Samdani Art Foundation (SAF) has been collaborating with artists, architects, curators, writers, and thinkers to shift how culture is experienced around the world by creating opportunities for profound encounters with Bangladesh Connect with Bangladesh's Cultural Narratives Go PRESS NEWSLETTER Samdani Art Foundation (SAF) has been collaborating with artists, architects, curators, writers, and thinkers to shift how culture is experienced around the world by creating opportunities for profound encounters with Bangladesh Founded in 2011 by collector couple Nadia and Rajeeb Samdani, Samdani Art Foundation (SAF) believes that the planet has much to learn from Bangladesh and South Asia and it supports research for curators to ground their thinking with experience thinking and working in the region. Its international collaborations (which know no geographic borders) seek to expand creative horizons and collapse outdated frameworks for considering art and culture within the limited frameworks of North American and Eurocentrism. All of SAF’s education and exhibition programs are free and ticketless, and the foundation supports the production of new thinking through residencies, exhibition opportunities, and other programs that it produces with its partners. The foundation has developed and continues to produce the Dhaka Art Summit, the world’s highest daily visited contemporary art event that is now entering its seventh edition. DAS is part of the foundation’s ongoing work of expanding The audience engaging with contemporary art across Bangladesh and increasing international exposure for artistic practices that do not lie within the "art capitals of the world” or which have not yet been written into the limited canon of art history. OUR STORY PARTNERS TEAM ALL PROJECTS SAF produces and participates in a variety of projects in Bangladesh and around the world as part of its ongoing commitment to increasing cultural engagement in Bangladesh and broadening the creative horizons of the country’s artists and architects. Initiatives SAF participates in a variety of projects, outside of the Foundation's regular programming, as part of a commitment to increasing world-wide engagement with the work of Bangladeshi and South Asian contemporary artists and architects. SAF assists and supports Bangladeshi artists in participating in art exhibitions and festivals around the world, and follows the international tours of projects it has produced as they grow and develop in the world. SAF AROUND THE WORLD VIEW The Samdani Artist-Led Initiatives Forum is an initiative committed to supporting the work of Bangladesh’s independently established and self-funded art collectives and initiatives. Launched in 2017, this program will be revitalized in 2025 in partnership with Srihatta. ARTIST-LED INITIATIVES VIEW SAF participates in a variety of projects, outside of the Foundation's regular programming, as part of a commitment to increasing world-wide engagement with the work of Bangladeshi and South Asian contemporary artists and architects. The Foundation assists in funding travel grants that enable artists to attend residencies or undertake research abroad and supports international institutions and festivals to include South Asian artists within their exhibitions and programmes. COLLABORATIONS VIEW The annual Samdani Seminars are a lecture and workshop programme that facilitates engagement between international arts professionals and local communities across Bangladesh through participatory artworks, lectures, and workshops. Open to all and free, the Seminar programme complements the existing syllabi of Bangladesh's leading educational institutions covering the mediums and subjects not currently included while expanding the audience engaging with art. SEMINARS VIEW Most SAF publications are available for free download on our website. SAF partners with institutions who publish books related to ongoing collaborations in Bangladesh, which can be ordered online. PUBLICATIONS VIEW The Art Mediation Program plays a pivotal role in bridging the gap between art and its audience, enriching the cultural experience for visitors through meaningful engagement and interpretation. Established in 2018, the program began with 25 Art Mediators at the Dhaka Art Summit, and as our February 2023 the program has grown in depth and scope with the collaboration of 123 mediators. These art mediators come from diverse backgrounds, ranging from fine art to political studies, mechanical engineering, journalism, etc, all sharing a common enthusiasm for art. ART MEDIATION PROGRAMME VIEW Recent Projects PREVIOUS ALL NEXT VIEW A project commissioned by the Samdani Art Foundation, uniting ten Bangladeshi artists with international curators and mentors to create score-based works that explore the space between dreams and reality, unfolding across global partner institutions in 2026. TONDRA: Phase One VIEW Crafting Togetherness is a collaborative programme initiated and led by Samdani Art Foundation, developed at Srihatta, Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park in Sylhet. The programme brings together local artisans and architecture students through workshops and knowledge exchanges focused on sustainable, vernacular building practices. Crafting Togetherness VIEW Submission closed তন্দ্রা /TONDRA OPEN CALL FOR LOGO DESIGN VIEW A collaborative film project developed at Srihatta, exploring Bangladesh’s six seasons through a poetic collaboration between Driant Zeneli and young Bangladeshi artists. When Winds in Monsoon Play, the White Peacock Will Sweep Away (2025) VIEW The Six Seasons of the White Peacock VIEW Srihatta Love- Power- Fall , Master Class Load More @samdaniartfoundation @dhakaartsummit Load More About Upcoming DAS 2023 2020 2018 2016 2014 2012 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. Dhaka Art Summit INITIATIVES EXPLORE DAS 2023 aimed to listen to the lands and waters of Bangladesh and its people to tell stories and imagine futures where people regard what the planet and non-human bits of intelligence have to say, as opposed to the clock or the calendar. DAS 2023 was about the power of water and the double paradox of how floods and their impact may be (mis)understood. Bonna was also concerned with the power of translation– how do Bangladeshi understandings of life challenge those who might have only understood the flood and its manifestations as a mistranslation and those now experiencing similar climatic challenges? Bonna DAS EXPLORE Inspired by the geological reading of the word ‘summit’ as the top of a mountain, Seismic Movements: Dhaka Art Summit 2020 (DAS 2020) considers the various ruptures that have realigned and continue to shift the face of our spinning planet. Seismic movements do not adhere to statist or nationalist frameworks. They join and split apart tectonics of multiple scales and layers; their epicentres don’t privilege historical imperial centres over the so-called peripheries; they can slowly accumulate or violently erupt in an instant. Seismic Movements DAS EXPLORE The fourth edition of the Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) took place from 2 to 10 February 2018, featuring both an Opening Celebration Weekend (February 2–4) and a closing Scholars’ Weekend (February 8–10), and several tiers of new programming. Produced and primarily funded by the Samdani Art Foundation, DAS 2018 was held in a public-private partnership with the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, the country’s National Academy of Fine and Performing Arts, with support from the Ministry of Cultural Affairs and Ministry of Information of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, the National Tourism Board, the Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA), and in association with the Bangladesh National Museum. 2018 DAS EXPLORE The third edition of Dhaka Art Summit welcomed 138,000 visitors in four days, of which 800 were international visitors, and 2,500 students from 30+ schools. Those participating included over 300 emerging and established artists, 100 speakers who attended as part of the Talks Programme, as well as internationally renowned curators and writers. The Summit attracted visitors from over 70 international institutions, who attended to extend and further their research into the region. 2016 DAS EXPLORE The 2nd edition of the Dhaka Art Summit unfolded from February 7 to 9, 2014 at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy. Marking a strategic shift, the Summit decided to concentrate its focus on South Asia starting from this edition. DAS 2014 showcased a diverse array of programs, including five curatorial exhibitions by both international and Bangladeshi curators, along with 14 solo art projects curated by Diana Campbell Betancourt, the Artistic Director of the Samdani Foundation. These projects celebrated artists from across South Asia. The summit encompassed a citywide public art initiative, performances, the screening of experimental films, speaker panels, and the active participation of 15 Bangladeshi and 17 South Asia-focused galleries. 2014 DAS EXPLORE The 1st edition of the Summit was held in collaboration with Shilpakala Academy and Bangladesh National Museum and showcased the works of 249 artists and 19 galleries. The 1st edition of the Summit focused only on the local artists and galleries. The Summit was visited by over 40,000 visitors The Summit also organised talks. 2012 DAS EXPLORE Our curators and art mediators have been dreaming up the 7th edition of DAS - TONDRA. In TONDRA we will float between dreams and reality. The meaning of the word TONDRA in Bangla can be described as a state of existence where reality and dreams collide; a lucid dream that captivates the soul. Upcoming DAS DAS EXPLORE No events at the moment Notices 74 The Samdani Art Foundation collaborates with artists and creatives globally, fostering a diverse and inclusive artistic community. Countries 6 The 6th edition of the Dhaka Art Summit was held in February 2023 Dhaka Art Summits 248 Projects 1919 Participants Rising from the red tinted alluvial soil of Sylhet , Northeast Bangladesh, Srihatta is the future home of the Samdani Art Foundation, rooted in the plurality found in Bangladesh’s history to conjure a more inclusive future through art, architecture , and culture. A unique combination of sculpture park, exhibition, residency, and education programme , Srihatta imagines what an experimental artist-centric institution can be in the 21st Century, beyond of western-centric paradigms. Founded by Nadia and Rajeeb Samdani and led by Artistic Director Diana Campbell, this art centre and sculpture park will also feature works from their collection and will be free and open to the public in 2025. INITIATIVES EXPLORE

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. PARTNERS TEAM Held at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, 5th – 8th February 2016 Curated by Samdani Art Foundation Artistic Director and DAS Chief Curator Diana Campbell, Katya García Antón (Director of the Office for Contemporary Art Norway), Daniel Baumann (Director of the Kunsthalle in Zurich), artist Nikhil Chopra, Beth Citron (Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Rubin Museum of Art), artist Madhavi Gore, curator Shanay Jhaveri (Assistant Curator-Modern and Contem-porary Art, South Asia, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), Aurelien Lemonier (Architecture Curator at the Centre Pompidou), Nada Raza (assistant curator at Tate Modern), Md. Muniruzzaman and artist Jana Prepeluh with Asia Art Archive Senior Researcher Sabih Ahmed and Amara Antilla (assistant curator at the Guggenheim Museum, New York). 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. DAS provokes reflections on transnationalism, selfhood and time with invited artists, curators and thinkers who build exhibitions through commissioned research and experience within the region—without being prescrip-tive. Neither a biennial, symposium nor festival but somewhere in between, the unique format of the Summit transforms the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy into a generative space to reconsider the past and future of art and exchange within South Asia and beyond. DAS 2016 included loans from the Bangladesh National Col-lection; the Museum Folkwang in Essen; the Pinault Collection and many public and private South Asian col-lections as well as partnerships with institutions such as the Centre Pompidou; Asia Art Archive and Harvard South Asia Institute, DAS considers South Asia from the view of doing and becoming rather than cartography, occupying the triplet planes of imagination, will and circumstance. In addition to new commissions and curated group exhibitions, DAS events included talks, critical writing, performances, films, book launches and the Summit’s first historical exhibition, Rewind. The Samdani Art Award finalists exhibition curated by Daniel Baumann; The Missing One curated by Nada Raza; Architecture in Bangladesh curated by Aurelién Lemonier; The Performance Pavilion, curated by Nikhil Chopra, Madhavi Gore and Jana Prepeluh; Not as far as it seems, a series of conversations and sound pieces curated by Safina Radio Project; a Film Programme curated by Shanay Jhaveri; as well as Critical Writing Ensemble, panel dis-cussions, workshops, and more. Exhibitions & Programmes The Summit is a free and ticketless event and this year welcomed 138,000 visitors in 4 days, of which 800 were international visitors and operated tours for 2,500 students from 30+ schools. Those participating included over 300 emerging and established artists, 100 speakers who attended as part of the Talks Programme, as well as internationally renowned curators and writers, and attracted visitors from over 70 international institutions, who attended the Summit to extend and further their research into the region. Talks Programme DAS 2016 Soul Searching DAS 2016 Curated by Md. Muniruzzaman Safina Radio project DAS 2016 Architecture In Bangladesh DAS 2016 Curated by Aurélien Lemonier Film Programme DAS 2016 Curated by Shanay Jhaveri Shifting Sands, Shifting Hands DAS 2016 Curated by Nikhil Chopra, Madhavi Gore And Jana Prepeluh Live Feed Station - Asia Art Archive DAS 2016 Critical Writing Ensemble DAS 2016 Curated By Katya García-Antón, Antonio Cataldo, Diana Campbell, Chandrika Grover And Bhavna Kakar Solo Art Projects DAS 2016 Curated by Diana Campbell Rewind DAS 2016 Curated by Amara Antilla, Beth Citron, Diana Campbell and Sabih Ahmed Mining Warm Data DAS 2016 Curated by Diana Campbell The Missing One DAS 2016 Curated by Nada Raza LOAD MORE

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. PARTNERS TEAM DAS 2023 considers the ways in which we inherit and form vocabularies to understand the world around us, and the mistranslation that can ensue when we try to apply these vocabularies to unfamiliar contexts; the same word can migrate from positive to negative connotations and back depending on how and where it travels. Weather and water as shapers of history and culture as well as being metaphors for life in general are viewed in an embodied way through the lens of those who live in Bangladesh, next to the sea and rivers, underneath the storm systems, feeling the wind and rain. This is further explored through a consideration of how Bengali children encounter these phenomena, palpably but also via the stories passed down through generations. The aim is to see past the limits of translation which can be incapable of conveying the different ways we negotiate the world, and open up new channels for transcultural empathy. How do you tell the story of a crisis, while facilitating hope? 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. Exhibitions & Programmes বন্যা (Bonna) DAS 2023 Samdani Art Award Exhibition DAS 2023 Curated by Anne Barlow Very Small Feelings DAS 2023 Co-curated by Diana Campbell and Akansha Rastogi with Ruxmini Choudhury To Enter The Sky DAS 2023 Curated by Sean Anderson দ্বৈধ (A Duality) DAS 2023 Curated by Bishwajit Goswami with research support from Muhammad Nafisur Rahman, in collaboration with Brihatta Art Foundation Art Mediation Programme 2023 DAS 2023 Dhaka Art Summit Purposeful Goods DAS 2023 Curated by Teresa Albor Talks Programme DAS 2023 Dhaka Art Summit 2023 LOAD MORE Bonna is the fifth chapter under the Artistic Direction of Chief Curator Diana Campbell and is complemented by a series of intersecting exhibitions including the Samdani Art Award curated by Anne Barlow (Director, Tate St. Ives), To Enter the Sky curated by Sean Anderson (Associate Professor and Undergraduate Program Director at Cornell University’s Department of Architecture), দ্বৈধ(a duality) curated by Bishwajit Goswami (Assistant Professor, Department of Drawing and Painting, University of Dhaka) with research support from Muhammad Nafisur Rahman (Assistant Professor of Communication Design at the School of Design, College of DAAP, University of Cincinnati) in collaboration with Brihatta Art Foundation, and Very Small Feelings, co-curated by Campbell and Akansha Rastogi (Senior Curator, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art) with Ruxmini Choudhury (Curator, Samdani Art Foundation), and a transnational folklore research team with contributions from Kanak Chanpa Chakma and other indigenous thought leaders connecting traditions across Bangladesh and Northeast India. DAS is a continually unfolding story imagined by hundreds of contributors, and this edition will include over 120 artists, architects, and writers, over 60% Bangladeshi, and over 50% producing new work for the show. Rather, the DAS concept of Bonna challenges binaries - between necessity and excess, between regeneration and disaster, between adult and child, between male and female. DAS 2023 invokes and interprets Bonna as a complex symbol system, which is Indigenous, personal, and at once universal, an embodied non-human reversal of how storms, cyclones, tsunamis, stars, and all environment crises, and discoveries are named, allowing Bonna, the young girl, to speak from Bangladesh to the world; she asks why the words for weather are gendered, what the relationship between gender, the built environment, and climate change might be. During Bengali New Year, Bangladeshi people sing a song written by Rabindranath Tagore, Esho he Boishakh , which calls upon the first month of summer to bring storms to wash away any residue of ugliness from the previous year: “'Bring forth and sound your conch of storm, Let the foggy mesh of ugly illusion be gone.” Ebb and flow, drought and abundance are phenomena that have shaped the culture and history of Bangladesh (and South Asia) just as a river cuts an ever-changing path as it seeks lower ground. When considering this, and the traditional ways of coping and celebrating polar forces, we must acknowledge that climate change is accelerating and causing even more dramatic events, often beyond the capacity of even the most resilient people’s ability to survive. During the planning stages of DAS 2023, the north-western part of the country was overwhelmed with severe flooding and we are releasing the thematics of Dhaka Art Summit at a time when devastating floods and the many lives lost and made precarious in South Asia demand our urgent attention. This is a sobering instruction to consider the implications during DAS 2023 for a country that has always managed to co-exist with extremes. The word for flood, ‘Bonna,’ is also given as a common name for girls in Bangladesh. A flood in Bangladesh does not simply translate into the dominant idea of the word flood carrying a singular connotation of “disaster.” Storms have eyes and eyes have storms. We can be flooded with emotions, yet reduced to singular drops of tears. We give storms human names; we describe human emotions using terms that are also applied to weather. A tropical cyclone in the Bay of Bengal was captured in the iconic “Blue Marble'' image of the Earth in 1972, the first full image of the Earth taken from space and one of the most circulated images of all time. The Bangladeshi artist and climate justice activist Nabil Ahmed points out that the cyclone in this image derives “from the same tropical storm system that produced Bhola, which devastated the coast of East Pakistan in November 1970. In its aftermath followed a genocide and war of national liberation for present-day Bangladesh. After Bhola, looking at a cyclone will never be the same; the potential for political violence and an ever-circling wind are united as one.” Extreme weather and the absence of state management was the tipping point for Bangladeshis to declare independence in 1971 and fight for the right to express themselves in their own language. As the Ghanaian-Scottish designer, thinker, and educator Lesley Lokko insightfully points out, “When you are in the eye of the storm, this is often the right point to push for maximum change.” DAS 2023 aimed to listen to the lands and waters of Bangladesh and its people to tell stories and imagine futures where people regard what the planet and non-human bits of intelligence have to say, as opposed to the clock or the calendar. DAS 2023 was about the power of water and the double paradox of how floods and their impact may be (mis)understood. Bonna is also concerned with the power of translation– how do Bangladeshi understandings of life challenge those who might have only understood the flood and its manifestations as a mistranslation and those now experiencing similar climatic challenges? By extension, the Bangladeshi artist and researcher Shawon Akand expands upon mud as a metaphor for the adaptive power of Bengalis; mud can be hard as stone when baked under the summer sun, a fertile bed for crops during the harvest season, and liquid during the monsoon, all without losing its essence.

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. PARTNERS TEAM The 2nd edition of the Dhaka Art Summit unfolded from February 7 to 9, 2014 at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy. Marking a strategic shift, the Summit decided to concentrate its focus on South Asia starting from this edition. DAS 2014 showcased a diverse array of programs, including five curatorial exhibitions by both international and Bangladeshi curators, along with 14 solo art projects curated by Diana Campbell Betancourt, the Artistic Director of the Samdani Foundation. These projects celebrated artists from across South Asia. The summit encompassed a citywide public art initiative, performances, the screening of experimental films, speaker panels, and the active participation of 15 Bangladeshi and 17 South Asia-focused galleries. 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. During the Dhaka Art Summit, the Samdani Art Award was presented to the talented Bangladeshi artist Ayesha Sultana. The winner was chosen by an international jury panel chaired by Aaron Cezar, the Director of Delfina Foundation, and included Adriano Pedrosa (Independent Curator), Jessica Morgan (Daskalopoulos Curator, International Art, Tate Modern), Sandhini Poddar (Associate Curator, Guggenheim Museum), and Pooja Sood (Director, KHOJ India). The awarded artist received a three-month residency at the Delfina Foundation in the United Kingdom. Exhibitions & Programmes The Summit is a free and ticketless event and this year welcomed 138,000 visitors in 4 days, of which 800 were international visitors and operated tours for 2,500 students from 30+ schools. Those participating included over 300 emerging and established artists, 100 speakers who attended as part of the Talks Programme, as well as internationally renowned curators and writers, and attracted visitors from over 70 international institutions, who attended the Summit to extend and further their research into the region. Visas to Happiness- Children's Workshop DAS 2014 Lifeblood DAS 2014 Curated by Rosa Maria Falvo Citizens of Time DAS 2014 Curated by Veeranganakumari Solanki Then | Why Not? -Solo Art Projects DAS 2014 Curated by Diana Campbell Ex-Ist DAS 2014 Curated by Ambereen Karamant B/DESH DAS 2014 Curated by Deepak Ananth Liberty DAS 2014 Curated by Md. Muniruzzaman assisted by Takir Hossain LOAD MORE

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

ALL PROJECTS DOCUWALK KASSEL, GERMANY | JUNE - SEPTEMBER 2012 Mahbubur Rahman and Tayeba Begum Lipi visited Documenta 13 which was supported by Samdani Art Foundation.

The Samdani Art Award, Bangladesh's premier art award, has created an internationally recognised platform to showcase the work of young Bangladeshi Artists to an audience of international arts professionals. 2023 2020 2018 2016 2016 Samdani Art Award The Award aims to support, promote, and highlight Bangladeshi contemporary art, and was created to honour talented emerging Bangladeshi artists between the ages of 22 and 40. In the year between each Dhaka Art Summit, the Samdani Art Foundation, in partnership with the Delfina Foundation —with whom the Samdani Art Award has partnered since 2013—sends an open call for applications. The Delfina Foundation then identifies twenty semi-finalists, and the guest curator selects the shortlist of ten finalists following one-to-one sessions with each of the artists. The winner is selected by an international jury board. The winner of the Samdani Art Award receives an all-expenses-paid, six-week residency at the Delfina Foundation in London. A residency at the Delfina Foundation can be a career-defining moment for an artist to develop their ideas, sharpen their practice, and widen their networks. The Samdani Art Award, Bangladesh's premier art award, has created an internationally recognised platform to showcase the work of young Bangladeshi Artists to an audience of international arts professionals. Samdani Art Award 2023 The Samdani Art Foundation has announced Bangladeshi artists Purnima Aktar and Md Fazla Rabbi Fatiq as joint winners of the biannual Samdani Art Award. It is the first time two finalists have been awarded the prize which aims to support, promote and highlight the country’s emerging contemporary artists. Purnima Aktar and Md Fazla Rabbi Fatiq were selected from a shortlist of 12 artists whose work was part of an exhibition curated by Anne Barlow (Director at Tate St Ives) at the DAS 2023. The members of the international jury included Ibrahim Mahama, artist; Tarun Nagesh, Curator of Asian Art at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) in Brisbane, Australia; Roobina Karode, Chief Curator, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art; and Simon Castets, Former Samdani Art Award Curator and Director of Strategic Initiatives, LUMA Arles. Md Fazla Rabbi Fatiq is the recipient of the residency at the Delfina Foundation and Purnima Aktar is the recipient of the residency in Ghana, hosted by Ibrahim Mahama’s Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art and Red Clay. EXPLORE The 2020 Samdani Art Award was curated by Philippe Pirotte, supported by Goethe Institut. The winner was selected by a jury chaired by Aaron Cezar of Delfina Foundation with Adrián Villar Rojas, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Julie Mehretu, and Sunjung Kim. The 2020 Samdani Art Award was curated by Philippe Pirrote and the winner was Soma Surovi Jannat. This was also the first time a Jury Award was provided to Promiti Hossain. Samdani Art Award 2020 EXPLORE EXPLORE EXPLORE For the 2018 edition of the Samdani Art Award, each of the eleven shortlisted artists exhibited newly commissioned work in an exhibition at the Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) from February 2-10, 2018, guest curated by Simon Castets, Director of the Swiss Institute, New York. During the summit, the jury selected Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury as the recipient of the 2018 award. Announced during the DAS 2018 Opening Celebratory Dinner on the 2 February by Tate Director, Dr. Maria Balshaw, Rahman Chowdhury will receive a six-week residency with the Delfina Foundation in London. In association with the Liverpool Biennial, each of the shortlist artists have also received curatorial mentoring support from the New North and South network. Samdani Art Award 2018 EXPLORE The 2016 edition of the Samdani Art Award exhibition was guest curated by Daniel Baumann, Director of the Kunsthalle Zurich, assisted by Ruxmini Choudhury, Assistant Curator Samdani Art Foundation, and artist Ayesha Sultana. During the Summit, the jury 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. Samdani Art Award 2016 EXPLORE The ten shortlisted artists for the 2014 edition of the Samdani Art Award exhibition were selected by the Delfina Foundation's Director, Aaron Cezar. During the Summit, the jury selected Ayesha Sultana as the recipient of the 2014 award. Announced during the DAS 2014 Opening Dinner on the 5 February, Sultana received a three-month residency with the Delfina Foundation in London which she undertook in the Autumn of 2014. Samdani Art Award 2014 EXPLORE The first edition of the Samdani Art Award had two prize categories: the Samdani Artist Development Award and the Samdani Young Talent Award. From 29 shortlisted artists, the jury selected artists Khaled Hasan and Musrat Reazi as the recipients of the 2012 awards. Samdani Art Award 2012 EXPLORE

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. 2023 2020 2018 2016 2016 Dhaka Art Summit Founded in 2012 by the Samdani Art Foundation—which continues to produce the festival—in collaboration with the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, People’s Republic of Bangladesh, DAS is hosted every two years at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy. DAS is a platform to catalyse a rich context for research and artistic production in the future through empowering artists and the public through the interaction between its exhibition, education and public programmes. Rejecting the traditional biennale format to create a more generative space for art and exchange, DAS’s interdisciplinary programme concentrates its endeavours towards the advancement and promotion of South Asia’s contemporary and historic creative communities, building alliances through shared values with international practices and initiatives. Chief Curator Diana Campbell leads the Summit with international key curators, artists, and thinkers. 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. For each edition of DAS, Bangladeshi artists shortlisted for the Samdani Art Award exhibit their work under the guidance of an international guest curator. Organised in partnership with the Delfina Foundation, the Award has created an internationally recognised platform for the work of young Bangladeshi artists. Many shortlisted artists have later exhibited or acquired by international exhibitions and institutions, such as Tate, SF MoMA, the Kunsthalle Zurich, Gwangju Biennale, Singapore Biennale, Lyon Biennale, Asia Pacific Triennial, Sharjah Biennial, Para Site, and many others. All of DAS’s exhibitions are supported by an ambitious commissions programme, which invites internationally acclaimed contemporary artists related to South Asia to create new work. Past commissions include Lynda Benglis, Simryn Gill, Po Po, Rasheed Araeen, Damian Ortega, Nilima Sheikh, Monika Sosnowska, Daniel Steegmann Mangrane, along with and some of the most exciting names from the region: Sheela Gowda, Ayesha Sultana, Waqas Khan, Munem Wasif, Zihan Karim, Randhir Singh, Seher Shah, Reetu Sattar, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Kamruzzaman Shahdin, Yasmin Jahan Nupur, Tanya Goel, and many more. Celebrated for its critically acclaimed exhibitions by local and international arts professionals, many of DAS’s past projects have toured internationally to venues and festivals, including Para Site in Hong Kong; TS1 in Yangon; the Modern Art Museum in Warsaw; the Berlin Biennale; the Gwangju Biennale; the Singapore Biennale; the Queens Museum, New York; Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; Artspace in Sydney; the Office for Contemporary Art Norway; the San Jose Museum of Art, USA; the Liverpool Biennial; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Sri Lanka; Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway; and MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Thailand. Free to the public and ticketless, DAS 2023 drew over half a million visitors across its nine-day duration. Expanding from its initial South Asia mandate, DAS 2018 created new connections between South, South East Asia, and the Indian Ocean belt, exhibiting artists from Thailand, Malaysia, Madagascar, the Philippines, and several other countries. DAS 2020 expanded further to connect widely across the Global South based on shared struggles rather than current geopolitical definitions. DAS 2023 took a planetary approach through the lens of climate change. SEVENTH EDITION TONDRA We are pleased to introduce you to the theme we have been dreaming up with our curators and art mediators for the 7th edition of DAS - TONDRA. The meaning of the word TONDRA in Bangla can be described as a state of existence where reality and dreams collide; a lucid dream that captivates the soul. TONDRA is also a common female name in Bangladesh, which became popular during the mid 1990s-2000s for a character named Tondra in a novel by the Bangladeshi author Humayun Ahmed. Our story of TONDRA emerged from heartbreak expressed by a young visitor at DAS 2023, who wrote messages for a woman named TONDRA on the walls of our exhibition such as “Everyone is here, but you are missing from my life”. His writing style ranged from graffiti to poetry, referring to his Tondra as ‘a cloudy day’ and other beautiful metaphors that connected his deepest personal feelings for his beloved to the stories and films of Humayun Ahmed. EXPLORE FIFTH EDITION DAS 2020 সঞ্চারণ / Seismic Movements Inspired by the geological reading of the word ‘summit’ as the top of a mountain, Seismic Movements: Dhaka Art Summit 2020 (DAS 2020) considers the various ruptures that have realigned and continue to shift the face of our spinning planet. Seismic movements do not adhere to statist or nationalist frameworks. They join and split apart tectonics of multiple scales and layers; their epicentres don’t privilege historical imperial centres over the so-called peripheries; they can slowly accumulate or violently erupt in an instant. EXPLORE FOURTH EDITION DAS 2018 The fourth edition of the Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) took place from 2 to 10 February 2018, featuring both an Opening Celebration Weekend (February 2–4) and a closing Scholars’ Weekend (February 8–10), and several tiers of new programming. Produced and primarily funded by the Samdani Art Foundation, DAS 2018 was held in a public-private partnership with the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, the country’s National Academy of Fine and Performing Arts, with support from the Ministry of Cultural Affairs and Ministry of Information of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, the National Tourism Board, the Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA), and in association with the Bangladesh National Museum. EXPLORE - Jonathan Shaughnessy, Associate Curator, Contemporary Art | Conservateur associé, art contemporainNational Gallery of Canada | Musée des beaux-arts du Canada (DAS 2020) "I feel most fortunate to have had the chance to return to the 2020 Dhaka Art Summit after my initial visit in 2016. The focus on collective practices, “South to South” and indigenous networks that guided the programming within the context of Seismic Movements was grounded, insightful, and provided many crucial perspectives on the otherwise often untethered expanses of today’s “global” art world. A dynamic gathering of artists, minds, and both general and specialized audiences, the strength of DAS (notwithstanding the clear breadth of research, organization and planning that goes into it) is that it is a platform that knows concertedly from where it speaks, and to what ends it serves, while fostering timely and urgent conversations across local, national, and international lines." - Alain Berset, President of Switzerland (DAS 2018) “It’s intense and you can feel lot of energy - this is somehow logical when you think of Bangladesh as a country with 160 million inhabitants and a very young population - you can actually feel the energy in the exhibition.” - Elisabeth van Odijk, Director, Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam (the Netherlands) (DAS 2018) “Visiting Dhaka Art Summit 2018 was an interesting and challenging experience. A great opportunity to get more insight in contemporary art from e.g. Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, in the recent ‘art history’ of South Asia and in the ‘cultural’ discourse going on. I am more than impressed by the level and richness delivered by the Art Summit as well as by the open and transparent atmosphere. I learned a lot. The visit broadened my insight into cultural developments in South Asia, and enriched my professional network at different levels. I am looking forward to the next edition!” - Gregor Muir, Director of Collection, International Art, Tate (DAS 2020) "Dhaka Art Summit reveals itself in wonderful myriad ways. That the summit centres on the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy makes perfect sense, allowing for easy manoeuvring between exhibitions, talks, performances and outdoor sculpture. There was much to discover, and a sense of liveliness throughout. Above all, I shall never forget the engagement of the local people whose enthusiasm added to an air of excitement." - Sophie Goltz, Assistant Professor, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore (DAS 2018) “DAS 2018 gave us a great opportunity not only to learn about South / South East Asian Art but much more to learn how we can engage in our time through art. The manifold conversations, guided tours and lectures challenged and expanded not only the knowledge about art from Asia but also about the Bengal region and its historical and contemporary cultural richness. The educational complexity of DAS gives young people such an important opportunity to learn thinking out of the (academic) box.” - Glenn Lowry, Director, Museum of Modern Art New York (DAS 2018) “The Dhaka Art Summit was a revelation. Sharply insightful exhibitions, expansive and generous conversations and panel discussions, and a deeply satisfying experience. I learned a great deal, made unexpected connections, and enjoyed being with so many artists, curators, and scholars whose collective energy animated the Summit.” - Koyo Kouoh, Founding Artistic Director, RAW Material Company (DAS 2018) “There is so much to share from this stimulating, inspiring, politically engzged, art historically facinating, sensual, joyful and last but not least simply beautiful show that is the Dhaka Art Summit. Bringing together nine tightly curated exhibitions by a group of the most talented curators practicing today, as well as a though provoking series of screenings, conversations, presentations, performances and symposia; not to mention the incredible education programme with some of the most critically practicing artists, artist’s collectives and thinkers, amazing Diana has completed yet another tour de force for which she can only be highly commended for its curatorial, intellectual, historical and contemporary scop, depth of research and unlimited sense of hospitality.” - Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Artist, Raqs Media Collective (DAS 2018) "The Dhaka Art Summit 2018 has been an intense, exhilarating and thought provoking experience. The curated exhibitions at DAS 2018 offer opportunities to rethink global histories of contemporary art while remaining anchored in a cogently and sharply expressed South Asian context. I had many wonderful experiences and exchanges and was able to get a clear sense of the energy and enthusiasm of the Bangladeshi Contemporary Art scene. The production values of the entire show set a very high standard. DAS is emerging as probably the most significant intersection of creative and discursive energies in the region. With DAS, the artistic and creative communities of Bangladesh stake their claim to being the incubators and custodians of a contemporary cultural sensibility that is truly planetary. This initiative’s continued success is crucial for the health of culture in the entire South Asian region." - Beatrix Ruf, Director, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (DAS 2014) "What a memorable experience the Dhaka Art Summit and Samdani Art Foundation organised. An amazing attendance of artists, curators, art professionals and collectors and the challenging and thought provoking panel discussions enabled meetings of people, intensive exchange and an insight not only into how art is integrating in Dhaka and Bangladesh but all of South Asia." - Sebastian Cichocki, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (DAS 2018) “DAS is not only a show, it is a self-learning apparatus, which changes the patterns of understanding, recognition and global dissemination from the South Asia region. DAS is a polyphony of voices, resonating deep in the contemporary art world but also locally, triggering the imagination of diverse audiences and touching upon the most urgent social, political and economic issues of our times. DAS might be defined also as a free academy, conceptual playground and a carnival. DAS is also a story-teller. One can learn a lot just from listening carefully.” - Jitish Kallat, artist and curator of Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2014 (DAS 2014) "I leave Dhaka, carrying with me a whole lot of generative ideas, great thoughts and memories.I feel what I witnessed is truly historic and will be discussed as a key transformative catalyst for the entire region in the many years to come. Congratulations to Rajeeb and Nadia Samdani and Diana Campbell Betancourt on this whole-hearted visionary effort." - Philippe Pirotte, Dean of the Staedelschule, Frankfurt (DAS 2018) “For me the Dhaka Art is a welcome alternative to the biennale circuit. Assuming in a discursively responsible way that such initiatives become more and more condensed events, in a global competition for attention, the Dhaka Art Summit, advances the notion of the “summit” which allows for very different, yet all interesting projects and initiatives, to share a venue, in which conceptual diversity is preferred over the constraints of one curatorial premise. Talks, exhibitions, prizes, documentaries, and even a fair of artist initiatives enrich each other in new surprising ways. Maybe the Dhaka Art Summit is not only an interesting answer to the often fatigue perceived in the biennale circuit but also to the global inflation of art fairs.” - Jessica Morgan, The Daskalopoulos Curator, International Art, Tate Modern (DAS 2014) "I heard over and over that Dhaka Art Summit had managed the complicated and sometimes impossible by bringing together artists, thinkers and curators from South Asia, providing a meeting place and a discursive space which is really to be applauded. The entire event was outstandingly well organised and installed. It was really exceptional to have the live encounter with Nikhil Chopra's performance and without doubt it was the presence of works like his, Shilpa Gupta, Naeem Mohaiemen, Rashid Rana and Mithu Sen, among others, who made work specially for the event, that brought a unique aspect to Dhaka Art Summit." - Maria Lind, Critic and Artistic Director, Gwangju Biennale 2016 (DAS 2016) “I almost gave up reading art writing. I have come to reconsider this through the Summit...” - Adam Szymczyk, Artistic Director, Documenta 14 (DAS 2014) "The Summit was a surprisingly personal, low key and highly focused gathering of many amazing individuals from several countries in South Asia. A variety of experiences brought under one roof was what I really appreciated as it exceeded the usual monoforms of a "biennial", "art fair", "conference" etc., offering instead a holistic experience of being with the artists, seeing their work and discussing it on the spot. Unpretentious and intelligently designed in skillful hands of Chief Curator, Diana Campbell, the Summit felt like it was a labour of love and not a dull cultural marketing exercise." - Lucas Huang, The National Gallery of Singapore (DAS 2016) “I thought the Dhaka Art Summit 2016 was a splendid affair of critical clout and great programming. There is literally nothing like it in Asia and I am certain the next one will be an even bigger success.” - Dayanita Singh, Artist, India (DAS 2016) “I have never experienced something as art focused, open and inclusive as I just did at Dhaka Art Summit. The calibre of the conversations was a rare happening in our region.” - Stuart Comer, Chief Curator of Media and Performance, Museum of Modern Art, New York (DAS 2016) “The Dhaka Summit proved to be an invaluable interface with a number of key artists, discourses, and histories that suggest the increasingly urgent voice South Asia has in the current global cultural discourse....We look forward to developing many of these conversations as we deepen our engagement in the region.” - Bunty Chand, Director of Asia Society, India (DAS 2016) “Dhaka Art Summit has set the gold standard for the visual arts in South Asia” - Frances Morris, Director of Tate Modern, London, UK, On her second trip to Dhaka, Bangladesh (DAS 2016) “The Dhaka Summit has rapidly become an important focus for artists from South Asia and beyond and this year is attracting widespread international attention.” THIRD EDITION DAS 2016 DAS provokes reflections on transnationalism, selfhood and time with invited artists, curators and thinkers who build exhibitions through commissioned research and experience within the region—without being prescriptive. Neither a biennial, symposium nor festival but somewhere in between, the unique format of the Summit transforms the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy into a generative space to reconsider the past and future of art and exchange within South Asia and beyond. DAS 2016 included loans from the Bangladesh National Collection; the Museum Folkwang in Essen; the Pinault Collection and many public and private South Asian collections as well as partnerships with institutions such as the Centre Pompidou; Asia Art Archive and Harvard South Asia Institute, DAS considers South Asia from the view of doing and becoming rather than cartography, occupying the triplet planes of imagination, will and circumstance. EXPLORE SECOND EDITION DAS 2014 The 2nd edition of the Dhaka Art Summit unfolded from February 7 to 9, 2014 at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy. Marking a strategic shift, the Summit decided to concentrate its focus on South Asia starting from this edition. DAS 2014 showcased a diverse array of programs, including five curatorial exhibitions by both international and Bangladeshi curators, along with 14 solo art projects curated by Diana Campbell Betancourt, the Artistic Director of the Samdani Foundation. These projects celebrated artists from across South Asia. The summit encompassed a citywide public art initiative, performances, the screening of experimental films, speaker panels, and the active participation of 15 Bangladeshi and 17 South Asia-focused galleries. EXPLORE FIRST EDITION DAS 2012 The 1st edition of the Summit was held in collaboration with Shilpakala Academy and Bangladesh National Museum and showcased the works of 249 artists and 19 galleries . The 1st edition of the Summit focused only on the local artists and galleries. The Summit was visited by over 40,000 visitors The Summit also organised talks. EXPLORE Following the fifth edition subtitled Seismic Movements which welcomed nearly 500,000 visitors in nine days in February 2020, its sixth edition is the first edition with a Bangla subtitle; বন্যা/Bonna. DAS 2023 considers the ways in which we inherit and form vocabularies to understand the world around us, and the mistranslation that can ensue when we try to apply these vocabularies to unfamiliar contexts; the same word can migrate from positive to negative connotations and back depending on how and where it travels. Weather and water as shapers of history and culture as well as being metaphors for life in general are viewed in an embodied way through the lens of those who live in Bangladesh, next to the sea and rivers, underneath the storm systems, feeling the wind and rain. DAS 2023 বন্যা / Bonna SIXTH EDITION EXPLORE TEAM

ALL PROJECTS ART BASEL HONG KONG 2018 RAMESH MARIO NITHIYENDRAN 27-31 MARCH 2018 | ART BASEL HONG KONG HAVING NOTICED THAT THERE ARE NOT VERY MANY PUBLIC MONUMENTS THAT CELEBRATE NON-WHITE OR NON-COLONIAL FIGURES, RAMESH MARIO NITHIYENDRAN TRIED TO ENVISION A DIFFERENT KIND OF WAY OF MEMORIALISING PEOPLE WHO SLIP THROUGH THE CRACKS OF WHAT IS CONSIDERED ACCEPTABLE. Following their debut at the Dhaka Art Summit 2018, Ramesh Mario's, Idols (2016-2018) travelled to Art Basel Hong Kong where they formed part of the Art Fair's Encounters , curated by Alexie Glass-Kantor. Commissioned and Produced by Samdani Art Foundation and Artspace, Sydney for DAS 2018 with support from the Australia Council for the Arts. Courtesy of the artist, Samdani Art Foundation, Artspace Sydney, and Sullivan + Strumpf.

Statement from the Artistic Director Diana Campbell ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Welcome to the new web portal of the Samdani Art Foundation! We thank you for being here, as your visit speaks to a desire to connect with our work in Bangladesh, and a commitment to widen your worldview by including points of view that institutionalized knowledge historically belittled or omitted entirely. We see our role as being interlocutors in this ongoing process of learning unlearning and relearning; where we elevate histories of Bangladesh and other contexts from the global majority world (i.e. the world outside of Europe and North America) above the space relegated for footnotes (a nod to DAS 2018 participant Nancy Adajania). We call ourselves a research platform – which we build through the careful acts of collecting, producing, convening, mentoring, and sharing. We created this platform through a unique collaborative process linking the passion and dedication of collectors with the creativity of artists, architects, designers, curators, writers, historians and educators executed through the hard work of our team, our partners, and our volunteers, encouraged by the enthusiasm of our growing number of participants and visitors. We recognize that what is happening outside of the room is often the site of the most radical reimagining, where artists come together to create the conditions for great art to be made, and also activate tremendous social change in the world. At Samdani Art Foundation we are interested in art on the scale of life , far bigger than any exhibition in a gallery space can contain. Life in Dhaka pulses with a collaborative, hopeful, and can-do energy unlike anywhere else in the world; it is one of the most densely populated cities on the planet, the front line of where we feel the impacts of the world’s climate catastrophe. Dhaka Art Summit 2018 speaker Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak hit upon that when commenting that “Unless this kind of wonderful effort [of Dhaka Art Summit] is supplemented by another kind of effort, we cannot achieve the impossible possibility of a socially just world.” Our work at Samdani Art Foundation seeks to blur those boundaries between what is in the room and what is outside of the room – seeking to make a freer and more porous atmosphere for dialogue, understanding that beauty can change the world. Beauty can be impact, and impact can be beauty. This portal is an entry point to our ongoing and evolving work fostering connections between artists and architects of the past, the present, and the future with the Bangladeshi public, and welcoming in sensitive collaborators and visitors from all over the world to learn how to connect differently with cultures and geographies that they might not yet be familiar yet. Tied to our desire to strengthen and re-establish links that colonialism tried to sever between humanity and nature, we work to cultivate, maintain, and grow relationships, and to build confidence that these relationships can create the conditions to change how the (art) world functions. This is why Dhaka Art Summit can best be described as a family reunion, where more and more members join in, and you can see how this familiar family friend named DAS grows up more and more each time you visit her, but retains her childlike wonder, curiosity, and joy. One of the best compliments we’ve ever received at Samdani Art Foundation is that “Dhaka Art Summit is where the art world goes and they turn into people – accessible human and vulnerable.” Dhaka Art Summit is also a place that launches many careers, partially because international CVs hold no meaning where most of our visitors are unfamiliar with traditional markers of prestige, making it possible to really talk about the work and the intentions of the artist in ways that are difficult to do on the international art circuit. As we grow, acknowledging the limitations of communicating in English, we work to build our work around concepts and words in Bangla, making them accessible to both Bangla and non-Bangla speaking audiences. We are working to step off of the institutionalized timelines of biennales and step closer into life’s rhythms – and long-term collaborative projects related to culture and agriculture that will soon be visible at Srihatta, the Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park – will give a glimpse into our stretched-out timelines of the future, inspired by projects in the previous bi-annual (but not ‘a biennial’) format Dhaka Art Summit such as Otobong Nkanga’s Landversation and Damian Ortega’s work Sisters, where we learned first-hand that nothing you can possibly try to do can make a cornfield grow in less than 90 days. We are drawn to acts of imagination informed by knowledge. Since day one, we have been planning for what does not exist yet -- trying to design a space where anyone from any background can come and have a profound encounter with art and culture, and imagine that they can play a part in building a more beautiful, socially, and environmentally just world. We would be delighted if you were to join us and our growing number of collaborators in this endeavor. Read more about the thinking behind Diana's vision: Forging Artistic Connections_Stories from the Dhaka Art Summit by Diana Campbell from the upcoming publication of Frame Contemporary Art Finland . Considering Dhaka Art Summit from a CHamoru Perspective by Diana Campbell from the book American Art in Asia: Artistic Praxis and Theoretical Divergence . “It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way." https://www.routledge.com/our-products/open-access-books/publishing-oa-books/chapters

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 দ্বৈধ (A Duality) Curated by Bishwajit Goswami with research support from Muhammad Nafisur Rahman, in collaboration with Brihatta Art Foundation দ্বৈধ (A Duality) Curated by Bishwajit Goswami (Assistant Professor, Department of Drawing and Painting, University of Dhaka) with research support from Muhammad Nafisur Rahman (Assistant Professor of Communication Design at the School of Design, College of DAAP, University of Cincinnati), in collaboration with Brihatta Art Foundation To think about Bangladesh is to think about the riverine, the deltaic landscape often evoking an idyllic imagining. To read about Bangladesh is to also read about floods and storms, and destruction designed by nature. To understand Bangladesh however, is to acknowledge the duality that flows through this land, its dwellers and natural environment interacting in unfettered fluidity in various forms. In welcoming the new year, we sing an ode to invite the stormy nor'westers (Kalboishakhi) to cleanse impurities and herald a fresh start. In embracing the destructive forces of nature, we accept the lessons it teaches us, the reality of the everyday struggles and the manifestation of the resilience of the Bengali spirit to hope for better days. The ambivalent relationship between man and the lived environment, people and nature, finds new modes of storytelling through these expressions. দ্বৈধ (Dyoidho) upholds that relationship by showcasing the fluidity found in the riverine nature of Bengal. The exhibition engages the human senses through color, form and its essence. Combining artistic research and practice, each section of the exhibition sheds light on a different aspect of duality in our everyday surroundings creating an immersive experience. Just as the waterways trace a path from the Himalayan springs to the estuaries of Padma, Meghna and Jamuna at the Bay of Bengal, the narrations traverse the artistic space following the way of the rivers. Sensory immersion is evoked both by the sound of paddy in the harvest festival, while the uneven gallery walls simulate the moist coarseness of the delta-soil. The chaos during coastal calamity resonates in the exhibition’s soundscape, as the seasonal qualities of Bangladesh’s climate: the humid summer, the refreshing monsoon, the dryness of winter all arouse affect, evoking emotion and memory. The dual manifestations of mother nature, nurturing and severe by turns, find new narrative forms where the beauty of the Sundarbans are juxtaposed against the insolent chimneys of bricks, coal and smoke; environmentalist movements are paired with creative performances eliciting thought-provoking contextual commentary on present-day reality. In the duality of light and darkness, the impure and gray forms of our destroyed environment are invoked, while hope shines at the edge of the horizon. দ্বৈধ (Dyoidho) evokes the idea of artifice, where things are not as they seem and artists, architects, designers, photographers and researchers come together in collaboration to set the stage for this discourse. As the urban character “Tokai” engages the environment in conversation and the dryprimitive aroma of hay connotes our agrarian roots—we extend an open invitation to participate in the discussion and to critique the apparent binaries of nature. Through texture, sound, smell, materiality, and color, the exhibition is activated in the creative imaginary and transformed by the experience of the audience. In the presentation of individual and collective experimental artworks, দ্বৈধ (Dyoidho) seeks to raise critical questions, reveal answers, and create dialogue between nature, the lived environment and our human connection to it. We welcome you to join the conversation. The exhibition is divided into six segments. Estuary Welcome to the untarnished estuary of land, air and water where our relationship with nature is fluid and ever-changing. As we immerse ourselves in the familiar and nostalgic sound of husking rice during the harvest season, Rafiqun Nabi's popular character “Tokai” cheekily questions the nature of our urban beliefs. The scent of newly harvested dry hay underlines our cultural nostalgia and our agricultural past. This sentiment is strengthened through the depictions of the seasons through Ahmed Shamsuddoha's Summer, Jamal Ahmed's Monsoon, Alakesh Ghosh's Autumn, Anisuzzaman Anis's Late Autumn, Sheikh Afzal Hossain's Winter, and Kanak Chanpa Chakma's Spring as they transform Hashem Khan's well-cherished memories of Bangladesh’s six seasons opening up a new avenue of discourse. Emerging artist Damasush Hacha's animation adds a new dimension to this conversation. Soma Surovi Jannat’s video artwork reflects the diversity stories found in the extensive water basin dialoguing in tandem with Abdul Gaffar Babu’s unique floating site specific installation. Fluidity Bengalis are easily drawn to the rippling rivers, developing an affection to the murky waters of riverine soil almost instantaneously. Both the abundance and scarcity of water define our daily livelihood, various feelings, or passions; this land of evening ‘Bhatiali’ songs is a serene aquatic canvas as it moves along with the rivers. As a response to the rivers’ temperament, Marina Tabassum's architectural model projects a silhouette of alternative hope that can overcome the shifting ebb and flow of the tide. Alak Roy’s sculptural piece presents the interrelation between the sacrificial and redemptive dynamic between water and land, while Tarun Ghosh’s artwork conveys an imagery of the intuitive exploration of everyday domestic qualities. Summing up this duality inherent in both the people and the wetlands, Dhali Al Mamoon portrays a new relation between a treasured memorable past and the strange aridity of the present. The Land Bengal's alluvial soil produces yearlong abundant harvests. Its nurturing quality is cherished by the artists who draw upon its wealth. Monirul Islam actively cultivates these tenets into his creative practice transforming commonplace daily objects into an expression of artistry that elevates and comments on the complexity of our relationship with our organic world. Through its nurturing quality, Bengali art pays tribute to femininity creating a magical connection with nature’s various manifestations. In her quest for her female self identity, Nazlee Laila Mansur combines surrealism with reality. Through the fluid and rhythmic brushstrokes in Farida Zaman’s Sufiya, we glimpse a dreamlike world evoked by Mother Nature. The power and resilience of the feminine is exemplified in Dilara Begum Jolly's installations and in Rokeya Sultana’s Madonna. Through Chandravati, Bengal's first female poet from Kishorgonj, Abdus Shakoor Shah pays tribute to the power of storytelling and “Parul”— the ever-familiar creation of master puppeteer Mustafa Monwar—joins this conversation in earnest. In understanding the tenderness of nature and the feelings of nurturing, Joydeb Roaza helps us visualise the tender roots of the sounds and feelings through his performance Tender Roots. Source Originating from the Himalayan Gangotri Glacier, the ancient Ganges exists to purify. The ever-familiar Padma, Meghna, and Jamuna rivers have changed the shape of this delta, saturating the earth with loam, alluvium and life. However, we, the ungrateful urbanites, repay that generosity by disposing our waste into the Buriganga. Mohammad Eunus’s Metaphor of a Wounded River paints that final heartbeat as nature gives in to relentless urban settlement. Through the mix of industrial and organic materials, Mahmuda Siddika’s leather collage comments on the extinction of the Buriganga. Mojahid Musa’s sculpture embodies the unusual and phantasmagorical form of the obscure darkness and fearful uncertainty of the future which is juxtaposed by Soma Surovi Jannat’s mural work where light heralds a new hope and a new resolution for the future. In the duality of light and darkness, people confront the contaminated and polluted reality of our present while holding hope for the future. Through their solo performances playing with colour, touch, and fragrance, Yasmin Jahan Nupur and Niloofar Chaman manifest the duality of both the lamentation and promise of our human condition. Indebtedness The Sundarbans, surrounded by loam, are a symbol of the deep trust in the preservation of the balance and diversity of our environment. Anisuzzaman Faroque’s installation represents the steadfast mangroves that defy the constant torrential tides, clinging to the southern border of our delta. They protect us decade after decade from the catastrophic side of nature unconditionally without any expectation or compensation. Shahid Kabir expresses this coexistence between the forests with the local inhabitants and Mostafizul Haque’s series Golpata depicts the evolution of this huge terrain. Hamiduzzaman Khan’s mural portrays a confluence of the duality of fresh and saltwater under the vast sky of the extensive Sundarbans. Meanwhile, Abul Barq Alvi provides us with a bird’s eye view of the brick kilns with fumes that engulf the surrounding landscape, and Nisar Hossain's painting Towards Annihilation reinforces the idiosyncratic emotions that man contains and performs against nature. Contradiction Bengalis remain optimistic even when faced with great adversity. The wrath of nature claims our homes and assets repeatedly along with priceless memories made over a lifetime. Recognising the silent desperate lament of the climate refugees, Abir Abdullah’s photo series documents their plight in an effort to discover the potent source of hope that propels them onward. The chaos brought on by the changeable and temperamental rivers permeate the lives of everyone and the nostalgic backdrop of Ahmed Rasel's visual storytelling holds up the constant fear of the devastation brought on by the ever-eroding river. This duality inherent in our natural habitat is reinforced both through the fictitious world found in Ashrafia Adib's virtual reality piece and Khairul Alam Shada’s cinematic portrayal of our natural surroundings. These contradictory perspectives are explored through Mohammed Emran Hossain's architectural installation of the periscope which refracts, reflects and reframes various angles symbolically empowering each of us to create a dramatic synthesis of our own perspectives of self-realisation, intuition, and worldview. Acknowledgements: We would like to express our sincere appreciation to the following individuals and organisations for their generous cooperation in helping make this project possible. Curatorial Team: Bishwajit Goswami (Curator and Researcher), Muhammad Nafisur Rahman (Key Research Support), Shouro Dasgupta (Research Assistance), Kashfia Arif (Editor), Souradeep Dasgupta (Content Development), Zannatun Nahar Nijhum (Content Development), Humaira Hossain (Content Development), Anadiny Mogno (Content Development), Nusrat Mahmud (Project Manager), Atkia Sadia Rahman (Project Coordinator), Tirtha Saha (Project Support). Documentation : Anas Bin Iqbal (Editorial support), Arup Mandal (Video and Photography), Farid Ahmed Rafi (Photography) Logistics: Tanzid Parvez, Din Islam Hossain Sayem Gallery Logistics: Md. Shahadat Hossain, Nurun Nahar, Niloy Mankhin, Ruposhree Hajong, Mohammad Ashraful, Ekmot Ali, Sohel Chowdhury, Faruk Hossain Art Mediators and Volunteers: Anadiny Mogno, Anas Bin Iqbal, Apu Nandi, Arup Mandal, Farhana Rafiq Achol, Farid Ahmed Rafi, Fatin Fida Arko, Kamrun Nahar, Konika Mahian, Jisan Sajjad, Sarker Tukhor, Shaidul Alam Shifat, Tirtha Saha, Rizwan Bin Iqbal Social Media: Anas Bin Iqbal, Atkia Sadia Rahman, Nusrat Mahmud, Nusrat Jahan, Arup Mandal, Farid Ahmed Rafi Exhibition Production: Abdur Razzaq and Team (Gallery Preparation), Amal Sarker and Team (Structural Installation), Chanchal Kumar Shil (Printing), Md Humayun Kabir and Team (Metalwork), Helal Samrat (Production Volunteer), Bijoy Devnath & Munia Ahmed Mim (Architectural Scale Model Making) Special Thanks: Abdullah Al Mahmud Mahin, Bipul Mallick, Enayetullah Khan, Farhan Azim, Imran uz-zaman, Mohammad Kamrul, Mong Mong Sho, Nisar Hossain, Ramzan Ali Chowdhury, Rezwan Rahman, Saiqa Iqbal Meghna, Sharmilie Rahman, Sourav Chowdhury, Sony Kumar Sen, Syed Kushal, Tania Sultana Bristy. Zareen Mahmud.