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.

ALL PROJECTS Khoj International Workshop 2017 Goa, India Dhaka Art Summit 2016 featured artist Marzia Farhana was selected to be part of the two-month long Khoj International Workshop in 2017, held in Goa, India and supported by the Samdani Art Foundation.

ALL PROJECTS Footnotes For The Future Hosted by Ruxmini Reckvana Q Choudhury As part of Samdani Art Foundation's continued support to work for the country's contemporary artists and architects during the pandemic, we have taken several initiatives, including virtual art programmes like 'Art Around the Table' and 'Footnotes for the Future'. Ruxmini Reckvana Q Choudhury hosted the regular session 'Footnotes for the Future' that takes place at 10 pm on every Thursday. It is a part of the initiative 'Art Around the Table'. Through our social media channels, we brought together various artists, curators and writers to organise various art projects, workshops and discussion meetings. 'Footnotes for the Future' covered topics such as the artists' own work, the role of artists in social and political contexts, their collective works, and future plans. Through zoom, SAF invited various Bengali-speaking artists, gallerists, writers and researchers to join the art sessions and discuss different topics. Creators from around the global joined hands to battle Covid-19 in Bangladesh. They generously donated their honorariums to feed and support the ones in need, through a partnership with the JAAGO Foundation. There were 29 sessions in 7 months.

ALL PROJECTS Live Feed Station - Asia Art Archive In its ongoing effort to map and present the many histories of 20th century art writing in different languages of South Asia, Asia Art Archive presented its first Live Feed Station at Dhaka Art Summit 2016. The Live Feed Station was an on-site junction where visitors could view an array of some of the most interesting publications, art magazines, books and catalogues that have been published in the past century, and was also an opportunity for visitors to explore the database and bring their own references to contribute to this expanding platform of shared knowledge. The Live Feed Station was a part of Asia Art Archive’s ongoing Bibliography of Modern and Contemporary Art Writing project and was hosted by the Samdani Art Foundation at the Dhaka Art Summit.

ALL PROJECTS Raqib Shaw: Whitworth Art Gallery Co-Curated By Diana Campbell Betancourt, Chief Curator Of Dhaka Art Summit And Artistic Director Of Samdani Art Foundation, Dr Maria Balshaw, Director Of Tate, And The Artist, As Part Of The New North And South, A Network Of Eleven Arts Organisations From Across South Asia And The North Of England In A Three-Year Programme Of Co-Commissions, Exhibitions And Intellectual Exchanges A solo exhibition by contemporary artist Raqib Shaw at Whitworth Gallery, Manchester from 24 June- 19 November, 2017 which examined the real and imagined spaces between the East and West. Shaw ’s opulent paintings of fantastical worlds were combined with historic textiles, furniture and drawings from the Whitworth's collection. The exhibition takes the form of an installation, drawing on influences of renaissance and baroque imagery, combined with theatrical extravagance, nature and poetry, to echo the mythic space Shaw creates in his paintings. New wallpaper designed by Shaw, commissioned specially for the exhibition, created an extraordinary backdrop for his work. The exhibition was reimagined for the South Asian context, during the Dhaka Art Summit 2018. A new network of eleven arts organisations from across the North of England and South Asia announced a three-year programme of co-commissions, exhibitions and intellectual exchange to celebrate shared heritage across continents and develop artistic talent. The New North and South network, supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England’s Ambition for Excellence programme, will bring prominence to the work of leading Bangladeshi, Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan and UK artists and include new artistic commissions, exhibitions and performances in Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool and in Colombo, Dhaka, Lahore, Karachi and Kochi.

ALL PROJECTS Untitled | 2017-2018 (Ongoing) Pablo Bartholomew THROUGH SEVERAL BODIES OF WORK CREATED WITH INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES IN NORTHEAST INDIA, PABLO BARTHOLOMEW HAS OBSERVED THAT THESE COMMUNITIES WEAR THEIR CULTURAL DNA THROUGH THEIR CLOTHING, ORNAMENTATION AND MARKING ON THEIR BODIES; CODES THAT THEY KEEP AS A FORM OF SELF IDENTITY. The Dhaka Art Summit featured Pablo Bartholomew from February 2-10, 2018. The exhibition later toured as part of the exhibition "A Beast, a God, and a Line," curated by Cosmin Costinas. 17 MARCH - 20 MAY 2018 | PARA SITE, HONG KONG 6-24 JUNE 2018 | TS1, YANGON 20 JULY - 7 OCTOBER 2018 | MUSEUM OF MODERN ART IN WARSAW With a father hailing from Burma and mother who is of partial Bengali origin, Pablo Bartholomew traces, in his newly commissioned project (a work in progress as part of a longer ongoing cross-border inquiry) the links between geographically fractured indigenous communities/ethnic minorities in Myanmar, India, and Bangladesh. Working within the Chakma community into which he is related from his mother’s side, he extends the scope of his practice by working with weavers. The artist asked these artisans to use their traditional idioms on back-strap looms (carried on the body through periods of migration) to weave graphic DNA patterns the imagery rendered through scientific testing. Through this project Bartholomew hopes to weaves together science, myth, legend and tradition, exploring a cross-border ethnic identity. Commissioned and Produced by Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Samdani Art Foundation

ALL PROJECTS MOTHERTONGUE, Australian Center for Contemporary Art 22 April- 18 June 2023, Melbourne, Australia mOTHERTONGUE surveyed the past two decades of Mithu Sen’s compelling art practice, including a series of major new installations. The exhibition was presented as an illuminated mind map. As a constellation of image and word associations that move between visible surfaces and interior states, mOTHERTONGUE charts how language is channelled into forms as diverse as drawing, sculpture, media and performance to create complex artworks which elude definitional categories, institutional power structures and imposed identities related to race, gender, ethnicity and location. Her work 'Batil Kobitaboli (Poems Declined), 2014' from DAS 2014 was also in display. Rather than celebrate her success or importance as a South Asian artist, Mithu Sen used her invitation to DAS 2014 to create a project called Poems Declined that celebrates the work and efforts of poets whose work was not previously given prominence or attention, to those whose work was declined or rejected. In her experience in Dhaka, Sen realized that poetry was not limited to poets, the Bangla language itself was poetry, and poetry itself is a language in Bangladesh, sharing that “In Bangladesh, the language is not Bengali but Poetry.” This exhibition is presented in partnership with Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) .

ALL PROJECTS Fragility and Resilience Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai, 6 September - 7 December 2024 Ayesha Sultana's solo exhibition, Fragility and Resilience , curated by Sabih Ahmed, is on view at the Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai. The exhibition explores the delicate balance between the vulnerability and strength of our planet in the 21st century. Featuring a diverse array of artworks that includes the first-ever unveiling of Sultana’s hand-blown glass sculptures, the exhibition is designed to guide viewers through a journey of discovery and reflection. The Samdani Art Foundation has loaned several works from our collection for the exhibition, alongside contributions from prominent collectors including Prateek & Priyanka Raja, Akshay Chudasama, the Ishara Art Foundation, and the Prabhakar Collection.

ALL PROJECTS Hill Artist Group Dhaka Art Summit 2020 The Hill Artists’ Group is based in 3 districts along Bangladesh’s south eastern border with India and Myanmar known as the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Home to 11 distinct indigenous groups with different languages and cultures, the region is under the control of the Bangladeshi army. In this highly militarised environment, many indigenous people are reluctant to be visible in public space. The Hill Artists’ Group organises exhibitions and also art camps for artists and young people, underlining the need for solidarity across the 11 ethnic communities to preserve their diversity of cultures and languages within a Bengali majority country. Their project for DAS was developed through a workshop with Alejandra Ballón Gutiérrez on the methodologies of SÖI (a public mural project in Lima, Peru with the Amazonian community Shipibo-Conibo). The Hill Artists’ Group identified a key shared practice of ‘jhum’ cultivation, also known as ‘slash and burn agriculture’, where crops are planted on land first cleared of trees and vegetation that are burnt on the spot. The soil contains potassium from the burnt plant materials which increases the nutrient content of the soil. The place of cultivation shifts annually, and every year indigenous farmers raise temporary houses in the mountain forests for months known as ‘Jhum Houses.’ This mural of a Jhum House weaves together textile patterns from the 11 communities, identified by different members of the Hill Artists’ Group as a statement of togetherness.

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

ALL PROJECTS Ex-Ist Curated by Ambereen Karamant Ex-ist* is the experience of following an unconscious road map of one’s everyday life, enveloped in various images. Our gaze has to wander over the surface of the images, feeling its way, following the complex path of the image’s structure on one hand and the observer’s intention on the other. The journey of being charged with just glancing at an image casts a magic spell on our imagination - emotions are stirred that put us under a trance - and the nature of the still image transforms it from a single image into moving scenes in our minds. The ostensible function of an image is just to inform, the magic on the surface itself does not bring change, but it is the power inside us that influences us to imagine better. This practice can evoke both positive and negative experiences, and can have a mysterious quality of enchantment, through a series of episodic events of looking at an image that binds together vision, hearing and imagination. Our lives are filtered through these magical images; they act as screens between man and the world, allowing human beings to ‘ex-ist ’ . We are constantly living in the past which is documented on different electronic devices used in daily life, creating a visual assemblage of still and moving images; and the present is recorded and re-lived on screens. An abundance of these significant surfaces, images appearing on laptops, television, cellphones, and reflective surfaces helps us to construe the world “out there.” These are meant to render the world imaginable for us, by abstracting it, by reducing its four dimensional space-plus-time to a two-dimensional plane. The specific capacity to abstract planes from the space-time ‘out there’ and to re-project these abstractions back ‘out there’ might be called ‘imagination’. Aroosa Rana in her works explores this imaginative world of realities, which intentionally or unintentionally cross over readily on a regular basis in our daily lives. The participating artists have learnt to manipulate metal, plastic and glass (the camera) in a way that expresses their ideas: Amber Hammad searches her own identity in observing the other; Wardah Shabbir works on old black-andwhite European photographs, adorning them further with miniature style painting, creating a handmade visual statement which can be seen as miniatures of ‘posed reality’ of dispersed lives and preset perceptions. The picture may not be a whole reality, but there is always a presumption that something exists, or used to exist. Other artists have used images that have dispersed into our stagnant lives by consciously breaking through them, playing with the programmes of the camera, and entering the photographic universe by creating an image of a magic state of things whose symbol informs its receivers how to act in an improbable fashion. We are living in a world where we are surrounded by redundant images that create a standstill situation in our ever-moving lives. Sajjad Ahmed uses imagery from mundane life, digitally fabricating and dividing the assemblage into geometric blocks which appear as a one-shot photograph, while Muhammad Zeeshan studies the imagery of faith, myths and transcendental narratives, producing them in a laser scouring technique that examines the power and longevity of a particular class on imagery. These image-makers are asked to play against the camera and to place within the image something that is not in its programme. Farida Batool creates an illusion and three-dimensional depth in her lenticular print, photographing her walk in the city of Lahore that allows her to take a new walking partner each time the image is viewed. To understand a painting, the observer needs to understand the relation between the image and its transference by the painter. It is this process that needs to be decoded, and decoding process is the pass to the ‘world of magic’ one can experience through this exhibition. * Ex-ist is a term used by Vilem Flusser in his book ‘Towards a Philosophy of Photography,’ Reaktion Books Ltd, 1983, pp. 9. Artists Farida Batool Farida Batool (b. 1970) a Lahore-based , internationally educated researcher, educationalist and established visual artist is best known for her lenticular prints, a process that gives her work a sense of dynamism, intrigue and metamorphosis through the three dimensional depth and illusion created. Her works are politically charged and are a representation of the socio-political climate of Pakistan. In the work exhibited at the Dhaka Art Summit 2014 she narrates ‘the story by taking you on a tour of Lahore’ by photographing herself walking in different parts of the city, capturing the expressions of strangers around her, the ever changing setting of the city influenced by political posters, walk-chalkings of religious rallies, providing a commentary to the once rich cultured, historical city engulfed by the menace of corruption and terrorism. Sajjad Ahmed Sajjad Ahmed (b. 1982) is a Lahore-based visual artist, exploring concerns such as holding abstraction and representation within the same surface, by using imagery from mundane parts of life that resemble the composition of paintings from art history. For the exhibition Ex-ist, one of the prints is digitally fabricated by two realistic images overlapping each other, forming in totality a geometric abstraction. The coalescence of western and eastern images is found in his works; the exhibition includes a print of Nato soldiers dominated by Mughal miniature war painting, creating a visual assembly of time, space and events. The other exhibited work, with an aerial looking view of a flock of sheep and precisely divided geometric patterned fields, is an assemblage from various sources appearing as a one shot photograph bearing a moment of mundane looking activity. The work addresses the broader system of multiplicities of power, economics, globalisation and individual identities. Amber Hammad Amber Hammad (b. 1981) Lahore-born and educated is best known for her works that are a commentary of her sociocultural environment; this is brought into her work by appropriating images from art history and the personification of characters. The idea of self and the other, gender ideologies and dress, and their relationship to the formation of identity, have always been part of the visual content of her work. For the new body of works for Ex-ist she has chosen her contemporaries’ works instead of images from art ‘history’. The search for her own identity is deeply rooted in observing ‘the other’ which ironically can only be perceived in her new works through her bias and personal view. Aroosa Rana Aroosa Rana (b. 1981) is a Lahore-based artist and educator trained as a painter who is currently working in digital media, photography and video. Her art is a constant query about ‘who is a viewer and who is being viewed’ and the position of the viewer. Being surrounded by an abundance of still and moving images - captured by cameras, seen on television, laptops, cell phone screens as well as reflective surfaces of many other objects simulate visual experiences; the mirage of so many realities exists all at the same time. The exhibited works for Ex-ist document these realities which, intentionally or unintentionally, cross over readily and regularly in our daily lives. Wardah Shabbir Wardah Shabbir (b. 1987) Lahore-born and educated, absorbs and translates what she sees and experiences within her environment into her ‘own language’ mostly using a traditional miniature painting technique. Her works can be described as surreal; she successfully draws from her imagination to create fantastical beings that only exist in her mind. In her new works for Ex-ist, she has worked on the surfaces of 19th century European photographs, connecting them with miniatures being produced in the subcontinent simultaneously. These hand-made visual statements give a glimpse of the East’s perception of the West, an attempt at reconciling the orient-occident polarities that exist in our minds. Muhammad Zeeshan Muhammad Zeeshan (b. 1980) raised in Mirpurkhas, living in Karachi, worked as a cinema board painter before he was trained as a miniature painter in Lahore. Still developing his practice, he now employs found images and videos from popular culture (posters, cable TV and magazines) and iconic ‘high’ art. At times he rephotographs the images with different lenses to create various effects, drawing out physical and thematic aspects that interest him. For Ex-ist, he combines faith, myths and transcendental narratives with modern laser scouring techniques examining the power and longevity of a particular class of imagery.

ALL PROJECTS World Weather Network Formed in response to the climate emergency, the World Weather Network is a constellation of weather stations set up by 28 arts agencies around the world and an invitation to look, listen, learn, and act. From June 21, 2022, to June 21, 2024, artists, writers, and communities shared observations, stories, reflections, and images about their local weather, creating an archipelago of voices and viewpoints. Engaging climate scientists and environmentalists, the World Weather Network brought together diverse worldviews and different ways of understanding the weather across multiple localities and languages.