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

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ALL PROJECTS AFIELD Study #3 Let's Share! Documenta Fifteen, Kassel AFIELD Study #3 Let's Share! at documenta fifteen by Elisa Cuccinelli https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8VgP1397j4 AFIELD Study is a series of co-learning programs led by members of the network on different topics. Based on closed sessions and public workshops, it seeks to nurture synergies between like-minded practitioners, allowing for mutual exchange of skills and knowledge. AFIELD Study #3 was structured around the meeting between two groups: grassroots initiatives that experiment with alternative support structures, and individuals who critically reflected on their role as collectors, patrons or philanthropists. It is often difficult to think about the big picture and the long term when struggling to ideate in “survival mode”. Our convening hopes to contribute to current debates on resource sharing from a wide array of experiences that allow us to think together about the use of networks such as AFIELD to elaborate sustainable sharing infrastructure. This reunion was the first one where a number of AFIELD members met “in real life” to celebrate and think together after 3 years of meeting online. Samdani Art Foundation supported the travel of Bangladeshi initiatives to participate in this edition of AFIELD Study.

ALL PROJECTS The Space Between - Rana Begum At The Parasol Unit Foundation For Contemporary Art 13th June - 18th September 2016| The Parasol Unit Foundation For Contemporary Art, London, UK Dhaka Art Summit 2014 Solo Project artist Rana Begum had her first solo show, supported by the Samdani Art Foundation at The Parasol Unit.

ALL PROJECTS Modern Art Histories in and across South Africa & South Asia Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong, 12 - 21 Aug 2019 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, launched a new research project entitled Modern Art Histories in and across Africa, South and Southeast Asia. The project began by convening 21 emerging scholars and 5 faculty members in Hong Kong in August 2019 to begin an ongoing research project connecting art histories outside of western frameworks. This group later reconvened at DAS 2020.

ALL PROJECTS Rasel Chowdhury At The Delfina Foundation During the Dhaka Art Summit 2016, an international jury, comprised of Cosmin Costinas, Catherine David, Beatrix Ruf, and Aaron Seeto, selected Rasel Chowdhury as the recipient of the 2016 award. Announced during the DAS 2016 Opening Dinner on the 5 February by Kiran Nadar , Chairperson of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and Trustee of the Shiv Nadar Foundation in New Delhi, Chowdhury received a six-week residency with the Delfina Foundation in London which he undertook in the Autumn of 2016. Rasel Chowdhury is a Dhaka-based artist whose passion lies in documenting environmental issues using camera. Born in Jamalpur, he started working in photography without a conscious plan, and eventually became addicted and decided to document spaces in and around Bangladesh. He obtained a degree from Pathshala, South Asian Media Institute in 2012. His body of work deals with unplanned desperate urbanization, the dying River Buriganga, the lost city of Sonargaon, the Mega City of Dhaka, and newly transformed spaces around Bangladesh railroads to explore the change of the environment, unplanned urban structures and new form of landscapes.

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.

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