ALL PROJECTS STITCHING SCREENS Supporting Artistic Collaboration Across India, Bangladesh, And Digital Space Introduction The way that we engage with and interact with each other has changed drastically in 2020. While it is not currently possible to physically travel long distances and meet existing and future friends, we have suddenly transitioned into an era of unprecedented digital connectivity - where screens and telecommunications cables and satellites seem the only links to the furthest corners of the planet. Rather than simply uploading existing material online, artists are finding new ways to work and harness digital platforms. Stitching Screens is a cross-border collaboration between the Dhaka, Bangladesh based Samdani Art Foundation (SAF) and the Delhi, India based Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA), connecting patrons, curators, and artists across India and Bangladesh to commission new work born from the challenges and possibilities of an age when we connect through screens. These words by the eighteenth-century mystic poet Lalon, whose words and songs inspired countless generations of writers and singers from Rabindranath Tagore to Allen Ginsberg, prime the spirit of this project: A mirror-city is next to my house A neighbour lives there I never saw him The village is surrounded by water fathomless And no boat is available I long to see him But how can I reach that village If the neighbour would touch me Anguishes of death would disappear He and Lalon live side by side Still a million miles wide gap remains. These times have forced us to think about our common humanity. And in a time of increasing divides, SAF and FICA come together to offer a platform for artists to work across borders. We invite Indian and Bangladeshi artists to explore artistic exchanges that enliven and activate the digital universe in the current time of distance and disconnect, to initiate dialogue across borders. We are looking at art as a coming together, a productive capacity of seeking connections, intricacies, availabilities, discords, (in)coherences, continuities, disparities, seeking new initiations. The first phase included interactive sessions among 22 invited emerging practitioners from Bangladesh and India who shared their work and instigated thinking around the art of proposals and collaborative modes of making. These artists will choose a collaborator with whom to submit a proposal that actively engages with the idea of collaboration with an artist from across the border. To participate in co-creation is to become entangled, to shake up one’s habitual way of engaging with the world, catalyzing potential conversations that can be initiated between the contexts, time zones and spaces. The second phase will mobilise support and mentorship for one collaborative project by an artist duo from Bangladesh and India, selected from submitted proposals by a jury comprised of Shilpa Gupta (artist, India), Munem Wasif (artist, Bangladesh), Shanay Jhaveri (Assistant Curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art), Daniel Baumann (Director, Kunsthalle Zurich), Vidya Shivadas (FICA), and Diana Campbell Betancourt (Samdani Art Foundation). About FICA The Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA) is a non-profit organisation that aims to broaden the audience for contemporary Indian art, enhance opportunities for artists, and establish a continuous dialogue between the arts and the public through education and active participation in public art projects and funding. Encouraging, promoting and supporting innovative work in the field of the visual arts, FICA works in collaboration with, and for the benefit of the art community of students, art historians/critics/curators, collectors and art enthusiasts. It has focused on building a long term relationship with other organizations, local and international, including museums, art schools, galleries and government institutions, collaborating on regular art events, educational programs and special exhibitions, while also developing active year-long public programing with the intention of bringing contemporary art closer to its audience. About Samdani Art Foundation The Samdani Art Foundation (SAF) is a private arts trust based in Dhaka, Bangladesh founded in 2011 by collector couple Nadia and Rajeeb Samdani to support the work of the country’s contemporary artists and architects. Led by Artistic Director and Curator Diana Campbell Betancourt, SAF seeks to expand the audience engaging with contemporary art across Bangladesh and increase international exposure for the country’s artists and architects. Its programmes support Bangladeshi artists and architects in broadening their creative horizons through production grants, residencies, education programs, and exhibitions. To achieve this, SAF collaborates with the Bangladeshi government through official partnerships with the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, People’s Republic of Bangladesh, and the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy. SAF’s motivations are articulated through a variety of initiatives, the largest being the bi-annual the Dhaka Art Summit (DAS), an international, non-commercial research and exhibition platform for art and architecture related to South Asia. With a core focus on Bangladesh, from its inception in 2012, DAS re-examines how we think about these forms of art in both a regional and an international context. SAF also supports the exhibition of Bangladeshi artists in the cases where institutions have meaningfully engaged with Bangladesh in their research about South Asia. SAF’s programme, the Samdani Artist-Led Initiatives Forum, recognises the importance of Bangladesh’s independently established and self-funded art initiatives. Supporting these initiatives’ ongoing efforts, the Forum will help each to continue their work locally while building their profile internationally through SAF’s network. Committed to increasing art-engagement in Bangladesh, SAF runs the annual Samdani Seminars, a free lecture and workshop programme that facilitates engagement between internationally renowned arts professionals and local communities across Bangladesh through participatory artworks, lectures, and workshops.

ALL PROJECTS Crafting Togetherness Workshop Srihatta Crafting Togetherness fosters collaboration between artisans and architecture students through workshops and knowledge exchanges, guided by Rizvi Hassan. Taking place at Srihatta and supported by the British Council's Climate Futures: South Asia Grant 2025, the project focuses on sustainable building practices and explores Sylhet’s indigenous techniques using bamboo, mud, and leaves. These exchanges will shape the design and construction of a biodegradable, zero-waste cultural space. After completion, the space will continue to host workshops and performances on sustainability, inspiring eco-friendly practices in the arts and strengthening community connections through shared learning. Crafting Togetherness is shaped by a team that connects artistic vision with deep local knowledge. Diana Campbell leads the artistic direction, while Ruxmini Choudhury guides the curatorial direction, with support from our curatorial assistant, Swilin Haque. Architect Rizvi Hassan, whose long-standing work with natural materials anchors the project, leads the architectural research and design. Our administrative and on-site backbone comes from Mohammad Sazzad Hossain, along with the Srihatta team who ensure everything functions smoothly on the ground. The workshop and design process is led by Rizvi Hassan, supported by a dedicated group of young architects and designers: Minhajul Abedin, Zareen Sharif, Ruhan Al Faruk, and Fazlul Haque, whose hands-on engagement with artisans and students is vital to the project’s collaborative approach.

ALL PROJECTS Let me get you a nice cup of tea Tate, London Yasmin Jahan Nupur’s work "Let me get you a nice cup of tea' 2019-2020 acquired by Tate, is currently on display at the Tate Modern. While she joins a great group of Bangladeshi artists in the collection, she is the first Bangladeshi artist whose work is being displayed at Tate as part of their permanent collection. This is a historic moment we are proud to be a part of - especially when it comes to mediums like performance which are not always the most simple works to collect. SAF worked on this project curatorially to support Yasmin Jahan Nupur from the start of an idea as one of the first DAS 2020 commissions to a presentation in our Artisitc Director Diana Campbell’s Frieze London program for Frieze LIVE in 2019 developed in partnership with a research residency DAS facilitated with Peabody Essex, further working with the artist as her ideas expanded into what was experienced at DAS 2020. Exhibit320 supported the initial presentation in London and so many people from around the world contributed to the development of this live piece through sharing their research knowledge.

ALL PROJECTS The Six Seasons of the White Peacock The Six Seasons of the White Peacock, by Albanian artist Driant Zeneli, in collaboration with an amazing group of interdisciplinary creative practitioners: Md. Tasnimul Izaz Bhuiyan, Pulak K. Sarkar, Rafi Nur Hamid, Sondip Roy, and Sumaiya Sultana. This unique and poetic collaboration between Bangladesh and Italy reimagines the familiar four seasons of Baroque music through the lens of Bangladesh’s rich cycle of six seasons. The film was developed at Srihatta – the Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park – where this beautiful vision came to life. This visionary project brings together the Samdani Art Foundation (Bangladesh), EMΣT – National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens (Greece), the Art House of Adrian Paci and Melisa Paci in Shkodër (Albania), the Civic Museum of Castelbuono (Italy), and the Museo Castromediano with the Region of Puglia, through the Department of Tourism, Culture, Economy, and Territory Valuation. The film is set to be released in September 2025.

ALL PROJECTS Collective Movements Curated by Diana Campbell We have been witnessing movements of people of all ages from Chile, to Lebanon, India, Hong Kong and beyond, all voicing a desire for forms of agency in the context of persistent repressive colonial and authoritarian structures. DAS was formed through the collective building of a grassroots transnational civil space where culture can be shared beyond the limits of the nation state. Together with artists who create situations, build relations, and organise events and institutions, we aim to create a strong sense of community rooted in Dhaka. The word body can also be read as individuals who come together as a group. Like antibodies, individuals within any body need to maintain the ability to disagree with the group and contribute to the dynamic evolution of the fragments, situations, and personalities that make it up. A powerful aspect of groups is that they are dynamic and fluid; they can come together, break up into two or more groups, move when they need to, and dissolve when their work is done, reforming if/when they are needed again. Damián Ortega b. 1967, Mexico City; lives and works in Mexico City Sisters; Hermanas, 2019–2020 Bricks, Corn, Squash, Chiles, Beans Commissioned and Produced by Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2020. Courtesy of the artist, kurimanzutto, White Cube, and Samdani Art Foundation. Realised with additional support from kurimanzutto and White Cube. A portion of the corn was grown and donated by Shakhawat Hossain In an empty, uninhabited lot covered by wild weeds and grass, a big conical figure is raised. It is made of red bricks and could be described either as a stupa, or a pre-Colombian pyramid. It is a sculptural silo, containing an offering with a sample of one of the native corn species of Mexico, a single seed. Seeds can be deposited on any land, and with some luck and under the right conditions, they multiply in a micro-explosion of fertility. Limits of private property are tested when rituals, knowledge and products are taken from one place to another. A ‘milpa’ is a piece of land that grows from using ancient Mesoamerican agricultural practices that are necessary to produce products to meet the basic needs of a family. A milpa contains a diverse ecosystem that produces corn, beans, squash and chile working in solidarity. This ecosystem is, to a certain point, what has fed us, and one of the most valuable gifts that Damian Ortega wishes to share from Mexico. Ortega uses sculpture, installation, performance, film, and photography to arrive at events of deconstruction, both material and conceptual. In his work, the familiar is altered and re-purposed, leading the viewer to inspect the unexpected interdependence of the components involved. Ortega highlights the complex social, political, and economic contexts that are embodied in every-day objects. Fernando Palma Rodríguez b. 1957, San Pedro Atocpan; lives and works in San Pedro Atocpan ‘Language programmes us’, shares Fernando Palma, indicating that it is possible to be a different person in different languages. Palma is an expert in programming; he has a background as an electrical engineer and he is interested in the transmission of systems, knowledge, and electricity. Part of Palma’s work is preserving the Nahua language, a group of languages related to the Aztec people, settled mainly in the central part of Mexico. ‘It is through indigenous languages that we begin to see a different relationship between people and their environment, their art and culture’, writes Palma. For example, the word for artist in Nahua language is derived from the word for the number five – because the artist is the fifth point connecting the four points on a compass: North, South, East, West. This definition does not contain the triangular axes of fame, power or money. The artist had a formative experience in Bangladesh visiting the Chakma community during a residency at Britto Art Trust in 2003, understanding that the condition of his community in Mexico was linked to that of indigenous people on the other side of the world. He returns to Bangladesh to catalyse transmission of indigenous knowledges of language and ecology through workshops related to his body of work creating Nahua inspired pictograms (found in The Collective Body). Palma makes robotic sculptures that perform narrative choreographies, addressing issues faced by Mexican indigenous communities, such as that in the agricultural region of Milpa Alta in Mexico. These include human and land rights, violence, and urgent environmental crises. He runs Calpulli Tecalco, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the preservation of Nahua language and culture as well as Libroclub Fernando Benitez In Cualli Ohtli, a book club active for over twenty years with Nahua reading groups for children, and Maspor Nosotros AC, an organisation constituted in order to prevent, mitigate and compensate for the environmental and social impact caused by industrial and consumer waste. Olafur Eliasson b. 1967, Copenhagen; lives and works in Berlin Your Uncertain Shadow (Black and White) , 2010 HMI lamps, glass, aluminium, transformers Courtesy of the artist and Samdani Art Foundation Several spotlights project light on a white wall, however these lights only become perceptible when visitors enter and move across the space, blocking the light source and filling the void of the room with the presence of their shadows. The moving shadows of visitors create a sort of choreography and stretch and contract in tones ranging from grey to black, varying based on the movements of bodies in the space. Differences in race, religion, age, and class are flattened in this work as details used to identify individuals are reduced to moving outlines, and we become more aware of the present moment and the patterns we can build by engaging with people around us. Olafur Eliasson’s art is driven by his interests in perception, movement, embodied experience, and feelings of self. He strives to make the concerns of art relevant to society at large. Art, for him, is a crucial means for turning thinking into doing in the world. Eliasson’s works span sculpture, painting, photography, film, and installation. Not limited to the confines of the museum and gallery, his practice engages the broader public sphere through architectural projects, interventions in civic space, arts education, policy-making, and issues of sustainability and climate change. Taloi Havini b. 1981, Arawa; Lives and works in Sydney. Reclamation , 2019–2020 Installation, mixed media Co-Curated by Diana Campbell, Alexie Glass-Kantor, and Michelle Newton. Commissioned and Produced by Samdani Art Foundation and Artspace, Sydney for DAS 2020 with support from the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body. Realised with additional support from the Australian High Commission of Bangladesh Reclamation is a new work by Taloi Havini created in collaboration with her Hakö clan members. The artist draws from recent historical movements of conflict as well as acts of resilience and self-determination experienced within the social fabric of her inherited matrilineal birthplace, the Autonomous Region of Bougainville. Reclamation is a site-specific assemblage of natural materials, harvested from the artist’s own matrilineal Hakö clan land. Here, Havini traces the significance of impermanence in traditional Hakö architecture. Individual panels have been shaped, cut and lashed within an arched form to reference formal Indigenous knowledges and map-making, echoing temporal spaces created for ritual and exchange to assert aspace for collective agency. Reclamation speaks to notions of lineage and navigation. Underlying the ephemeral installation of cane and earth are questions about the ways in which we relate within temporal spaces; how borders are defined and claimed as well as the value of impermanence and embodied knowledge over fixed historical understandings. Havini weaves together the tensions of precarity and resilience, vulnerability and activism to create a space of encounter and transmission. Havini speaks through geographic and cultural specificity of situations with global implications, working at a time when communities across the globe find themselves at the tipping point of environmental and social change. Havini works with photography, sculpture, immersive video and mixed-media installations. She considers the resonance of space, ceremony, and how material culture can be defined and translated through contemporary practice. Vasantha Yogananthan b. 1985, Grenoble; lives and works in Paris The artist Vasantha Yogananthan photographed SECMOL’s moving Ice Stupa project in Ladakh . Yogananthan's work straddles fiction and documentary, and this project shows how an imagined idea for a utopian future can come into being through creativity and institution building. Yogananthan’s photographic approach has been developed over the last 10 years whilst working on the major independent projects Piémanson (2009–2013) and A Myth of Two Souls (2013–2020) which have been published, exhibited and awarded internationally. Yogananthan is deeply attached to analogue photography for its slow – almost philosophical – process. His interest in painting led him to work around the genres of portrait, still life and landscape. SECMOL/Ice Stupa The Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) engages scientists and engineers with young people growing up in Ladakh (a highly border-contested mountainous zone of northern India bordering China), especially those from rural or disadvantaged backgrounds. SECMOL equips young Ladakhis with the knowledge, skills, perspective, and confidence to choose and build a sustainable future in a high desert, which is increasingly lacking in water. Temperatures in the Indian Himalayas are rising as a result of climate change, causing snow from glaciers to melt faster, negatively affecting local communities that rely on springtime meltwater for agriculture. Resulting from two years of experiments at SECMOL, ‘Ice Stupa’ is a local solution to a local problem. ‘Ice Stupa’ is an artificial glacier created by piping a winter mountain stream down below the frost line, and then cascading it out of a vertical spout in the desert plateau. When gushing water encounters freezing ambient temperatures, it transforms into a conical ice formation with minimal surface area exposed to direct sunlight. The artificial glacier lasts late into the spring, allowing communities extended access to water for irrigation, as opposed to normal ice, which melts much faster. This is a local solution at a human scale. These photographs were taken by the artist Vasantha Yogananthan in 2019 for the New Yorker. SECMOL’s travel to DAS was generously supported by the Inlaks Shivdasani 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. Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury b. 1981, Noakhali WINNER Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury’s (b. 1981, Noakhali) interdisciplinary practice plays with everyday objects to create interactions, which sit between installation and assemblage. By creating unfamiliar situations for everyday objects, Chowdhury creates new interpretations of familiar objects while opening new experimental territories with open-ended possibilities. He received a Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking at the University of Dhaka (2011). His work has been shown in group exhibitions throughout Bangladesh. DAS 2018 Commission : The Soul Who Fails to Fly into the Space (2017) Humans are the ultimate expression of freedom. Connected with the cosmos, with nature, and the higher forces through spirituality, the human body is a reflection of all such associations. The soul-body-mind desires to become immortal, to go beyond the vacuum of death, flying into the cosmos time and again, but failing to meet eternity. The shiny golden fountain is like a reservoir - the essence of life where the eternal sound of this cosmos reverberates. Samdani Art Award 2018 INTERVIEW SELECTION COMMITTEE Sheela Gowda (artist, based in Bangalore, India) Runa Islam (artist, based in London) Subodh Gupta (artist, based in New Delhi, India) Mona Hatoum (artist, based in London) Chaired by Aaron Cezar (Director, Delfina Foundation) IN PARTNERSHIP WITH New North and South Network Liverpool Biennial Delfina Foundation 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 SHORTLIST Shikh Sabbir Alam Discern the shape, form, within space (2016), acrylic on canvas. Image courtesy: the artist. Shikh Sabbir Alam (b. 1982, Kushtia) embraces the practice of freehand drawing to plot out his thoughts, which evolve into a more permanent process, predominantly painting. Alam embraces each part of the process to express his understanding of a subject; each dot, line, shape or colour helps him to map out an idea. His work portrays the process of our sensory system, creating a map to describe the elements and their position within the process. Alam received a Master of Fine Arts from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway (2016). Rakib Ahmed Untitled (2016), new photograph taken on old set acquired from photography studio that closed. Image courtesy: the artist. Rakib Ahmed (b. 1988, Netrakona) is a photographer and director whose work has been published broadly. His project “Faces of the City” documents the lost black and white photography studios – those that used darkrooms – of Bangladesh’s past. Ahmed received a Bachelor of Arts in Photography from Patshala – South Asian Media Academy (2010). Palash Bhattacharjee Marked (2017), microphone set, photographs, hammer etc., on display at "Ephemeral Perennial" at the Daily Star-Bengal Arts Precinct, Dhaka. Image courtesy: the artist. Palash Bhattacharjee (b. 1983, Chittagong) bridges performance, installation, and video within his practice. His works present aesthetic experimentations derived from personal experience, set in relation to human sensitivities and emotion. These are conscious and unconscious expressions of his everyday behaviours, excitements, and obsessions within the context of a society where narratives of a human’s existential reality seems to lose meaning in the face of larger political, social concerns. His work and performances have been included in numerous group exhibitions throughout Bangladesh as well as South Korea, Argentina, and the United States. Bhattacharjee received a Master in Fine Arts from the University of Chittagong (2006). Opper Zaman Insulate (2016), casting plaster, found objects, nails, rope and projected film. Image courtesy: the artist. Opper Zaman (b. 1995, Dhaka) examines the daily scenarios and codes everyday people participate in to survive within society, addressing factors such as social standing as well as race and culture, in an attempt to understand what others experience. Using a wide variety of media, Zaman creates spaces in which his audience can be emerged, and engage with, his concepts on how other people, living very different lives to his own, experience life. Zaman is currently working towards a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Hertfordshire. Marzia Farhana Text Sculpture (2017), mixed-media installation including book shelf, books, wires, paper plates etc. Image courtesy: the artist. Marzia Farhana (b. 1985, Dhaka) constructs precarious multimedia installations informed by Joseph Beuys’ anthropological understanding of art. Her practice is time- and space-based and ongoing, open to interpretation. Art for Farhana is an act of resistance, an act to resist the horror of the present wild condition of the world. She received her Masters of Fine Art from Central Saint Martins (2014) and bachelor of Fine Art in Graphic Design from the University of Dhaka (2009). Her work has been exhibited in multiple group shows in Bangladesh. She has attended residencies at the Khoj International Art Association Residency in Goa, India (2017) and the 16th International Festival in Iran (2010). Debasish Shom Untitled, from the artist’ ongoing project, In the Rivers Dark. Image courtesy: the artist. Debasish Shom (b. 1979, Bagerhat) was raised in rural Bangladesh and is part of the country’s Hindu minority. Shom’s work is a very personal form of self-expression motivated by his socio-political background and the psychological tension in the subjects he tackles. Working in the medium of photography, Shom uses alternative image-making and printing techniques, choosing the way he captures light through his lens based on the feelings he wants to communicate. He is currently a lecturer of Photographic Technique at Pathshala – South Asian Media Institute. His work has been published in CANVAS, The Daily Star, and Lens Culture among others. Asfika Rahman Untitled (2016), hand painted photograph from the artists Suspected project. Image courtesy: the artist. Asfika Rahman (b. 1988, Dhaka) is currently studying photography at the University of Applied Science and Arts in Germany, and received a professional degree in Documentary and Photojournalism from Pathshala – South Asian Media Institute (2016). Her practice sits between art and documentary, drawing inspiration from 19th century prints, which she recontextualises with new media. Photography has become the predominant medium and vehicle for expressing her views on complex systemic social issues. Aprita Singh Lopa Freedom in Femininity (2017), performance. Image courtesy: the artist. Aprita Singh Lopa (b. 1986, Kishoreganj) holds a Master of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from the University of Dhaka. Her work examines the relationship between the natural landscape and the creatures that reside within it. Lopa searches for ways to maintain and develop the worlds green spaces, while communicating the importance nature plays in everyday life through the mediums of ceramics and performance. She has been included in numerous group exhibitions within Bangladesh. Ahmed Rasel Untitled (2016), from the series Memories of Water in Tafalia, Dhaka. Image courtesy: the artist. Ahmed Rasel (b.1988, Barishal) is a faculty member of the Dhaka-based photography institute, Counter Foto. He earned a Masters in Bengali Literature from the University of Dhaka (2013) with the ambition of becoming a poet, before realising that photography could better blend his poetic feelings with his inner vision, memory, and personal history. Rasel is a visual storyteller. He presents the world as a continuation of the great human story, intertwined with his personal experiences, believing that every story forms part of our overall world history and that every human being is a historical element. His work has been published in Trouw, Private Magazine, F-stop magazine, and The Daily Independent, among others, and exhibited in photo festivals in Bangladesh and India. 2023 2020 2018 2016 2014 2012 Award Archive

ALL PROJECTS Uronto Artist Community Samdani Artist-Led Initiatives Forum 2020 URONTO Artist Community came up with their first VR project in 2019. This project was supported by the Annual Grant of Artist-Led Initiatives Forum from Samdani Art Foundation. Uronto always works out of Dhaka in Rural and remote areas in abandoned heritage buildings. They interact with the local community of those rural areas and they do their open studio there only. The City based audience cannot always visit their exchange program or the open studio for many practical reasons connected to their busy urban life. So Uronto came up with this alternative Idea to create accessibility to their work and sites for a wide range of audience. The VR project was produced around the 8th and 9th Episode of Uronto Residential Art Exchange Program activities. That took place in Naogaon at Dubolhati Palace by November 2019. The VR consists of all the site-responsive works by almost 30 artists coming from different countries together to explore the lost narratives of the fascinating site. It gives the audience a unique opportunity to be present at the site virtually, have a 360 experience of a 200 years old fragile and abandoned palace. Also allows them to see how artistic expressions are merged into the space with a local interaction in and around them.

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. Ayesha Sultana b. 1984, Jessore, Bangladesh WINNER Ayesha Sultana’s practice encompasses drawing, painting, object and sound. The work relies heavily on process as an attempt to translate notions of space, which is inseparably connected with perceptions of time as a way of looking. The artist was born in 1984 in Jessore, Bangladesh. Her drawing series often acts as an enquiry, through the building of spatial structures by tapping in repetition, variation and rhythm. It may appear dissimilar in technique but is essentially one and the same, permeating similar areas of transformation. For the past two years, drawing has often acted as a formal backbone to her practice. She uses it as a verb, of ‘doing’ whether it be cutting, folding, stitching, layering, recording, and tracing. This doing even extends to explorations with photocopy machines, allowing them to alter and distort other works that she experiments with. The illustrated image, Cataract II, 2011, is part of the artist’s ongoing series of drawing with staples, piecing rice paper and creating new patterns and structures that highlight the tension between the strength of the industrial staple and the vulnerability of the translucent organic paper. Sultana studied under Rashid Rana at Beaconhouse National University in Lahore, and later lectured there for two years. Sultana’s work has been exhibited extensively in India, Italy, the Netherlands, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates. She is an active member of the Britto Arts Trust and recently completed a residency at Gasworks, in London. Samdani Art Award 2014 INTERVIEW SELECTION COMMITTEE Aaron Cezar (Director of the Delfina Foundation) Eungie Joo (Curator of the Sharjah Biennale 2015) Jessica Morgan (The Daskalopoulos Curator, Tate) Sandhini Poddar (Curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum) Pooja Sood (Director of KHOJ International Artists’ Association) IN PARTNERSHIP WITH Delfina Foundation 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 SHORTLIST Shumon Ahmed What I have Forgotten Could Fill an Ocean, What is Not Real Never Lived (2011). Courtesy of the artist. b. 1977, Dhaka Sayed Tareq Rahman Installation image of Transformation 4 (2016), wood, nail, plastic wire etc. Courtesy of the artist. b. 1988, Khulna Sarker Protick The Light Chamber (2017), vertical projection and sound installation (part of artist’s Origin series) installed at the Shilpakala Academy as part of Chobimel. Courtesy of the artist. b. 1986, Dhaka Sanjoy Chakraborty Red Dot on a Red Road (2017), still from live performance as part of D'LAB (Dhaka Live Art Biennale) at Dhaka University Campus. Courtesy of the artist. Photo credit: Imtiaz-al-Tareq. b. 1984 Promotesh Das Pulak Encapsulated (2008). Courtesy of the artist. b. 1980, Sylhet Palash Bhattacharjee Wastage Abstract (2013), site‐specific project, installation with dual channel video, Cheragi Art Show, Chittagong b. 1983, Chittagong Kabir Ahmed Masum Christy Quandary (2011). Courtesy of the artist. b. 1976, Narayanganj Afsana Sharmin Zhumpa …and the feminine…(2016), documentation of live performance at the 17th Asian Art Biennale. Courtesy of the artist. b. 1984 2023 2020 2018 2016 2014 2012 Award Archive

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

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

ALL PROJECTS রিক্সা শিল্পীদের পাশে In partnership with Britto Arts Trust Part of the Samdani Art Foundation’s ongoing work was supporting research into pre-colonial knowledge of South Asia and blurring boundaries between art and life by empowering Bangladeshi artist-led initiatives. Artists from around the world often took motifs from vernacular artistic practices, and through our initiatives, we partnered with artists and artist-led initiatives to support the practices of artists who often did not have the privileges of resources and mobility found in “the art world,” such as Cinema Banner painters, Rickshaw painters, weavers, and other talented artisans who created the vibrant visual culture of Bangladesh. Dhaka Art Summit was a platform that realized Bangladesh’s largest cinema banner painting in collaboration with Jothashilpa, SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin, and the Goethe Institut, and kantha stitched renditions of Bangladesh’s six seasons were realized in collaboration with Art Pro and were recently acquired by the Whitworth Museum in Manchester after their display at Dhaka Art Summit 2020. Protecting the heritage of Bangladeshi traditional arts also meant supporting the people behind these arts in their daily lives, so they could continue their practice once the world healed from the Covid-19 pandemic. Samdani Art Foundation is proud to have partnered with Britto Arts Trust to support 23 Rickshaw painters and Cinema Banner painters to produce each producing an artwork that highlighted the unique talent of each maker, while also financially supporting this at-risk community in a time when there were few opportunities for them to continue their work animating public spaces of Dhaka. The artist community forming Britto Art Trust had been working with Rickshaw painters and Cinema Banner painters for a long time. They had exhibited the works of the painters in Paris at Palais de Tokyo, and at other leading institutional platforms in Bangladesh and abroad. Britto Arts Trust had generously lent their talent and infrastructure to help bring 23 artists into the fold of Britto and gave them a platform to share their work with the world during this difficult time. The artists had painted on cut-outs representing parts of the human body, speaking to the fact that together, we were one collective body as residents and contributors to life in Dhaka. “The mission of samdani art foundation is to empower artists and to make art available for everyone to enjoy. It was a pleasure to support these wonderful artists during this difficult time, and we invite you to join us in this mission to show these artists how much the city of Dhaka values their talent and imagination. I am a proud collector of works from this project myself.” nadia samdani “Bangladeshi art owes a lot to the inspiration of its cinema banner painters and rickshaw painters, who we have worked with closely in our own artistic journeys in bangladesh and abroad. We are proud to share their work with you and look forward to these works finding permanent homes in offices and residences across Bangladesh, including our own.” Tayeba Begum Lipi and Mahbubur Rahman