH ITS CONNECTING ART HISTORIES INITIATIVE.

ALL PROJECTS Shako and National Trovoa Dhaka Art Summit 2020 Several artist-led initiatives have been tearing away the cloak of invisibility thrown by structural racism within the art world. The manifesto of Brazil’s National Trovoa , a group of black and non-white women artists and curators which can be seen both as a collective and as a movement, states ‘We understand the need to speak of and to exhibit the plurality of our languages, discourses, research and media produced by us as racialised women’. A rallying call that lives in physical and digital space, Trovoa counts over 150 members and empowers the most disenfranchised members of the art world to become visible together. Shako – Women Artists Association of Bangladesh – for women and by women – believes art can play a role in healing society. It raises funds for individuals, male and female, who are unwell or in need of medical treatment; uses art to encourage physically or mentally challenged people; and promotes female artists and helps them develop skills. A ‘shako’ is a temporary bamboo bridge, built to make it possible to cross rivers and streams, an apt metaphor for Shako’s work connecting talented female artists to vulnerable communities. Reflections on blackness and racial subjugation must respond to different histories and contexts. The largest African diaspora in the world is found in Brazil. In South Asia also, the colour of a woman’s skin can subject her to structural prejudice. Skin-lightening creams are used widely across the country, derogatory phrases are directed at women with dark skin or indigenous features, and advertisements for arranged marriages explicitly favour ‘fair skin’. The Collective Body brings together these two generations of female-led collectives from South Asia and South America for a 5-hour tea party to compare experiences, and in their words, to ‘darken our thoughts.’ The results of these discussions was published in Bangla, English, and Portuguese on social media, follow #darkeningthoughts Shako also ran a workshop about black empowerment on 13 February from 4–6pm in the 4th floor workshop area.

In early 2017, the inaugural Samdani Architecture Award invited, through open call, individuals or groups of 3rd and 4th year Bangladeshi Architecture students to propose new models for learning in abandoned urban spaces across Bangladesh, using ecologically sustainable, and locally sourced materials and technology. Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী) Maksudul Karim FIRST PRIZE From 135 registrations, Maksudul Karim’s design, Chhaya Tori (ছায়া তরী), which translates as Shadow Boat, was selected. A Level 3, B.Sc Architecture student at Premier University, Chittagong, Karim’s design utilised traditional Shampan boat building techniques—synonymous with Bangladesh’s fishing communities—bringing traditional rural Bangladeshi construction techniques into the urban environment. Using bamboo as its primary construction material, Chhaya Tori floated above ground level on bamboo supports, covered with a shade (known locally as choi) erected using traditional bamboo inter-weaving techniques, allowing natural light to fall into the internal teaching space. Bangladesh has one of the largest inland waterway networks in the world with nearly 5,000 miles of navigable waters, making boats a vital mode of transportation to the nation. Despite this, the use of traditional boat building methods is in decline in favour of mechanised mass-produced models. “Maksudul Karim's design embraced themes from the origins of the tectonics as the interlacing of materials and fibres proposing a habitable structure. Exploring local materials and techniques he offers experiences based in the generation and superposition of shadows with different sieves that present an organic changing atmosphere.” - Jeannette Plaut, Co-Founder and Director Constructo Karim was awarded the inaugural Samdani Architecture Award during the Dhaka Art Summit's Opening Celebratory Dinner and received funding towards further studies. DHAKA ART SUMMIT 2018 EDUCATION PAVILION On 2 February 2018, Karim’s winning design was unveiled at the heart of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy as the Dhaka Art Summit 2018’s Education Pavilion. Curated by Diana Campbell, the Education Pavilion transformed DAS into a free art school, re-imagining the traditional toolboxes used when considering art-making and artistic practices. This free and alternative art school’s curriculum was led by leading artistic practitioners and educators from institutions including: Goldsmiths University (UK); Yale School of Art (USA); Cornell University (USA); Kalabhavan Santiniketan (India); Harvard, South Asia Institute (USA); Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (Switzerland); Open School East (UK); Council (France); and the FHNW Academy of Art and Design (Basel, Switzerland); among others. Programmed across DAS’s nine-day duration, the Education Pavilion hosted a bilingual, collaborative curriculum, developing a timely and productive discussion about art education in South Asia. Samdani Architecture Award In early 2017, the inaugural Samdani Architecture Award invited, through open call, individuals or groups of 3rd and 4th year Bangladeshi Architecture students to propose new models for learning in abandoned urban spaces across Bangladesh, using ecologically sustainable, and locally sourced materials and technology. Participants were required to design an imaginative and innovative open pavilion, both visually stimulating and architecturally flexible for different functions, including lectures, events and workshops. The winning proposal was selected by an international jury: Aurélien Lemonier (National Museum of the History of Immigration, Paris, France); Jeannette Plaut (Constructo, Santiago de Chile); and Shamshul Wares (Department of Architecture, State University of Bangladesh). “I sense a Threshold: Light to Silence, Silence to Light – an ambiance of inspiration, in which the desire to be, to express, crosses with the possible … Light to Silence, Silence to Light crosses in the sanctuary of art.” - Louis Kahn Just under 20 percent of Bangladesh’s land mass is covered with forest, the largest of which are in the Chittagong Hills, covering around 4,600 square kilometres, and the tidal mangrove forests in the Sundarbans, covering around 6,000 square kilometres. Mimicking the layering of foliage in Bangladesh’s lush forests, the pavilion’s two outer mesh layers create a visual barrier to the outside world. A space for public gatherings, lectures and sharing, inside the pavilion, rays of light push through the outer mesh, creating patterns and shapes that will change with the seasons and time of day. Fouzia Masud Mouri (b. 1996) Ahmad Abdul Wasi (b. 1995) Both level 3, B.s.c Architecture students at the Bangaldesh University of Engineering and Technology To Sense The Unseen, Designed by Team Gaia SECOND PRIZE Dhaka, the capital and largest city in Bangladesh, is a city of diversity. One of the most densely populated cities in the world, crammed with educational institutes, government and private offices, markets, industrial units and residences, it is filled with people from all walks of life and backgrounds. A microcosm of the whole country, The Dot Pavilion encapsulates Dhaka’s diversity, creating a space for the city’s people to meet. An omnidirectional circle, representing the city’s diversity, the pavilion’s main vernacular structure uses bamboo and wood. Maintaining an environmental friendly structure, bamboo will keep the inner environment 3° degrees cooler than outside, while the structures longitudinal cross-section hollows absorb co2. An outer layer of lipids, will protect the bamboo structure from rotting. Rahat Ibna Hasan (b. 1996) Nirupam Bakshi (b. 1996) Md. Khalid Hossain (b. 1996) All Level 3, B.s.c Architecture students at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology The Dot Pavilion, Designed by Team Delta THIRD PRIZE

FAQs Frequently asked questions General What makes the Samdani Art Foundation (SAF) unique? The Samdani Art Foundation is a solely non-commercial entity, which is unique to both Bangladesh and a rarity across the South Asian region. While there are other art foundations in Bangladesh, SAF is the only one not tied to commercial activities within the art world. SAF also rejects the art camp model of other local foundations, which ask artists to produce works for free in return for participating in their programs. SAF is privately funded and does not sell any artworks, nor does it generate income by engaging with the commercial activities of galleries or art fairs. All of SAF’s programmes are free and never require registration or participation fees. In 2012 the Samdani Art Foundation founded the bi-annual Dhaka Art Summit (DAS), an international non-commercial research and exhibition platform for art and architecture related to South Asia, which re-examines how we think about these art forms in a regional and wider context. DAS’s interdisciplinary programme creates a generative space for art and exchange, and is unique in that it commissions, funds, and produces works as opposed to merely exhibiting them. Many projects commissioned and produced by SAF for DAS—such as those by Shilpa Gupta, Rashid Rana, Jitish Kallat, and Munem Wasif—have travelled to international institutions such as the Berlin Biennale, NYU Abu Dhabi, San Jose Museum of Art, Gwangju Biennial, and the Singapore Biennial. This is not a collection building strategy; works commissioned for DAS often travel to other international exhibitions after the event and will continue to belong to the artists. SAF does not recover production money or take commissions pertaining to the work it produces. The Foundation has been successful in providing a non-commercial platform for international institutions to consider art from Bangladesh in their curatorial research process, which has led to the inclusion of work by Bangladeshi artists and architects in international exhibitions. Munem Wasif, Ayesha Sultana, and Rana Begum have recently showcased their work in Korea at the 11th Gwangju Biennale–the Biennale’s first inclusion of Bangladeshi artists. Architect Kashef Chowdhury’s work in the 2015 Venice Architecture Biennale was the Biennale’s first inclusion of a Bangladeshi architect, which speaks to the rising role of Bangladeshi architecture on the international scene. Munem Wasif participated in fifth edition of the Singapore Biennale after its curator reached out to SAF for information about Bangladeshi emerging artists. SAF supported Naeem Mohaiemen’s solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Basel in 2014, leading to the artist’s inclusion in documenta14. In 2017, Kunsthalle Zürich included two Bangladeshi artists from the Samdani Art Award (Samsul Alam Helal and Raqiful Shuvo) in the group exhibition Speak, Lokal, curated by DAS 2016 guest curator Daniel Baumann. Raqiful Shuvo and Farzana Ahmed Urmi recently participated in the 11th Shanghai Biennale with the support of SAF. There has been unprecedented mobility for emerging Bangladeshi artists in recent years, which SAF is proud to have supported and will continue to do so through its various initiatives. The Samdani Art Foundation has a great number of projects including the Samdani Seminars, the Samdani Artist Led Initiatives Forum, the Samdani Art Award, the Samdani Architecture Award, the Dhaka Art Summit, and the recently launched DAS Research Fellows programme. SAF also supports a great number of global events and the participation of artists from Bangladesh in international exhibitions. For further information about our projects, please visit the dedicated section on our website here. What is the Samdani Art Award? The bi-annual Samdani Art Award, organised in partnership with the Delfina Foundation, has created an internationally recognised platform to showcase the work of young Bangladeshi artists to an international audience at the bi-annual Dhaka Art Summit. Inviting applications through an open call, Bangladeshi artists between the ages of 20–40 are eligible to apply. Applications are then shortlisted by an invited jury of international artists and curators who chose ten finalists to receive one-on-one sessions with an invited guest curator. The winner will receive an all-expenses paid, six-week residency at the Delfina Foundation in London. Each short-listed artist will be given an international curator as a mentor as part of the Biennials’ Associate Artists programme and at least two of the short-listed artists will be commissioned for the upcoming Liverpool Biennial. Many past short-listed artists have since shown their work at international exhibitions and institutions including; 11th Gwangju Biennale (2016), curated by_Vienna (2016), 11th Shanghai Biennale (2016), 4a Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (2017), and Kunsthalle Zürich (2017). For further information about the Samdani Art Award, please visit the dedicated section on our website here. Who is behind the Samdani Art Foundation (SAF)? Nadia Samdani is the President of the Samdani Art Foundation, which she co-founded with her husband Rajeeb Samdani in 2011. SAF is led by Diana Campbell, its Artistic Director, an International Advisory Committee, and a local organising committee, chaired by Farooq Sobhan, President and CEO of the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute (BEI), an independent research institute in Bangladesh. What is the source of these private funds? Rajeeb Samdani is the Chairman of Golden Harvest. Golden Harvest is a diversified Bangladeshi conglomerate with over 5,000 employees, involved in numerous business sectors: food, real estate, information, technology, agro, infrastructure development, dairy, aviation, insurance, commodity, and logistics. Rajeeb Samdani is also the Secretary of the General of the Bangladesh Human Rights Foundation, which is one of the largest Human Rights organisations in Bangladesh. Mr. Samdani is also the Founder of the Taher Ahmed Chowdhury Charitable Hospital in the city of Sylhet. The Samdani family financially supports both of these initiatives as part of their corporate social responsibility efforts. Is there a tax exemption from the sources invested in the Samdani Art foundation (SAF)? Due to local regulations, there is no tax benefit for any of the funds invested in the Samdani Art Foundation or any of its projects. Does the Samdani Art Foundation (SAF) plan to expand outside Dhaka? The Samdani Art Foundation has offices based in Dhaka and Mumbai, which facilitate its work across South Asia. SAF does not currently plan to open any international offices or exhibition spaces, but it is developing a permanent art centre in Sylhet, Bangladesh–a forty-minute flight from Dhaka. The majority of SAF’s funds are spent on activities in Bangladesh in order to support the local art scene. SAF engages with institutions outside the region by supporting curatorial research and exhibition-making in Bangladesh. Such an example is SAF’s Artistic Director Diana Campbell’s current work with the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago to lend many artworks from the SAF collection for the exhibition MANY TONGUES: Art, Language, and Revolution in the Middle East and South Asia, curated by Omar Kholeif, set to open in November 2018. This will be the largest showing of work by Bangladeshi and South Asian modern and contemporary artists in the United States. What is the arts centre in Sylhet? Srihatta – Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park is currently under development with plans to open in 2021. Srihatta is being designed by Aga Khan prize winning Bangladeshi architect Kashef Mahboob Chowhdury. It will be located in a 100+ acre outdoor site in Sylhet, Bangladesh with a 5,000 square foot indoor exhibition space to house works from the Samdani Collection. Srihatta will also include ten rooms to be used as residency spaces for local and international artists and curators to contemplate art and nature. SAF will also commission new works for Srihatta by South Asian and international artists. This space will aim to improve the existing public art infrastructure in the country, as well as increase accessibility to contemporary art, reaching a wider Bangladeshi audience. The first realised project on this site was Rokeya – an interactive sculpture created by leading Polish artist Paweł Althamer in collaboration with the local community, completed in early 2017. For further information about the development of Srihatta – Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park, please visit the dedicated section on our website here. Why Sylhet? Located in northeast Bangladesh, surrounded by rain forests, hills, rivers, and valleys, Sylhet is one of the leading tourist destinations in the country. As the Samdani Art Foundation seeks to promote international artistic exchange between Bangladesh and the rest of the world, Sylhet has proven to be an easily accessible international Bangladeshi city–an ideal location for Srihatta – Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park. Sylhet is also the hometown of the Samdani family. What initiatives will Srihatta – Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park promote? Once open, Srihatta – Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park will house part of the Samdani Art Foundation’s permanent collection and have exhibitions dedicated to contemporary art from Bangladesh and South Asia, as well as to international artists. It will also have a performance programme and a vast outdoor area for sculpture and architectural pavilions. As part of an international exchange initiative, Srihatta will host the Samdani Seminars, which currently take place in Dhaka. Srihatta will also have an international residency program. Visiting the space, as with all SAF’s programmes, will be free. What are the Samdani seminars? The Samdani Seminars are a free lecture and workshop programme, which facilitate engagement between international arts professionals and local communities across Bangladesh through participatory artworks, lectures, and workshops, to engage a broader audience with the arts. The Seminars complement the syllabi of Bangladesh’s leading educational institutions by covering the mediums and subjects not currently included, accessible to those of all ages, to encourage an inclusive dialogue around art. Curated by the Samdani Art Foundation’s Artistic Director Diana Campbell, the first annual Samdani Seminars began in 2015 and focused on exploring the possibilities of the body and the space it occupies. The premise was for artists to consider the body as the primary tool of expression, a tool that also allows the engagement with traditional arts such as painting, sculpture, and photography. The 2017 Samdani Seminars focused on sound and listening as tools for art-making. The Seminars also consider Arte Util, institution-building, and organisational strategies for local artist-led initiatives and collectives. For further information about the Samdani Seminars, please visit the dedicated section on our website here. Who takes part in the seminars? Twelve leading international artists and curators from eight countries participated as visiting faculty in the previous series of Seminars in 2015. They worked alongside individuals from theatre, music, dance, and architecture backgrounds which ensured the programme facilitated collaborations across creative disciplines. Half of the Seminars were open to the public and enjoyed by audiences of over 300 art enthusiasts and students. The other half of the 2015 Seminars were closed-door discussions, each with a group of around 16 participants, selected by the visiting faculty and artists from a strong applicant pool. The current 2017-18 Seminar programme,featured Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Haroon Mirza, Asim Waqif, Pawel Althamer, Susan Philipsz, Tarek Atoui, Sebastian Cichocki, Nick Aikens, Council, and Open School East. Many of the ideas and movements introduced in these sessions fed into the Dhaka Art Summit 2018’s Education Pavilion. Why Dhaka and Bangladesh? Besides being the current home of Nadia and Rajeeb Samdani, Bangladesh and Dhaka, in particular, have a vibrant art scene still in need of support to flourish on both a local and international stage. By producing the Dhaka Art Summit and funding international events to encourage cultural exchange, the Samdani Art Foundation provides an opportunity for leading figures of the international art world not only to engage with South Asian art, but also to become familiar with the Bangladeshi art scene. Furthermore, it is important for SAF to provide opportunities for the local community to engage with regional and international art. Bangladesh does not have a dedicated contemporary art museum, making SAF’s collection an important bridge for Bangladeshi art enthusiasts and students to experience first-hand examples of international modern and contemporary art. What is the Samdani Architecture Award? The inaugural Samdani Architecture Award was launched in 2017, and was open to all third and fourth year architecture students from Bangladesh to propose a design for DAS 2018’s Education Pavilion. Creating much needed opportunities for young architects, the first prize winning entry was realised and animated with the Education Pavilion programme, during the Dhaka Art Summit 2018. For further information about the Samdani Architecture Award, please visit the dedicated section on our website here. What is the Samdani Artist-led Initiatives Forum? The Samdani Artist-Led Initiatives Forum recognises the importance of Bangladesh’s independently established and self-funded art initiatives and collectives. Supporting these initiatives’ ongoing efforts, the Forum will help each to continue to work locally while building their profile internationally through SAF’s network. For further information about the Samdani Artist-Led Initiatives Forum, please visit the dedicated section on our website here. How does the Samdani Art Foundation sustain itself financially? The Samdani Art Foundation is privately funded by Nadia and Rajeeb Samdani.