ALL PROJECTS Art Around the Table We at the Samdani Art Foundation see our community as a body that is nourished by a constant flow of ideas, provocations, care, debate, and curiosity. For nearly ten years the Samdani Art Foundation has built an intellectual movement, punctuated every two years by a thought-provoking, joyous physical event: The Dhaka Art Summit (DAS). Today we announce the launch of a new programme: Art Around the Table. Via our social media channels, we will serve up activities, things to look, listen and react to, around thousands of literal and figurative tables across Bangladesh and the globe. The diverse group of artists, curators and writers who make this possible have one thing in common: in exchange for their contributions, they have generously agreed that food will be provided in their name to be shared around the tables of people in need in Bangladesh through a partnership with the JAAGO Foundation. Over nine days in February, half a million of us dressed up, went out, and explored together the euphoria of being part of a movement. The Dhaka Art Summit (DAS 2020) may have been one of the last major embodied gatherings of makers and thinkers this year and for some time to come, but its real purpose has always been to set the stage for what comes next. “Unless this kind of wonderful effort is supplemented by another kind of effort [meaning activism outside of the exhibition], we cannot achieve the impossible possibility of a socially just world,” said Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in her speech at Dhaka Art Summit 2018. We have always sought to sustain the momentum of the fresh thoughts, innovative ideas and new relationships made possible by the Summit; to make sure the thousands of physical interactions and exchanges flourish and grow into actions after everyone has gone home. Working together across the global majority world, we must come up with ways to overcome political and geographical challenges as well as the isolation some of us encounter, often without formal infrastructures. Art Around the Table aims to unite us and to set the table for a more equal world. We have built a school (of thought) and will continue to make sure it prospers because we believe we are all students. We are commissioning new work from which we can all learn. As members of our movement gather round to take part, the JAAGO Foundation, will be using Art Around the Table activities in their schools in Bangladesh, which they run in addition to responding to the Covid-19 crisis. We're hoping the ideas, projects, and further provocations will be as diverse as the tables they pile up on. On Friday 12 June, we launched the first Art Around the Table digital workshop with the Sylhet born artist Rana Begum, who is the first Bangladeshi artist to be a member of the Royal Academy in London. This workshop is available via the social media channels of Samdani Art Foundation and our dedicated Instagram page @artaroundthetable ; new programmes contributed by artists and thinkers from Bangladesh and around the world will be released every Friday. ABOUT JAAGO FOUNDATION The JAAGO Foundation is a registered civil society organization with a vision of eliminating poverty and illiteracy from Bangladesh and rebuilding the nation. JAAGO (founded in April 2007),is among the few organisations which provides free-of-cost schooling exclusively for underprivileged children living in Bangladesh. JAAGO started with only 17 children and a single classroom and overthe past 13 years its platform has grown to accommodate learning for 3500 children currently enrolledin its 11schools all around Bangladesh. JAAGO also works to empower the youth of Bangladesh with its youth development program- Volunteer for Bangladesh. This program was established in 2011 with the purpose to create a platform that would allow youth to raise their voice and come together to reduce social and economic inequalities to build a better Bangladesh. JAAGO Foundation and its team of over 3500 volunteers across Bangladesh have come together to provide needed relief in these challenging Covid-19 times. Through collaborating with various organizations who have been helping out financially, as well as providing food items and transportation services, JAAGO Foundation has been able to reach out to a vast number of people through its network. JAAGO’s school venues are being utilized as hubs to distribute packages of food (containing rice, flour, pulses, potatoes, salt, soap, and other needed supplies) to people in need in locations including Dhaka, Chittagong, Rangpur, Dinajpur, Gaibandha, Madaripur, Rajshahi, Habiganj, Bandarban and Teknaf. JAAGO and its collaborators are working to keep families in Bangladesh from facing the crisis of hunger while ensuring the safety of its volunteers through social distancing. Artists' contributions to Art Around the Table The first artistic contribution to #artaroundthetable is by the Swiss based design non profit common interest who designed our logo. Learn more about it below: Rana Begum Our first family artmaking workshop as part of our new initiative 'Art Around the Table' is presented by Rana Begum. Habiba Nowrose Bangladeshi artist Habiba Nowrose inspires us to consider our leftover food and the potential found in waste. Gidree Bawlee Our third video workshop comes all the way from Balia village in Thakurgaon, Bangladesh and is our first workshop in Bangla (with english subtitles). Led by seven amazing children, the workshop inspires to make puppets out of objects found in nature - like leaves and seeds. Gisela McDaniel Our fourth video for Art Around the Table is presented by Detroit based artist Gisela McDaniel. Soma Surovi Jannat Our fifth video for Art Around the Table is presented by winner of the Samdani Art Award 2020, Soma Surovi Jannat. Tsherin Sherpa Our 6th Art Around the Table video workshop is presented by Tsherin Sherpa. Tsherin Sherpa presents us one of his drawings from the 'Protector' series to fill the colour out and make one-of-a-kind piece in collaboration with Tsherin Sherpa. Yasmin Jahan Nupur Our 7th Art Around the Table video is presented by Bangladeshi artist Yasmin Jahan Nupur. Yasmin Jahan Nupur has also arranged a virtual tea party through a performative process. Joydeb Roaja Our 7th Art Around the Table video workshop is presented by Bangladeshi artist Joydeb Roaja. In the video he shows the how he uses natural materials from his surrounding in his performance. Tahia Farhin Haque Our 8th Art Around the Table is presented by Bangladeshi artist Tahia Farhin Haque. Tahia Farhin Haque’s work shatters traditional stereotypes about women, specifically in Islamic countries, by bringing women’s unique perspectives to the forefront of her photography practice. She hopes to lend a voice to issues that are unheard of and unseen in the rest of the world, while making her viewers question their paradigms on a personal level. Dr. Nurur Rahman Khan This #artaroundthetable session brings in a lecture presented by architect, educator and researcher Dr. Nurur Rahman Khan on 'Architect Muzharul Islam: Politics and Architecture'. Najmun Nahar Keya Samdani Art Award 2020 shortlisted artist Najmun Nahar Keya is a multidisciplinary artist who employs old photographs, gold gilding, drawing and printmaking in her work - which she juxtaposes to create nostalgic settings. Grace Grace Grace Our fourteenth Art Around the Table is presented by Grace Grace Grace featuring Bangladeshi famous singer Momtaz! Grace Grace Grace is a collective of artists who focus on the politics of everyday life, gender and ageing through their performance. Their newest piece CLUB addresses gender and ageing which involves sequins, movement and the disconnect of older women clubbing, owning/taking up space ON THE DANCE FLOOR. Diana Campbell As the Artistic Director of the Samdani Art Foundation and Chief Curator of the Dhaka Art Summit since 2014, Diana shares the transformation of Dhaka Art Summit as a South Asian event to a platform that connects global art with Bangladesh in this session of Art Around the Table. Bishwajit Goswami, Tania Sultana Bristy and Barisho Dhora This Art Around the Table is presented by artists-trio Bishwajit Goswami, Tania Sultana Bristy and their daughter, Barisho Dhora.

Visit Dhaka Samdani Art Foundation Level 5, Suites 501 & 502 Shanta Western Tower, 186 Gulshan- Tejgaon Link Road Tejgaon I/A, Dhaka- 1208 Visit Samdani Art Foundation Applying for a VISA The Bangladeshi Government provides a visa-on-arrival (VOA) service for citizens of the following countries: United States of America, Canada, New Zealand, Russian Federation, China (excluding Hong Kong passports), Japan, Singapore, South Korea, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia (KSA), Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Malaysia, and all European countries If applying for a VOA, you will need to provide a photocopy of your passport, two passport-size photographs, a printed copy of your hotel reservation (including a full address and contact number), a copy of your return flight ticket, and a completed arrival card and visa application: copies can be obtained on arrival at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport. The VOA fee is approximately $52 USD (other currencies are accepted) and must be paid in cash (debit and credit cards are NOT accepted). If you need to apply for a visa before you fly, please contact the nearest Bangladesh High Commission/Embassy. For more info, visit the Bangladesh Ministry of Foreign Affairs . Our VIP team is there to assist you with visa letters or any queries. Please contact our VIP team here: vip@dhakaartsummit.org The Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport is served by numerous international and domestic airlines. Flight options from most international destinations are easily searchable through popular travel sites and travel search engines. Getting to Dhaka 01 Samdani Art Foundation is based in the Gulshan-Tejgaon link road, closer to the industrial and commercial are of Dhaka. Dhaka Art Summit, produced by the Samdani Art Foundation take place at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, in Segun Bagicha, Dhaka. Suitable hotels can be found through popular travel sites and hotel search engines. Due to the heavy traffic situation in Dhaka, we recommend international visitors to stay closer to the venue during the Dhaka Art Summit. For hotel options, download the recommended list Accommodation 02 The best way to move around on the streets of Dhaka is in a car. The best way to arrange a rental car is through your hotel concierge. In case, you decide to go and book a rental car by yourself here is what we recommend the followings: App-based ride share: Uber Pathao For pre-booking visit: RentalCarBD Sheba.xyz Bdcabs.com Getting around in Dhaka 03 The official currency in Bangladesh is the Taka: known as Bangladeshi Taka or BDT. The Taka is a restricted currency and you will only be able to obtain cash currency on your arrival in Bangladesh. Taking money out at an ATM is the quickest and easiest means of currency exchange, but don’t forget to tell your bank that you are travelling before you leave. There are also several money exchange available at the airport If you require further assistance, please email info@dhakaartsummit.org For press enquiries, please email press@dhakaartsummit.org or visit our press page Currency Exchange 04

ALL PROJECTS বন্যা (Bonna) DAS 2023 is told through the voice of বন্যা (Bonna), a character who speaks from Bangladesh to the world. She is a bold young girl who expresses her dynamic personality fearlessly, refusing to be silenced by her brothers, uncles, or forefathers. Bonna is a common name in Bangladesh, and it also means ‘flood.’ In Bangladesh, a flood does not simply translate into a singular connotation of “disaster.” The DAS concept of বন্যা (Bonna) challenges binaries - between necessity and excess, between regeneration and disaster, between adult and child, between male and female. DAS 2023 invokes and interpretsবন্যা (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 environmental crises and “discoveries” are named. বন্যা (Bonna),the young girl, is an activating creative force who offers us an invitation to join her in sharing stories and asking questions. She asks why the words for weather are gendered, what the relationship between gender, the built environment, and climate change might be…why her namesake has been deployed as a weapon against indigenous people for centuries across the continents. She is filled with wonder when she sees that the traces of her physical growth and traces of floods are measured with similar horizontal lines marked vertically on a wall. She wonders if her name might mean something different now, as the floods she encounters in traditional as well as modern forms of artistic expression are very different from the ones she witnesses outside with her own eyes today. “বন্যা (Bonna)” is joined by over 1,200 Bangladeshi children who made artistic contributions to the exhibition as part of the production process and education programming of DAS 2023. As with the movement of peoples and ideas, languages travel too, often embedded in songs and stories from which we can try to trace their point of origin. DAS 2023 considers the ways in which humans form, inherit, and establish vocabularies to understand the world around us, and the mistranslations that can ensue when we try to apply singular terms 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 are shapers of history and culture, as well as being metaphors for life in general. The aim is to see past the limits of translation which can be incapable of conveying the different ways we negotiate the world, while opening new channels for transcultural empathy. How do you tell the story of multiple crises, while facilitating hope? 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. 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.” For millennia, humans have invoked their minds and bodies through prayers, rituals, songs, and dances to summon rain from the sky. Bonna is now learning that humans with power are not only filling the earth with genetically modified seeds, but also now seeding the sky with clouds. During Bengali New Year, Bangladeshi people sing a song written by Rabindranath Tagore, Esho hey Boishakh, which calls upon the first month of summer to bring storms to wash away any residue of ugliness from the previous year. 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. Climate change is not unidirectional. It is a systemic and episodic transformation of ecologies, systems and structures over time. While these same conditions once historically evolved to be considered as protective, today they are fragile, imbalanced and precarious at multiple scales. DAS 2023, in collaboration with its artists and curators, presents the work of organizations from across the country who are realizing the capacity for more meaningful, just, and beautiful forms of life in situations some may misguidedly see as “hopeless.” Bonna is the overarching narrative of DAS 2023; made up of works of art that tell a story across the venue of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, also containing chapters within it which are complete exhibitions in themselves: Very Small Feelings; Samdani Art Award; To Enter the Sky; and Duality, which are also part of Bonna and are told through the voice of guest curators in dialogue with Chief Curator Diana Campbell, Ruxmini Reckvana Q Choudhury, Curator and Swilin Haque, Curatorial Assistant. ARTISTS: LOCATION: GROUND FLOOR Joydeb Roaja Submerged dream 8 (জলমগ্ন স্বপ্ন ৮), 2022-2023 Ink on Paper and board Commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2023 Courtesy of the artist and Jhaveri Contemporary This immersive installation submerges visitors in a metaphorical lake of tears. In 1962 under Pakistani rule with American financial and technical support, the construction of the Kaptai dam flooded 400km of Chakma land in what is now Bangladesh, even submerging the Chakma royal palace. Today, tourists in Bangladesh take boat rides over these beautiful waters, mostly unaware of the trauma submerged below the reflective surface that mirrors the sky. To the local indigenous Chakma people, this lake is the site of a heartbreaking event called Bor Porong, or “the great exodus.” Over 100,000 people from about 18,000 families, mostly from indigenous communities, were displaced, resulting in the forced migration to neighboring India of over 35,000 Chakmas and Hajongs. Dams and flooding are a shared weapon of violence against indigenous people all over the world. Roaja’s installation imagines people from the Chittagong Hill Tracts raising the submerged palace from the bottom of the lake back up to the surface, a promise of hope for renewed ways of life after the flood. Part of the artist’s making process involved interviewing multiple generations of indigenous people who remember life before the dam, and also younger generations who have only heard about life before the dam via storytelling and oral tradition. Roaja has an interconnected performance, painting and drawing practice that highlights the challenging social and political landscape of Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts. His works are tied to the experiences of indigeneity, often emphasizing the deep and symbiotic connection of indigenous people with their land as well as the fight for recognition and rights. His work is an empowering demand preservation of minority cultures. b.1973, Khagrachari; lives and works in Khagrachari Kasper Bosmans No Water, 2019/2023 Instruction based mural Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery No Water refers to the descending level of the ground water table, otherwise known as the boundary between water-saturated ground and unsaturated ground. This descent is partly the result of sand mining and the proliferation of concrete architecture. These works were produced according to the instructions of the artist Kasper Bosmans, which are always the same: the uppermost segment of the painting must be blue, the lowest one brown. Specific hues of each color are chosen by people who have a connection with the place where the work is being shown, in this case, nine people who have been working on Dhaka Art Summit since 2012. They also determine the height of the horizon, but this may never be situated precisely in the middle of the wall, giving rise to playful involvement to create a portrait of Dhaka Art Summit and its surroundings. This is part of a series of instruction based, participatory works found across the Summit. Bosmans is a storyteller; a keen observer of the many ways in which images probe the boundaries between nature and fiction, art and craft. From an intuitive, playful, as well as anthropological approach, he takes the remnants of local traditions, tales, and mythological iconography to speak about global questions in today’s world. b. 1990, Lommel; lives and works in Brussels Matt Copson Age of Coming, 2021 Laser animation with 16 minute audio soundtrack Samdani Art Foundation Collection Formed by a laser machine that flickers in nearly every color, a naked baby created by the artist Matt Copson faces storms inside and outside of his shapeshifting body, which sings to us about his existential conflicts. This work is inspired by the iconic self-help book Diary of a Baby that follows the journey of a baby discovering the world step by step until he turns four years old. The baby expresses how he feels hunger as a storm: “A storm threatens. The light turns metallic. The march of clouds across the sky breaks apart. Pieces of sky fly off in different directions. The wind picks up force, in silence. There are rushing sounds, but no motion. The wind and its sound have separated. Each chases after its lost partner in fits and starts. The world is disintegrating. Something is about to happen.” Copson’s ravenous baby swallows a chair, then a gun, then a plane and grows larger and larger until disintegrating into an abstract work of art. Copson talks about this shift: “The baby wants it all: every color possible, to grow and grow and this is impossible. The laser projector is a mechanical device and the growing density of information eventually means that it can no longer even depict an image and becomes a barrage of spinning broken lines.” This work captures the struggle of trying to obtain something impossible, and the beauty that can be found in these existential quests. Based on theatrical elements and artistic tropes, Copson broaches notions of contemporaneity, abstraction, automation, recurrence, the eternal, and the strange in his work as an artist and a director. He uses elements ranging from classical philosophy to traditional folklore to introduce familiar characters, sometimes partially sketched or whose process of abstraction is incomplete. Generally expressed in the form of a monologue, these characters are perceived through perpetual questioning as to their state or present situation, always hard to pin down and impossible to resolve. b. 1992, Oxford; lives and works in London and Los Angeles Miet Warlop Chant For Hope, 2022-2023 Participatory performance Commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation in partnership with KANAL, Centre Pompidou, Brussels with support from the Flemish Region of Belgium and EUNIC Inspired by the history of the language movement and movement of language in Bangladesh, visitors get swept into the trance conjured by a participatory dancing sculpture which injects energy to propel makers (of history) past exhaustion. Chant for Hope is an incantatory ritual that aims, literally and figuratively, to convey hope for a better world. The performers act as cheerleaders and freedom fighters, injecting energy and meaning into the struggle for life. A group of performers sculpt a series of words in Bengali by flooding molds with plaster, which become moving sculptures that can be rearranged and find new meaning as they are passed between the performers and the audience. The audience thus becomes a participant: spectators are asked to take all the words out into the 'real' world, into the street and/or into their homes. The content of Chant for Hope thus spreads, literally, as a critical reflection and as an invitation to connect ourselves more with each other, as human beings. Warlop’s work is about making the static-dynamic and making the dynamic-static. She treats art as an experience, like ritual concerts or objects animated by choreography. She works in cycles rather than in projects and believes in the attitude that accompanies an idea, using a combination of performance, choreography, theater, and sculpting skills to make her shows. Her work amplifies the dynamics of personal relationships that are created between memories, skin, objects and sounds. b. 1978, Torhout; lives and works in Brussels LOCATION: SOUTH PLAZA Afrah Shafiq Where do the Ants Go?, 2022-2023 Immersive game installation This project was created as part of the "to-gather" international collaboration of Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council with curatorial support of Diana Campbell, Fernanda Brenner, Chus Martinez, Daniel Baumann, and Iaroslav Volovod Where do the Ants Go? is a large-scale sculpture of an anthill that the audience can enter and interact with a colony of ants that live within it. Using real time inputs the “players” within the anthill make choices that affect the behavior of the individual ants and the collective outcome of the colony. The anthill is imagined as a real-life rendering from the game Minecraft, using the logic of voxels and referencing immersive environments, speculative futures and web3.0; the ant colony set within it translates ant behaviors from the natural world into algorithms and data sets. As more and more of human existence continues to play out in the virtual space where conversation is mediated by seemingly invisible algorithms, the installation creates a meeting ground between the physical and digital, the algorithm and consciousness, the virtual world and the natural world and offers a space to step back, observe patterns and perhaps even re-set. Shafiq uses the process of research as an artistic playground. She intertwines archival findings, history, memory, folklore and fantasy to create a speculative world born of remix culture. Her work moves across various mediums drawing from the handmade language of traditional folk forms and connecting them to the digital language of the Internet and video games. When she is not glued to her computer she makes glass mosaics. b. 1989, Bangalore; lives and works in Goa Ahmet Öğüt Balanced Protest Banners, 2022-2023 Bamboo stilts, Digital Print, Performance Commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, and Latvian Center for Contemporary Art with support from SAHA and Goethe Institut Bangladesh and the curatorial contribution of iLiana Fokianaki Performers walk across the South Plaza on bamboo stilts that are both support structures and also protest banners highlighting difficult-to-find goods and commodities in Bangladesh such as cherry blossoms, avocados, blueberries and kiwis. This precarious balancing act invites us to consider what we might take for granted as we exert ourselves in the world. Bangladeshis in villages, as well as Indians in similar climatic contexts, address their rising water levels by creating tools for living similar in form to these stilts, finding new ways to walk on unstable ground.Öğüt is a sociocultural initiator, artist, and lecturer. Working across a variety of media, including photography, video, and installation, the artist often uses humor and small gestures to offer his commentary on serious and/or pressing social and political issues. Öğüt is regularly collaborating with people from outside of the art world to create shifts in collective perception of society. B. 1981, Diyarbakır; lives and works in Istanbul, Amsterdam and Berlin This work is also part of Very Small Feelings Antony Gormley TURN, 2022-2023 A 2.5km line of bamboo Commissioned by Samdani Art FoundationCourtesy of the artist and Xavier Hufkens Bamboo, the world’s largest grass, can be a metaphor for generative transfers of energy in Bangladesh. It grows high out of the earth powered by photosynthesis and when harvested, is bundled and tied together to form large rafts that float down Bangladesh’s many rivers, then unbundled and transferred to construction sites across the country to be transformed into architecture, a kind of second-body for human and non-human bodies to dwell in. Antony Gormley and a team of Bangladeshi artisans have transformed 2.5km of bamboo into a drawing in space that could also be seen as a sculpture or as a second skin for the visitors passing through it. It is an energy field, exploding like unfurled springs and seemingly boundless orbits, a line transformed into an infinite loop without beginning or end. It makes us think about time, which can be perceived as linear in some contexts, circular in others. Our bodies, and how they move in making drawings, sculptures, and architecture are interconnected in their role in world-building. How can we create and collaborate on the same scale that society has the capacity to destroy? Continuing along the shapeshifting journey of bamboo in Bangladesh, the work will be recycled into other forms after Dhaka Art Summit is over. Antony Gormley is widely acclaimed for his sculptures, installations and public artworks that investigate the relationship of the human body to space. His work has developed the potential opened up by sculpture through a critical engagement with both his own body and those of others in a way that confronts fundamental questions of where human beings stand in relation to nature and the cosmos. Gormley continually tries to identify the space of art as a place of becoming in which new behaviors, thoughts and feelings can arise. He studied meditation in South Asia in the 1970s prior to attending art school, and this is his first return to the region since 1974. b. 1950, London; lives and works in London Ashfika Rahman বেহুলা আজকাল (Behula These Days), 2022-2023 Community-led photography and textile installation Commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation Courtesy of the artist বেহুলা আজকাল (Behula These Days) is a collaborative community project articulating the violence against women around in one of the most flood-prone areas in Bangladesh, which is also the birthplace of the mythological figure Behula. Behula is the protagonist of one of the most popular epic mythological love stories in Bengal - Behula and Lakhindar - written between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries. In the plot line, Lakhindar (Behula’s husband) lost his life on their wedding night through the curse of the Hindu goddess of snakes, Manasa. In the hopes that a victim of a snake bite could miraculously be brought back to life, it was customary that the dead body would float down the river rather than be cremated. Behula accompanied her husband’s dead body on a raft towards heaven, facing many dangers and praying to Manasa and all of the gods to revive her husband. Once in heaven, Behula pleased all of the gods with her beautiful and enchanting dancing and earned her husband's life back. Behula’s sacrifice and isolation from society are regarded as the epitome of a loving and loyal wife in Bengali culture. This popular mythological love story is translated through the lens of feminism in Ashfika Rahman’s work. Idolizing such a sacrifice and celebrating such isolation through the reverence of Behula, while villainizing Manasa (the goddess of the snakes) who needed devotion from a man in order to reach heaven, speaks to ongoing systemic violence against women. Behula and the many women she represents float without agency on their own lifes’ paths. Rahman’s epic investigative project traces the footprints of Behula through the riverline and landscapes mentioned in the epic story. She collected stories of violence against women on the river bank, which is isolated and almost impossible to navigate during the many floods there. The women illustrated their stories on their own portraits displayed here, which reconsider this epic love story from the lens of contemporary reality. Death rates during floods do not have gender balance; more women die in floods, speaking to the gendered nature of climate-based violence, which is tied to societal beliefs about a woman’s role at home. Rahman’s practice explores and experiments with photography, using media ranging from historical techniques like 19th-century printmaking to documentary approaches and contemporary media. Photography is the predominant medium that she uses to express her views on complex systemic social issues such as violence, rape, and religious extremism – often overlooked by the administrative machinery of the state. In her practice, she creates a conceptual timeline of the stereotypes of victims, repeated across history, notably in regard to minority communities in Bangladesh. b. 1988, Dhaka; lives and works in Dhaka Bhasha Chakrabarti নরম অতিক্রমণ (Tender Transgressions), 2022-2023 Site Specific Installation Made from Jute, Bamboo, and Tropical Plants Commissioned and Produced by Samdani Art Foundation with support from EMK Center, Dhaka Courtesy of the artist and Experimenter নরম অতিক্রমণ (Tender Transgressions) is a site specific installation which explores the concept of Bonna as the feminine form of bonno, meaning wild, untameable, and excessive, all words historically used to denigrate women’s sexuality. The large-scale work transforms nine columns that structurally hold up the building of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy into a jungle of anthropomorphic feminine forms. It materially references Navapatrika, a Hindu practice common in Bengal, where plants are wrapped in sarees and worshiped as embodiments of the goddess Durga. Here, the plant being venerated is jute: essential to the economy of Bangladesh, dependent on excessive rainfall, and commonly used as a fabric support in Western painting. This transformation of rigid architectural supports into supple caryatids of cloth and crop, breaks down binaries of strong and soft, functional and decorative, necessity and excess. Chakrabarti engages with art-making as a process of mending, which is primarily associated with clothing, and then extended to relationships. As opposed to other forms of repair, traditionally undertaken by men in a professional capacity, mending is largely non-transactional and often delegated to women. Working across painting, weaving, sound, and installation, her work explores how art can function as a mode of public discourse rather than being a self-contained discipline, bringing feminist ways of being to the fore in a patriarchal world. b. 1991, Honolulu; lives and works in New Haven Bishwajit Goswami ঋতু, 2022-2023 Mural and interactive performance Commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation Courtesy of the artist The word ঋতু (Reetu), meaning ‘seasons’, is also a commonly used first name for Bengali girls, culturally and symbolically related to the name ‘বন্যা (Bonna)’. Bangladesh has six seasons (and some would argue “had” as climate change has made two of the seasons difficult to recognize anymore) each harkening a particular mood, feelings and cultural practices. (Human) life can also be measured in seasons. Goswami connects these personal stories of land, nature and seasons with words, pigment and touch. Fragments of memory enable a sensorial, intimate exchange of feelings and words to take place with the artist, and within the self, manifesting in moving drawings connecting our inner and outer worlds. Bishwajit Goswami began his career as a figurative, hyper-realist painter. Inspired by the Bangla language and its written formation, the artist has been breaking down and rearranging and reconstructing his artistic language into abstract forms and shapes. Institution building and education is also a core-part of his creative practice as the founder of Brihatta Art Foundation and as a professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Dhaka. B. 1981, Netrakona; lives and works in Dhaka Roman Ondák Measuring the Universe, 2007/2023 For the whole duration of the exhibition, gallery attendants offer to the exhibition visitors marking their height on the gallery walls along with their first name and the date on which the measurement was taken. Performance, felt-tip pens, guards, audienceFrom the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York As we grow(up), our scale to the world and our understanding of time changes. Flood lines and people are measured in similar ways; vertical markings on walls. Measuring the Universe extends out of Roman Ondák’s interest in blurring lines between art and everyday life, and using simple means to create complex images that can metaphorically compete with cutting-edge technology. Ondák got the idea to create this work after frequently taking measurements of his sons’ heights at home as they were growing up, and he created this instruction-based work by extrapolating this personal, intimate act into an exhibition space where guards write visitors’ measurements on the wall, creating the presence of people into a physical object. The work begins with a blank, white, room, but over time, a thick black band of names will begin to encircle the walls, almost resembling a galaxy where each black mark of a visitor’s name could resemble a star. These marks are part of registering the passage of time, the public experience of Dhaka Art Summit. Ondák’s artistic interventions blur the boundaries between art and the everyday, challenging traditional hierarchies between artists and non-artists, the artwork and the spectator and between public and private domains. In presenting elements of everyday life in an art context, new perspectives on social relations and human experience arise. Ondak’s relational art practice breaks with the traditional idea of the art object - the constructed social environment becomes the art. Choosing immersion over representation, he invites viewers, friends and family, to play a vital role in his work, enlisting their own creativity in the process of following his instructions. The result is a controlled study of collective discovery and imagination. b. 1966, Zilina; lives and works in Bratislava Sumayya Vally They who brings rain, brings life, 2022-2023 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” on the 2nd floor of DAS 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, GALLERY 4: STORMS HAVE EYES AND EYES HAVE STORMS Antora Mehrukh Azad Ground Zero, 2022-2023 Oil on Canvas Commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation Courtesy of the artist Ground Zero is a large-scale landscape painting that depicts the modern relationship between nature and humans. The work depicts how the natural Bangladeshi landscape has gradually been subdued and replaced by citified objects such as traffic signs, poles, and neon colors. It is a stylized, exaggerated rendition of common Bangladeshi flood scenes. Bangladesh is suffering from severe floods and rising sea levels, more extreme than in the past as a result of global warming. With the next flood perpetually around the corner, Bangladesh is frequently referred to as “ground zero for climate change.” The bright neon pink water body symbolizes how this situation is not entirely natural but rather manmade, and how silently Bangladeshis are metaphorically treading water as the sea level rises, finding new ways to survive. Azad’s work is based on the modern connection between nature and humanity. Exaggerating the increased toxicity in this relationship with an overtly artificial color palette, her paintings reveal how urban life is gradually taking over the natural world. b. 1994, Dhaka; lives and works in Dhaka Ayesha Sultana Breath Count, 2019 Mark-making on clay-coated paper Samdani Art Foundation Collection Nightfall, 2022 Acrylic and oil on canvas Samdani Art Foundation Collection Untitled, 2023 Aluminum Commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation with support from Experimenter Courtesy of the artist and Experimenter Untitled, 2023 Aluminum Commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation with support from Experimenter Courtesy of the artist and Experimenter Ayesha Sultana’s recent work negotiates space and distance by measuring the space between things – such as the breaks between taking breaths – marking the rhythm of the day. She contemplates the relationship between her hand, her body, and the rest of the landscape surrounding her, making visible the motion of rhythm without being seen. Through a body of scratch drawings on clay-coated paper, Breath Count are personal explorations of movement, mark-making and corporeality. Ayesha reveals staccato patterns that represent a delicate inward probe of her own body using count, distance, motion and removal in breath in these works. Like the marble lines in Louis Kahn’s parliament building, which mark the labor of a day’s work casting concrete, Sultana’s marks measure the labor of internal bodily systems, which are related to the toxicity of the world outside which are internalized as we breathe. Floor-based aluminum sculptures seem to freeze a flood of acid rain, holding toxicity back from its onward journey. A painting depicting the sea and a seemingly infinite space beyond can be seen as a portrait of the artist’s personal emotions as well as her constant return to looking at water as an amorphous, shape-shifting medium that holds more than what is apparent on its surface. Sultana works with drawing, painting, sculpture,and sound, through processes that translate notions of space. She employs drawing as a tool of inquiry, through cutting, folding, stitching, layering, recording, and tracing applied to her series characterized by repetition, variation, and rhythm. Sultana often draws inspiration from architecture and the natural environment. b. 1984 in Jessore; lives and works in Dhaka Hana Miletic Materials, 2022 Hand-woven and hand-knit textile (azure blue cottolin, cobalt blue repurposed mercerised cotton, dark blue peace silk, deep blue organic cottolin, gold repurposed polyester, indigo washed rub- ber cotton, ocean blue organic linen, variegated blue recycled wood, and white peace silk) Materials, 2022 Hand-woven (barley white organic cotton, beige repurposed mercerised cotton, brown variegated recycled wool, gold metal yarn, and organic hemp) Materials, 2022 Hand-woven textile (beige peace silk, and white repurposed polyester) Materials, 2022 Hand-woven and felt textile (copper repurposed polyester, dandelion yellow, dark brown, cinnamon brown, russet brown, and white-yellow raw wool) Commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation with the support of the Flanders Region of Belgium Courtesy of the artist, LambdaLambdaLambda and The Approach The positions, shapes, colors and textures of repairs and transformations in public space, often made in quick and improvised ways on buildings, infrastructure and vehicles as the material consequences of economic and political actions, can also be seen as marks of gestures of care and repair. They are core to the way the artist Hana Miletić experiences the world, and these woven sculptures are based on repairs and transformations that the artist observed after a recent flood in her home country, Croatia. The museum quarter where the artist was exhibiting flooded due to heavy rainfall combined with rising sea levels. As is the case of Bangladesh, but admittedly to a lesser extent, this huge influx of water is the result of climate change. The world outside seeped into the museum world inside, a normally pristine, utopian space. The artist photographed the repairs and transformations made by the city authorities and the individual residents the morning after the flood, and based on these photographs, she produced these works for Dhaka. Through these hand-woven textiles, Miletić is sharing in Bangladesh the soft power of care and resilience from her homeland, and proposing a dialogue between these two geographically remote yet familiar practices of repair. Miletić reflects on issues of representation and social reproduction by making linkages between photography and weaving. The artist models her handwoven textiles after her photographs that document vernacular, often do-it-yourself, repairs in public space. Remaking these repairs allows Miletić to understand and participate in the complexity of society, striving to tell alternative feminist stories of technology and progress stemming from the loom, the precursor of the computer today. Miletić uses the weaving process – which requires considerable time and dedication – as a way to counteract certain economic and social conditions at work, such as acceleration, standardization and transparency. b. 1982, Zagreb; lives and works in Brussels and Zagreb Krishna Reddy River, 1959 Whirlpool, 1963 Samdani Art Foundation Collection Krishna Reddy’s prints consider elements of nature and his life experiences in diverse landscapes. Early representational works including Insect (1952) and Fish (1952) explore the physical structure of those animals, physically bringing about the image by mixing liquid inks of different densities together at the same time, freezing them in time by printing them on a single plate. Through the 1950s, his works became progressively more abstract, and River (1959) refers to the movement of its subject but avoids direct representation. Reddy’s prints of the 1960s reflect a strong sense of dynamism, as Wave (1963) and Whirlpool (1963) each reveal the immediacy of water in motion, and through color variation and modulation of line show the fleeting collision of water with air and light. Reddy was born in rural Andhra Pradesh, India and educated at the idyllic Kala Bhavan at Santiniketan. As a student of pioneering artist Nandalal Bose at Santiniketan in the mid 1940s, Reddy absorbed India’s great heritage of figuration by traveling to historical sites including Ajanta and drawing the goddesses represented at the caves. He later studied sculpture under famed British artist Henry Moore, whose work shaped Reddy’s abstracted figurative sculptures. Reddy then moved to Paris where he joined Stanley William Hayter’s intaglio printmaking studio, Atelier 17. He approached the intaglio plate from the perspective of a sculptor, lending a sculptural quality to his printmaking throughout his career. At Atelier 17, Reddy invented the technique of simultaneous color printmaking by experimenting with the use of several colors of different viscosities on a single plate. Reddy is best known for this innovation, and it can be seen in the fluid layering of colors in the works on view here, especially from the 1960s onwards. b. 1929, Nandanoor; d. 2018, New York Lala Rukh Mirror Image II 1, 2 & 3, 2011 Graphite on carbon paper Samdani Art Foundation Collection Gazing deep into the dark black carbon paper, subtle, almost flickering glimpses of water’s movement on a moonlit night reveal themselves to the viewer. In the words of the artist and art historian Mariah Lookman, the subtle graphite markings appear “like phosphates that are able to absorb and reflect back barely visible traces of light. The marks one can see are like those signs of life that are reflected back onto the paper by hand of the artist, who [was] living through perhaps the bleakest of times in Pakistan’s history. Given the high level of violence that is perpetrated on innocent civilians, the darkness in the work speaks volumes of the horror and tragedy that is witnessed in everyday life. And yet, in the fine lines against the darkness of the paper, I can see signs are still symbolic of hope, of anticipation, expectation, and a force and belief against pure forces of nihilism.” One of the foremost feminist activists of South Asia, Rukh’s contribution to art and culture spans far beyond the visual arts and into politics, music, and countless other parts of civic life in Pakistan and the wider region. Her works often chart horizons and draw together the waves we experience in nature as sight and the waves we experience within as sound, bridging inner and outer worlds and asking for heightened sense of perception from the viewer. b. 1948, Lahore; d. 2017, Lahore Lucas Arruda Untitled (from the Deserto-Modelo series), 2018 Untitled (from the Deserto-Modelo series), 2020 Untitled (from the Deserto-Modelo series), 2020 Untitled (from the Deserto-Modelo series), 2021 oil on canvas Courtesy of the artist and Mendes Wood DM who also provided support for this presentation The first image of Earth taken from outer space, Blue Marble, captures the image of a cyclone over the Bay of Bengal; it is fitting that Arruda’s cyclones find their debut here in Bangladesh.“Light constitutes an essential aspect of Lucas Arruda’s paintings, even though it’s never as much a representation of light as a representation of the presence of light; indirect, subtle, glowing not shining. Only a hint of the sunlight, whose rays struggle through dark clouds above the seas, is nervously reflected by countless waves. Or are these foreboding images of impending climate change, of toxic skies and a world void of inhabitants?” “The small format, the repetitiveness of Arruda’s imagery may strike one as minimalistic, yet it is anything but mechanical. There’s a physical dimension: Arruda presses his brush into the paint, roughens it up. Turned and turned while pressed, the brushes move in circles and in angular strokes. They scratch the paint. The handle of the brush incises the paint, cutting the surface up like with a knife or a burin, revealing what lies below the surface, revealing more than meets the eye. It reminds us on an etching and yet the quality of the engraved paint is not a one-dimensional image as in a print. The landscape visibly becomes a painted construct. The hair of the brush transforms into bristle scratching the wet painting away in a manner that is as forceful as it is elegant. Arruda’s subtractive method of painting is like writing a story in beautiful calligraphy, one that goes under the skin. Paintings that glow from within.* ” *Text by Till-Holger Borchert edited by Diana Campbell Between sky and earth, ethereal and solid, imagination and reality, Arruda presents meditations on the infinite drawn from his memory while highlighting the materiality of the media he works with, from paint to film. As we move above and below horizon lines, the artist puts us before atmospheres that are charged with visual as well as metaphysical questions. b. 1983, São Paulo; lives and works in São Paulo Marina Tabassum Photograph of Khudi Bari structure photo credit: Asif Salman, 2022 Marina Tabassum and her team are among a generation of architects and designers who see the power of design as a generative resource; a significant creator of value even in the face of meager financial resources and plentiful contextual challenges. To quote her, a paucity of means should not limit hopes and dreams. The Khudi Bari (Bengali for ‘Tiny House’) is an example of this kind of thinking and action, a modular, mobile home that can be fabricated for as little as 500 dollars that provides elevation to save goods and lives in the wake of flash floods on tiny “desert islands” of sand known as 'chars' that are dotted precariously across the Bengal delta (and also visible in the background of SM Sultan’s painting exhibited next to this photograph). Land is fluid on the floodplains of Bangladesh, and these islands often break off and erode into the water, making it necessary for people to physically move their home as the land it was originally placed on may no longer exist. Tabassum’s design mimics the traditional language of architecture on the Bengal delta to create modular mobile housing units that are low cost, durable, and can be assembled and disassembled within a short time with minimum labor, taking advantage of a rigid space-frame structure. Khudi Bari reminds us to look to locally rooted knowledges to innovate solutions for uncertain futures. As an architect, Marina Tabassum has established a language of architecture that is contemporary to the world yet rooted to the place. She rejects the global pressure of consumer architecture, a fast breed of buildings that are out of place and context, pledging to root architecture to the place informed by climate and geography. She and her team engage in extensive research on the impacts of climate change in Bangladesh, working closely with geographers, landscape architects, planners and other allied professionals. The focus of her studio, Marina Tabbasum Architects (MTA) and the Foundation for Architecture and Community Equity (FACE) which she founded, also extends to the marginalized ultra-low income population of the country with a goal to elevate the environmental and living conditions of all people. b. 1968, Dhaka; lives and works in Dhaka Marzia Migliora Paradoxes of Plenty #51 (Big Wave), 2022-2023 Ink on paper Courtesy of the Artist and Lia Rumma Commissioned by Samdani Art FoundationPresentation realized with the support of ARAV s.r.lSilvian Heach, SH, John Richmond, JR kids, Trussardi Kids, Marcobologna Marzia Migliora’s ongoing series of drawings, I Paradossi dell’abbondanza (Paradoxes of Plenty, 2017-2023), is a continuation of the artist’s studies over the last years reflecting on the relationship between food production, commodities and surplus value of the capitalist system and the exploitation of natural, animal and human resources. A visual exploration of the paradoxes that govern consumer society, this series outlines the limitations of an anachronistic model antithetical to present-day environmental and social emergencies. Reflecting on the dramatically visible consequences of climate change in Bangladesh, such as frequent flooding, tropical cyclones, riverbank erosion, and high salinity levels in groundwater, Paradoxes of Plenty #51 is a large-scale drawing depicting the rush of a giant wave that reveals the depths of a sea. Ecosystems of a multi-species universe are animated in this work by schools of fish realized using the gyotaku technique, used by Japanese fishermen in the nineteenth-century. This technique is a direct printing method that involves fish covered in cuttlefish ink as a matrix imprinted directly on Washi rice paper. The presence of fishing nets lying on the bottom of the work points to the consequences of intensive fishing and the phenomenon of ghost nets, which constitute 85% of the plastic waste in the world's marine waters. In the metaphorical sense, the words ‘Big Wave’ in the title also refer to the surfing practice of looking for the perfect wave. The artist pays homage to Ayesha, a young surfer from Cox's Bazar, who defied social norms and dared to surf in the ocean, becoming the subject of the award winning Bangladeshi documentary Nodorai (I'm not Afraid). Marzia Migliora uses a wide range of media including photography, video, sound, performance, installations and drawing to focus on everyday life. She investigates themes like identity and desire, delving into present and past history and putting memory into relation with places and spaces. Her projects are like questions that trigger the active engagement of the observer, who becomes the protagonist without whom the work cannot be resolved. The artist’s goal is to propose an experience that can be lived and shared by the audience. B. 1972, Alessandria; lives and works in Turin Michael John Whelan And they did live by watchfires 1, 2020 pigment print on paper, 50 x 40cm, edition 1/3 And they did live by watchfires 2, 2020 pigment print on paper, 200 x 160cm, edition 1/3 Courtesy of the artist and Grey Noise These analog photographs explore light pollution, specifically skyglow, as an eco-marker of humanity’s unbridled global population growth and subsequent effects on the environment. Today over half the world’s population live in cities. According to research from the UN, by 2050 2.5 billion more people will be living in cities. Michael John Whelan has been documenting urban densification from an array of locations (including Dubai, Vienna and Dublin) and elevations, focussing on the abstract visual gradient caused by the artificial light refracting in the night sky. The light sources themselves are excluded from the image, focusing only on the effects. Abstraction becomes a tool for accessibility and contemplation on how our ways of life affect the circadian rhythms of the planet. Working across film, video, photography and sculpture, Whelan’s practice asserts the landscape as a place where traumatic narratives overlap with the evidence of anthropogenic processes. Whelan undertakes extensive long-term projects documenting elusive but ever-present phenomena like light pollution or darkness. Animals, people or places, like the last Irish wolf, a young marine biologist struggling with the effects of climate change, or the world’s most radioactive ocean, are given agency within his work. b. 1977, Dublin; lives and works in Berlin Pol Taburet Out the womb, 2022 Parade, 2022 alcohol based paint and raw pigment Courtesy of the artist and Mendes Wood DM who also provided support for this presentation with alongside Alliance Francaise de Dacca For millennia, humans have invoked their minds and bodies through prayers, rituals, songs, and dances to summon rain from the sky. These bold, spiritually charged paintings depict that age-old human desire to extend our power of movement on earth to universes above us. Ghostly figures in the foreground dance and pulse with the energy of thunder and lightning inside of them to make it rain and bring about abundance. There is something haunting, even sinister about these figures, who seem to conjure dark magic. In the language of hip-hop, the term “make it rain” refers to a hypothetical relationship between the rapper and the devil invented by fans, where the rapper conjures the devil in a quest to make money manifest itself as if falling from the sky. Taburet’s work brings a complex range of reference including his Caribbean background and its syncretic voodoo traditions and belief systems, wider contemporary culture, and Western classical painting. He developed his unique painting style by incorporating the use of airbrushing alongside traditional brush painting with acrylic colors, symbolic of his work which mixes the old and the new. Working across painting, sculpture, installation, and performance, his work speaks of life and death, and the passage from one state to the other. b. 1997, Paris; lives and works in Paris Rithika Merchant Transtidal, 2022 Gouache, watercolor, and ink on paper Commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation Courtesy of the artist and Tarq who also provided support for this presentation River deltas are environments, gateways between rivers and seas that offer challenges and opportunities, where the conditions for sustaining life change throughout the days and seasons. Deltas are cradles of life and tell a story of evolution from the sea, by the river, to the land, possibly representing what the future holds. We now have to go backwards as the sea gains ground and makes land hostile. Like the mudskippers floating in the foreground of this work, we too will have to learn to be amphibious as waters rise. This watercolor is inspired by the nomadic river based Bede community of Bangladesh. They reap the benefits of water as a life giver and have adapted to overcome the more destructive aspects of the water. As waters rise, their amphibious way of living on the river is something many of us may have to adopt on our ever flooding planet in order to survive. Figures from Bangla lore such as crocodile djinns and snakes appear in the work, speaking to fertility, prosperity, and abundance tied to river based life. Snakes are a source of livelihood for the Bede community who earn income from snake charming, snake catching and snake selling, generating possibility from a place others may cower away from in fear. Both the Goliath Heron and the Peregrine Falcon inhabit the mangrove and can be seen as sacred animals integral to the ecosystem, immortalized here as constellations and stars reflecting in the winding rivers connecting the desert to the mountains to the sea to the sky. Merchant is fascinated with navigation. She is inspired by how old maps and celestial charts are folded and stored, and how they are built up with water-based paint on paper, transformed by exposure to the sun and the elements over time, appearing very different to us now than when they were originally made. After she finishes her paintings, she folds them up into geometric shapes and unfolds them to create and reveal a narrative of the paper’s journey. She imagines that in the future, someone might come across her folded drawings in a book or in a drawer and when they unfold them, they would find strange and otherworldly maps, with creatures and clues from another time. b.1986 Mumbai, lives and works in Barcelona and Mumbai Safiuddin Ahmed Flood, 1994 Flood 8, 2004 Gusty Wind, 2005 Bare Trees-2, 2004 Charcoal on paper The Cry, 1980 Copper engraving print Courtesy of the Shilpaguru Safiuddin Ahmed Memorial Storms have eyes and eyes have storms. Safiuddin Ahmed emblazoned the relationship between Bangladeshis and the storms plaguing them from inside their bodies and outside through floods and wars in his iconic prints and lesser-known, haunting charcoal drawings, which are rarely exhibited. Pulsing with emotion, these works speak to Bangladesh’s ongoing cry for freedom from both natural and manmade violence. Their symbolism speaks to the entanglement of human and non-human life on the Bengal delta. Ahmed helped raise the profile of printmaking in Bangladesh, a discipline often considered of secondary importance, by adopting it as his main medium and inspiring others to engage with the medium through his teaching practice. His work addresses the violence of water and the storms, literal and metaphorical, that Bengali people live with culturally. Many of his titles address strong emotions such as anger, sadness, and fear paired with symbolic scenes of water, fishing, and flooding. b. 1922, Calcutta; d. 2012 in Dhaka Sana Shahmuradova-Tanska The Womb of the Land, 2022 People of De-occupied Territories, 2022 Oil on Canvas Courtesy of the Artist Voluptuous female forms keep a violent sky at bay, feeding and fuelling a counter-apocalypse with their life-giving energy. Sana Shahmuradova-Tanska has been painting harbingers of life in the midst of war-torn Ukraine, depicting the role that women play in keeping the world alive in the midst of man-made horrors, both today, and also historically in her homeland with countless injustices including man-made famine, the Holodomor, which parallel histories in Bangladesh when it, too, was a colonially occupied territory. As a visual artist, Shahmuradova-Tanska she mainly works with graphics and painting, searching for the barely explored roots of her ancestry through collective and personal archetypes. Women are the main protagonists in her work, which is also inspired by her experience training in ballet and studying drawing with an elderly Jewish artist who introduced her to Jewish frescoes, among other references. b. 1996, Odessa; lives and works in Kyiv SM Sultan Untitled, 1987 Natural dyes on unprimed jute canvas Samdani Art Foundation Collection While South Asian art history describes him as a landscape painter, S.M. Sultan is remembered in Bangladesh for his energetic paintings of bulbous-muscled farmers made after 1975. These large-scale paintings, primarily made with natural pigments on unprimed jute canvases, celebrate the strength of Bengali peasants, both male and female, in their struggle against colonial and ecological disasters. Famine had been plaguing the country on and off from the era of the British Raj until just the year before Sultan first painted these icons of physical might. In this context, his depiction of the weak and downtrodden as invincible forces cultivating the future of Bangladesh can be seen as subversive. Small islands, known as chars, dot the landscape in the background of this painting, an integral part of the Bangladeshi landscape. While still violent, the storms and floods impacting Bangladesh’s landscape during Sultan’s time are different from those experienced now, yet architects and designers are turning toward traditional solutions from Bangladesh’s wetlands to imagine ways to survive on wetter and wetter land. Sultan’s work as both an artist and an educator highlight the importance of rural culture in the collective identity of Bangladesh. After traveling extensively as a celebrated artist both internationally and within South Asia, Sultan retreated from urban life, moving to his home village of Narail, where he founded the Shishu Shwarga art school. His devotion to rural art education has had a lasting legacy, inspiring many initiatives to promote personal growth outside of urban centers through art. b. 1923, Narail; d. 1994, Jessore Veronika Hapchenko Shelter, 2022 Acrylic and Ink on Canvas Samdani Art Foundation Collection This painting is Veronika Hapchenko’s contemporary interpretation of the mosaic Windfighter, a depiction of a bird fighting the wind that was created by the legendary artist Alla Horska in 1967 for Mariupol’s restaurant Ukraina, recently destroyed by shellings in July, 2022. This work commences a new series by the artist devoted to the topic of Soviet avant-garde mosaics and murals from the 1960s and 1970s located on the territory of Ukraine. These works of art once spoke of a bright, peaceful future of the republic, and are now being destroyed in the course of the Russian invasion and bombardment of Ukrainian cultural heritage sites. A first glance at this painting reveals two figures of long-haired women flanking a mysterious shape placed in the center of the scene. Upon a closer look, one notices that the women’s strands of hair form a roof over the heads of the multitude of figures whose faces emerge from the body outlines. With silhouettes infinitely looped in the composition, it is difficult for the viewer to establish the number of people who are sheltered in this painting. Like Bengal in the 1940s, Ukraine also suffered a man-made famine in the 1930s known as the Holodomor. Responding to violent, ongoing histories of oppression, Hapchenko, as well as the iconic Bangladeshi painter SM Sultan, paint figures with bulging muscles of epic strength, refusing to be reduced to skin and bones by occupying forces and rising up to protect their communities and ways of life. Coming from a stage design background that migrated into painting and object making, Hapchenko’s practice has a strong research foundation. Looking to philosophical theses, cultural archives and oral history in her work, the artist traces legends and taboos surrounding revolutionary artists and political gurus to deconstruct and rethink the cultural tropes of the former USSR, which oscillated between esotericism and militarism throughout the twentieth century. This work was commissioned by KANAL- Centre Pompidou, Brussels to mark their inaugural feminist conference and garner support for the crisis in Ukraine. B. 1995, Kyiv, lives and works in Krakow LOCATION: SECOND FLOOR Amit Dutta Mother, Who Will Weave Now?, 2022 Digital AnimationCommissioned by MAP (Museum of Art and Photography) Bangalore on the Textile Collection of the Museum Mother, Who Will Weave Now? attempts to sample and mirror the grand tapestry of Indian textile traditions and histories by interweaving snippets of Indian cloth on an editing table, using poetic elements of classical Indian literature sewn together with the words and motifs of the weaver-saint Kabir. Dutta attempts to create in film what he sees in painting, and describes all of his formal work as an attempt in that direction. Whether examining India’s contemporary artists, traditional weavers, or classical painters and the scholars who know their every brushstroke by heart, Dutta’s process-oriented films attest to the ardor of art history. b.1977, Jamu; lives and works in Palampur Kamruzzaman Shadhin Irrelevant Field Notes, 2020-2023 Two-channel video, sound, sculptures Commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation Courtesy of the artist This installation traces the seasons and cycles of indigenous rituals, poetry, myths, and practices that have been intertwined with agricultural landscapes and the act of cultivation in Bangladesh. Drawing from Kamruzzaman Shadhin’s childhood memories of deeply ingrained community practices rooted in agriculture, the work tells the story of how the move towards an extractive nature of cultivation has slowly rendered a disconnection in the intimate/intrinsic ties between humanity and land. Incorporating sculptures, video, and sound and using materials related to land and rituals, Shadhin creates an imaginary landscape where the old rhymes, songs, fables, and other “irrelevant beings” hover around in apparent aimlessness, disconnected from the earth. They are displaced, but linger on as a distant and fragmented memory of a forgotten link, almost as if to stage a secret rebellion against this capitalist aggression on soil, water, and many ways of life. Made over a three-year period, this two-channel video chronicles the fields at different seasons through movements of masked figures who also appear in this space as various forms, linked through an immersive soundscape where the disappearing songs and rhymes come alive again. Shadhin's participatory practice incorporates installation, sculpture, performance, video and public art interventions. His work is shaped by long-term engagement with communities, exploring themes of the environment, migration and local history, and their connection to personal and collective memory. He usually works with locally sourced materials, drawing inspiration from the techniques and practices of the past to comment on the present. He is the founder of the Gidree Bawlee Foundation of Arts (f. 2001). b. 1974, Thakurgaon; lives and works in Dhaka and Thakurgaon Najmun Nahar Keya বর্ণগীতি(Symphony of words), 2022-2023 Soft Sculptures Made from Antique Sarees Commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation Courtesy of the artist and Aicon Gallery Bengali script seems to drip from the ceiling as rain, or flow through space like a river, similar to how the words of Khana have flowed across time in Bangladesh. Khana was a poet and an astrologer active in Bengal somewhere between the 9th and 12th centuries, and her verses are among the earliest compositions of lyrical Bengali verse and tied to wisdom gleaned from observing nature. According to legend, Khana attracted the attention of King Vikramaditya by solving problems that neither her husband nor her father-in-law, who were both court astronomers, could answer. Threatened by her knowledge and divinatory power, her father-in-law had her tongue cut off and forced her into exile. In another version, Khana cut off her own tongue to spare her father-in-law the shame of being upstaged by a woman. Both scenarios speak to how the fragility of male egos threatens the basic wellbeing of women. Putting Khana’s words into the air as sayings and/or writing them into physical form as text, or inscribing them as an artwork as the artist Najmun Nahar Keya has, speaks to the power of orality and of collective memory to keep alive the wisdom that oppressive forces, such as patriarchy, have tried in vain to silence. These sayings that are still alive in rural Bangladesh today, known as Khanar Bachan (Khana’s words), are also a collective memory of climate, and how human behavior and weather could interact to produce fruitful results. These adages must have worked at some point; otherwise it is unlikely that they would have been carried across so many generations, but they don’t all make sense anymore as weather does not move over the lands in the same way it once did. Like the Tangail sarees that Keya and her elder sisters used to craft these sayings into soft sculptural form, they are likely to become obsolete as these generationally passed down wisdoms are at risk of being forgotten. Najmun Nahar Keya is primarily a painter, but also employs old photographs, gold gilding, drawing and printmaking, which she juxtaposes to create nostalgic settings. Having grown up in the old part of Dhaka, Keya draws her inspiration from the rapid social, economic and environmental changes happening in the area as a result of urbanization. She is interested in the duality of society focusing on lifestyle, culture, cityscapes, urban motifs, customs and architecture. b. 1980 in Dhaka, lives and works in Dhaka Miet Warlop The Board II, 2014/2023 Performance Commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation with support from BGMEA In a dynamic collaboration with female garment factory workers in Bangladesh, this performative installation challenges preconceptions of “who wears the pants” in society. A group of trunkless, armless, and headless pants in heels walk across the Dhaka Art Summit venue, taking stock of the artworks and the exhibition, laughing hysterically that anyone could take life so seriously and releasing their own irreverent gestures in paint for the audience to take in. Warlop’s work is about making the static-dynamic and making the dynamic-static. She treats art as an experience, like ritual concerts or objects animated by choreography. She works in cycles rather than in projects and believes in the attitude that accompanies an idea, using a combination of performance, choreography, theater, and sculpting skills to make her shows. Her work amplifies the dynamics of personal relationships that are created between memories, skin, objects and sounds. b. 1978, Torhout; lives and works in Brussels Rana Begum No.1234, 2022-2023 Fishing Net and Bamboo Commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation with support from British Council BangladeshCourtesy of the artist and Jhaveri Contemporary Inspired by the fragile drape of fishing nets and the filtered reflections of light across water, No. 1234 Net is closely connected to Begum’s childhood memories growing up in Bangladesh. The work sweeps above the visitors, layering veils of color and form. This organic expression marks a departure from Begum’s language of ordered geometric abstraction, growing in the space to create a dramatic, site specific installation. Begum utilizes industrial materials such as stainless steel, aluminum, copper, brass, glass, and wood in her minimalist sculptures and reliefs. Her contemplative works explore shifting interactions between geometry, color, and light, drawing inspiration from both the chance encounters of city life and the intricate patterns of Islamic art and architecture. b. 1977, Sylhet; lives and works in London Sahej Rahal Black Origin, 2022 Digital Collage Courtesy of the artist and Chatterjee and Lal This series of images, rising from the artist’s imagined world of digital “storm sisters,” gathers a collection of digital collages conjured in collusion with AI-driven image generation programs. The images portend visions of an Earth exhausted of all human life. In this aftermath, new denizens populate the planet, petroleum-drenched beings, draped in the ruins and refuse of humankind. They rise under mangroves that rest over ramshackle housing complexes, highway lines, boulevards, banks, and bureaucratic enclaves, mounting insurrections on the other side of extinction. Rahal’s work builds up mythology that he weaves together by drawing upon local legends and hidden histories and bringing them into conversation with the world today. He manifests his myth-making in sculptural installations, paintings, performances, films, and video games that he creates using found materials, ranging from digital technology as well as ephemera, found footage, salvaged furniture, and scrap material. b. 1988, Mumbai; lives and works in Mumbai Shawon Akand ধীরে বন্ধু ধীরে (Slow friend, be slow), 2022-2023 Hand-woven installation Commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation Courtesy of the artist Turtles are icons for slowness, and slowness is necessary to keep certain cultural practices alive that fall outside of the speed necessary for mechanical reproduction. Shawon Akand worked with traditional jamdani weavers to transform turtle motifs in his paintings into a woven installation. ধীরে বন্ধু ধীরে (Slow friend, be slow) questions where in the fast paced world the need for slow process work falls, and how slowness can be adapted in this timeline of urgency. When a slow-pace culture merges with a fast paced life, will any good come out of it? Akand’s body of work questions cultural norms with a critical perspective on social and political structures through painting, printmaking, installation, photography and video. He is passionate about empowering and amplifying the reach of Bangladeshi craftspeople in his creative work which extends from art making to curating to entrepreneurship. He founded the organization Jothashilpa which has been a melting pot where various categories of arts (such as fine art, folk art, native art, crafts etc.) are brought together to create a new art language rooted in cultural history. Since its inception Jothashilpa has been working with artisans and traditional folk artists living in rural as well as urban areas. This includes women who are experts in hand embroidery, jamdani weavers, cinema banner painters and rickshaw artists who he regularly collaborates with. b. 1976, Kushtia; lives and works in Dhaka Tanya Goel Botanical Studies (Monsoon Flowers), 2020-2023 Crushed pigments on paper Commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation Courtesy of the artist and Nature Morte who also provided support for this presentation Like flowers, we are formed by feelings that follow our relationship to sunlight and moonlight that illuminate our time on this planet, transforming what we perceive with our eyes into emotions that we feel with our hearts. The artist Tanya Goel has been meditatively studying flowers and the role that color plays in lived experience especially when it comes to the “laws of attraction.” As part of that process, she has been building what she refers to as “a collection of dust”; an archive of pigments that reminds her that color is ground. Ground: both in the sense of being a pulverized material (a physical process she actively engages with when making pigments), but also as coming from the surface beneath our feet (such as chalk and titanium dioxide). This series of Botanical Studies is inspired by monsoon flowers, forms that grow when the ground is wet and flooded with rainwater, just as beautiful as flowers blooming in the spring, but often overlooked when the global imagination around flowers relates to a world of “four seasons” that does not correspond with the seasons in South Asia. The artist perceived new universes when observing the pistils of flowers under a magnifying glass, zooming closer and closer in order to understand how the interplay of color around the reproductive parts of flowers serves to attract bees while also attracting our eyes. Goel reminds us that color is a powerful harbinger that life will go on in a duration that defies the limits of the optics of a human life-span. Goel’s compositions, noted for their density and complexity, are mathematical formulas which are established and then violated, resulting in a balance between structure and chaos. The artist makes her own pigments from a diverse array of materials including charcoal, aluminum, concrete, glass, soil, mica, graphite and foils, many sourced from sites of architectural demolitions in and around New Delhi. She is interested in the textures of her pigments as well as their colors, which is a direct result of how they reflect light. b. 1985, New Delhi; lives and works in New Delhi LOCATION: THIRD FLOOR Anthony McCall Line Describing a Cone 2.0, 1973/2010 Digital projection with fog machine Samdani Art Foundation Collection Like watching the sunset, experiencing the work Line Describing a Cone requires a duration of 30 minutes to watch a white curve appear and transform in space. This iconic work by Anthony McCall, key to the artistic movement that opened up the visual arts towards cinema, was inspired by the artist observing how projections in a cinema hall - where dust swirling in the air interacts with light spewing from the projector - can produce sculpture-like effects. Here, a thin mist flows into the room, allowing the viewer to progressively see a large cone of light which simultaneously becomes a light sculpture that the audience can walk into, almost like a portal into another universe. This work is not just something to watch, it is a universe to be absorbed in and to participate in. The artist inverts the relationship between the projector and the audience. Here, the public faces the projector, not the movie, destroying the illusion of a moving image while opening up another kind of space of wonder. The process of the realization of the film becomes its content. During the 1970s, Anthony McCall was one of a number of filmmakers who rejected the narrative demands of Hollywood cinema as well as the more abstract content of independent films, addressing instead the specific properties of the film medium itself–light, surface, projection, frames, and time. His work spans across drawing, installation, and performance, one of his preferred mediums. He is an indispensable reference to a younger generation of artists working in video and installation, including Matt Copson whose work is found at the entrance of DAS. b. 1946, Saint Paul's Cray; lives and works in New York Daniel Boyd Untitled (GPS Coordinates), 2022-2023 Vinyl on glass Co-commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation and Artspace Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery with Curatorial Contributions from Alexie Glass-Kantor and Michelle Newton Daniel Boyd’s works often explore the ways in which Indigenous people and histories are seen, interpolated, and represented within a western or colonial vision. In this site-specific window installation, circular cut outs re-frame the views outside, transforming them into a web of illuminated dots, and spilling new light patterns across the gallery. As in Boyd’s artworks re-working colonial imagery, he uses a simple technique for mediating the audience’s vision to transform and reorient how things are seen. The work disrupts any kind of passive consumption of the landscape as usually framed by the architecture, while creating a new immersive visual spectacle. These circular forms are used to perform a complex re-envisioning wherein dark matter becomes part of a total image, connecting a multitude of flashes of detail beyond. Daniel Boyd is an Indigenous Australian multidisciplinary artist. His paintings, installations, and sculptures are informed by his Kudjla/Gangalu heritage, and examine Eurocentric narratives around Australia's colonial history. Through his signature 'dot' painting technique, Boyd presents visual manifestations of Indigenous collective memory and perception, suggesting a form of lens with which to view the world. b. 1982, Cairns; lives and works in Sydney Marina Perez Simão Untitled 1-9, 2022Oil on canvas Commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation Courtesy of the artist and Mendes Wood DM who also provided support for this presentation In a world where we are supposed to know everything through the touch of a screen, Marina Simão paints in order to conjure the wonder and awe that comes with experiencing a sense of being that was previously unthinkable. Her paintings open up possibilities for new states of matter beyond known solids, liquids, gasses, and plasmas. What colors might suffuse the smoldering gasses of yet-to-be-discovered atmospheres in far-off extraterrestrial landscapes? These paintings could be window portals of a spaceship, imagining rivers and waterbodies in yet-to-be-known planets in yet-to-be-known galaxies. Our minds are left free to wander in the myriad paths that open up in her paintings and reach far beyond the limits of the canvas. She takes us to the edge of an abyss with no solid place to step, but with no need to touch the ground. Simão uses a variety of techniques, such as collage, drawing, and oil painting, as starting points in order to marry interior and exterior landscapes, she composes visual journeys that sometimes traverse the unknown, the abstract and the nebulous, but also include visions and memories. With interests ranging from science to literature, the artist is on a constant quest to surprise viewers and herself by creating new worlds with visions we might have never imagined before. B. 1980, Vitória; lives and works in Sao Paulo Munem Wasif পতন / Collapse, 2021-2023 Spatial design in collaboration with Architect Salauddin AhmedArchival pigment prints, Variable sizesMetal structures, Wooden frames With additional support from Samdani Art Foundation Courtesy of the artist and Project88 Munem Wasif brings forward the conflicted relationship between the idea of development and the larger ecosystem. On one side flows a mighty river while on the other stands an intrusive structure made out of rods, cement, sand and stones. In these photographs, we see a man-made structure, geometric, brutal and monumental in scale, standing tall against the forces of vigorous currents of the Jamuna river that race down on the horizontal plane amidst soft and fragile elements of nature. Bangladesh is born out of the nerves and veins of numerous rivers spurring out of the Himalayas. These rivers move through the mountains, deciding the very nature of the land they pass through, the ecology, human character, life’s rhythm, politics and economy. Neo-liberal development processes in the last few decades have neglected the natural flow of water, climate and the lives around these areas. With human-centric notions of development, economic gain and consumption of natural resources as the basis of modern life, the voices of other species have been excluded resulting in the consequent loss of biodiversity. Grains of sand particles glisten like stars in these black and white photographs, a ferocious body of water bends hurriedly down the curves, and tall mutilated parts of the structure pierce through the skin of the river silently witnessing the flat plane. Bringing forward this juxtaposition of a horizontal and vertical axis, Munem Wasif’s image based installation discloses a contradictory tale of climate, life, nature and development. One can’t help but ask “What is the definition of development?” Wasif’s image-based works explore the notion of trace in its various forms. His complex installations often mix photographs with moving images, archive documents or collected paraphernalia to reveal notions of impermanence and insecurity. Never exhaustive and always open to interpretation, the narratives they develop simultaneously test the limits of documentary representation and the possibilities of fiction. b. 1983, Dhaka; lives and works in Dhaka Shahzia Sikander Singing Suns, 2016 Digital animation with music by Du Yun Samdani Art Foundation Collection Shahzia Sikander recontextualizes traditional motifs from Indo-Persian miniature painting, such as the hair found on gopis (female worshippers of the Hindu god Krishna), into dynamic forms in motion in her animation practice that makes painting sing and dance. Gopi hair swirls in orb-like-forms of varying densities, reminiscent of the shape-shifting movements of flocks of birds or colonies of bats, creating an illusion of singing suns that light up the room. We often think about the sun as singular, but every star is a sun and there are billions of stars in billions of universes. The music accompanying this piece by the Chinese composer Du Yun rejects linearity, and through working cross-culturally across musical traditions, her collaboration with Sikander speaks to the way that cultural practices have developed new forms in circulation, taking new paths by way of collision and deep integration. Sikander reinterprets the tradition of Indo-Persian miniature painting in a vibrant multimedia practice that considers colonial legacies, orientalizing narratives, and current events, pairing ancient traditional painting techniques with the latest digital technology. She introduces postcolonial and feminist perspectives into rigorous compositions that feature scenes and abstractions related to trade, migration, and imperial histories. b. 1969, Lahore; lives and works in New York

ALL PROJECTS Monika Sosnowska at Zachęta – National Gallery of Art 24 July - 25 Oct 2020, Warsaw, Poland Monika Sosnowska's first extensive monographic exhibition in Poland at Zachęta – National Gallery of Art in Warsaw includes works inspired by her multiple visits to Bangladesh from 2017-2020, contextualized within her ongoing interest in deconstructing and reconstructing diverse histories of architecture across the world. We facilitated her research visit for the Dhaka Art Summit 2020 and her commission 'Concrete River' 2020 at the Srihatta: Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park which encouraged her to create new works for the summit as well as her solo exhibition at Zachęta. Monika Sosnowska's sculpture draws from the modernist architecture of Dhaka, in that particular case the inspiration comes from Muzharul Islam’s faculty of Fine Arts and the spiral staircase that he designed. Sosnowska transforms, modifies and distorts basic architectural elements. She deforms metal constructions, guardrails, staircases, beams and angle profiles, giving them unusual shapes. Deprives them of their original function and rescales them, creating expressive sculptures. These architectonic installations are meant to affect our senses, distort our sense of gravity, weight and hardness of matter, and instill anxiety with their rescaled forms, unnatural deformation. Image: Monika Sosnowska, Stairs, concrete and painted steel, 110 x 185 x 150 cm, 2020. Courtesy of the Foksal Gallery Foundation.

ALL PROJECTS Colonial Movements Curated by Diana Campbell Colonial Movements Ongoing legacies of colonialism establish and maintain conditions of exploitation throughout the global majority world (the world outside of Europe and North America which hosts most of the human population on the planet). Naked capitalism and internationalism, sometimes masked under the guise of religion and development aid, continues to drive networks of power controlling the globe. Revealed through its extractive actions of planting and uprooting indigenous goods and people, colonialism still extends deep into the furthest reaches of the Earth through the seeds of commodities. Artists across generations have made works that reflect how histories of land are intimately entangled/embedded with narratives of hunger, dispossession and ultimately erasure. Colonisation is inscribed in the physical and cultural DNA of the worlds we inhabit, and the artists working across these spheres help us navigate through complex webs of greed and addiction to imagine solidarities for alternative and autonomous futures Ongoing legacies of colonialism establish and maintain conditions of exploitation throughout the global majority world (the world outside of Europe and North America which hosts most of the human population on the planet). Naked capitalism and internationalism, sometimes masked under the guise of religion and development aid, continues to drive networks of power controlling the globe. Revealed through its extractive actions of planting and uprooting indigenous goods and people, colonialism still extends deep into the furthest reaches of the Earth through the seeds of commodities. Artists across generations have made works that reflect how histories of land are intimately entangled/embedded with narratives of hunger, dispossession and ultimately erasure. Colonisation is inscribed in the physical and cultural DNA of the worlds we inhabit, and the artists working across these spheres help us navigate through complex webs of greed and addiction to imagine solidarities for alternative and autonomous futures. Adebunmi Gbadebo b. 1992, Livingston; lives and works in Newark True Blue: Peter, Peter 2 and Phillis, 2019 Human Black Hair, Cotton, Rice Paper, Denim, Hair Dye, Silk Screen Print Commissioned for DAS 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Claire Oliver Gallery Adebunmi Gbadebo addresses the concepts of land, memory and erasure in her work. Sheets of paper constructed with beaten cotton linters and human hair collected from black barber shops serve as abstracted documentations of genetic histories, embedded in the strands of hair. The dominant blue dye traces Gbadebo’s maternal family history to three plantations where her ancestors were forced into slavery. Gbadebo’s use of indigo inevitably links her historical inquiry to Bengal, where the plant was grown as a cash crop from around the year of 1777 by the British East India Company. The more recent histories of Bangladesh and the USA (where Gbadebo traces her family’s history) are interlinked through the garment industry. The bold, blue colour produced from the indigo plant can serve as a reminder of the vast amount of denim clothing produced in Bangladesh for international export. The conditions under which the clothing worn by western consumers is produced by Bangladeshi workers, should not be erased from history. Using black hair, cotton, rice paper, indigo and sometimes silkscreened photo imagery, Gbadebo creates abstract ‘portraits’ of her enslaved ancestors. The DNA of those people still exists in these works of art. She perceives hair as a means to position her people and their histories as central to the narratives in her work. Annalee Davis b. 1963, Barbados; lives and works in Barbados F is for Frances, 2015–16 Coloured pencil on plantation ledger pages Courtesy of the artist The last will and testament of Thomas Applewhaite written in August 1816 directed that six years after his death his ‘little favourite Girl Slave named Frances shall be manumitted and set free from all and all manner of Servitude and slavery whatsoever.’ At the time, Applewhaite was the owner of Walkers – the site where the artist Annalee Davis lives, works, and explores. F is for Frances maps Frances’ name in a series of seven drawings on ledger pages. The letters forming her name are comprised of 17th-and 18th-century sherds found in the soil of former sugarcane fields, suggesting fragments of history understood only in part – usually through the words of the white colonial-settler and most often a male voice. With Frances, another voice becomes audible and visible. Davis has a hybrid practice as a visual artist, cultural instigator, educator, and writer. With the media of printmaking, painting, installation, and video art, she works at the intersection of biography and history, focusing on post-plantation economies through engaging with a particular landscape on Barbados. Davis has been involved in the founding and co-founding of numerous initiatives, including Fresh Milk (f. 2011), an arts platform and micro-residency programme, Caribbean Linked (f. 2012), an annual residency in Aruba, and Tilting Axis (f. 2015) an independent visual arts platform bridging the Caribbean through annual encounters. Apnavi Makanji b. 1976, Bombay; lives and works in Geneva Appropriation Disinformation – Nature and the Body Politic, 2019 Collage on found paper Commissioned for DAS 2020 Courtesy of the artist and Tarq Sourced from the Atlas International Larousse Politique et Economique (1950), the pages making up Apnavi Makanji’s collages are records of the treasures of the globe as represented through the eyes of imperial powers in their quest for progress and the modern condition. In fact, these pages of statistics are effectively lists of extractivism. They remain silent on the violence inflicted on the environment, on modern-day slavery, and on the displacement of indigenous communities. The artist has chosen to look at them instead as tools of capitalism and proof of systematic violence. These collages are not only a representation of what has been forgotten, buried, or annihilated, they also stand in for a subconscious that is mutant and diseased. In its soft sensuality and secretions, the work attempts to trigger a visceral memory of a situated environment that existed before it was reduced to highly mobile commodities. Installed across the gallery as punctuation points between walls, these collages help the viewer navigate a complex history of connectivity across diverse contexts spanning Africa, South, Southeast, and East Asia, South America, the Caribbean, the Pacific Islands, as well as North America and Europe. Makanji works with the media of installation, drawing, and film, producing complex constructs informed by botany, memory, displacement, and environmental urgency. They are interested in exploring the intersection of these concepts within the context of human-engendered climate emergency. Candice Lin b. 1979, Concord; lives and works in Los Angeles The Tea Table, 2016 Etching on Japanese Kozo paper The Roots of Industry, 2016 Etching on Japanese Kozo paper Courtesy of the artist, François Ghebaly,and Gasworks Candice Lin’s works establish a network of connections between historical and contemporary Asian and African diasporas in the Americas, as well as their generational traumas. In The Roots of Industry, Lin reinterprets an engraving of Bolivian silver mines by Theodor de Bry. The Andean potato was cultivated to feed indigenous miners mining silver and mercury in South America. This silver and the excess potatoes travelled across the sea and fuelled the Industrial Revolution, changing the course of world history. In The Tea Table, Lin appropriates an engraving by John Bowles (circa 1710) which was a satire on affluent fashionable ladies and featured a devil lurking under the table as Envy drives Justice and Truth out of a door. In this rendition, Lin draws connections between tea, opium, and sugar by replacing the symbolic figures with images of tea production and opium abuse. Lin works predominantly with sculpture and video, addressing notions of cultural, gendered, and racial difference, rampant sexualities, and deviant behaviour. Interested in the fluid boundaries between the self and the other, she examines how Western ideologies of the self-influence the politics of power within notions of individualism, selfhood, freedom, and difference. Dhali Al Mamoon b. 1958, Chandpur; lives and works in Chittagong শতাব্দীর উপাখ্যান (The story of the Century), 2019 Spices, tea, and indigo on paper and canvas Commissioned for DAS 2020. Courtesy of the artist The history of colonialism is objectively the history of despair. Dhali Al Mamoon’s ongoing work searches for the self through the narrative of historically contextualised images, with a nod to the existentialism found in the analysis of every work of art. Our appearance, sartorial/material representation, and constructed sense of self carry the legacies of colonisation; history, memory, and flashes of coincidence prime our perception of the world. In free-play kinetic works on paper and canvas, the artist draws in commodities that changed the course of South Asian history under the control of the British East India Company: tea and indigo and spices. Tea and indigo, in both solid and liquid form, correspond to the colours of amber and blue used extensively in the artist’s palette, evoking a sense of melancholy associated with the history of how these materials were misused to exploit people and lands. Al Mamoon works with drawings, paintings, kinetic sculptures and installations, addressing issues of knowledge, history and identity. Constructing complex experiences, he is interested in deconstructing the collective memory of his homeland of Bangladesh. He focuses on the ways in which colonialism de-humanised, exploited and dislocated people from their own land, culture and tradition, separating them from traditional systems of knowledge. Elia Nurvista b. 1983, Yogyakarta; lives and works in Yogyakarta Sugar Zucker, 2016–2020 Crystallised sugar, mural Courtesy of the artist. Realised with additional support from the Indonesian Embassy of Bangladesh Beyond their sparkling surfaces, sugar and jewels are linked by stories of violent exploitation of labour and the environment. From Africa and the Caribbean to Asia, from Europe to the Pacific, the history of sugar is tied to the mass movement of people around the world as part of exploitative plantation economies that fuelled a global demand for its sweet taste. This model of commodity production continues today; the amount of money that producers of commodities make is far removed from the taxes that foreign governments levy on them and from the profits that traders and corporations enjoy as a result of addictive cycles of consumption. Elia Nurvista’s gemstone-shaped candy sculptures remind of an underlying bitterness behind the sweet ‘taste’ that we have grown accustomed to. Nurvista presents her social research through mixed-media installations, food workshops, and group discussions. Her predominant focus is on the production and distribution of food, and its broader social and historical implications. Nurvista’s works explore the intersection between food and commodities, and their relationship to colonialism, economic and political power, and status. Faiham Ebna Sharif b. 1985, Dhaka, lives and works in Dhaka and Uppsala Cha Chakra: Tea Tales of Bangladesh, 2015–ongoing Photographs, archival material Commissioned for DAS 2020 Courtesy of the artist The Baganiya communities of Bangladesh are made up of tea workers who originate from at least ninety different ethnic groups from across South Asia formerly known as British India. While their ethnic and linguistic origins differ, their histories are intertwined as they were forcefully moved as indentured servants to the tea gardens of Sylhet and Chittagong, where they remain to this day. After the partition of British India in 1947 and the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, these people became citizens of Bangladesh and lost touch with their ancestral homelands. Cha Chakra is Faiham Ebna Sharif’s research-based work that uses old printed materials, advertisements, and historical documents show the ongoing story of inequity and exploitation behind the second most consumed drink (after water). His research extends into the resistance of the community as it strives to hold onto its traditions in this newly commissioned presentation. Faiham Ebna Sharif is an artist and researcher interested in long-term explorations of subjects such as tea plantations, the film industry of Bangladesh, the Rohingya refugee crisis, HIV patients, climate change, and migration from the micro-scale of the local bus to the meta-scale of humanity. Although Sharif studied international relations, he chose photography as his medium of expression. Sharif collects manuscripts, published primary sources (such as newspapers and other local media), as well as visual records (painting, photography and video) and oral histories parallel to and contributing to his artistic practice. Gisela McDaniel b. 1995, Bellevue; lives and works in Detroit I am M(in)e, 2019–2020 Oil and assemblage on canvas with sound Commissioned for DAS 2020. Courtesy of the artist Many people are unaware that the United States still holds five inhabited territories from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean that fall under the definition of a colony. The power and interests of the US military are given as reasons to deny the people of these colonies the same rights of self-governance that America fought for in the War of Independence in 1776. Gisela McDaniel is a mixed-race Chamorro artist whose DNA carries the complex history of colonisation on the American territory of Guam. Her paintings subvert traditional power relations by allowing the subject to talk back to the viewer through overlaid audio interviews. As evidenced in the works of artists like Paul Gauguin, power dynamics can be extremely problematic between native women and the men colonising their lands, and McDaniel’s work pushes back against a primitivist gaze. This haunting new series of portraits provide a portal into the struggle of mixed-race people to find a sense of belonging and to pick a side in conflicted cultural and political battles for autonomy. McDaniel’s work is based on a process of healing from her own sexual trauma while engaging with other female survivors through the practice of portraiture. Interweaving assemblages of audio, oil painting, and motion-sensored technology, she creates pieces that ‘come to life’ and literally ‘talk back’ to the viewer, giving agency to the subjects of her paintings. Hira Nabi b. 1987, Lahore; lives and works in Lahore Good Seeds | Bad Seeds, 2019–2020 Relief prints in vitrine Commissioned for DAS 2020. Courtesy of the artist Any attempt to map a history of plant species reveals that it is as migrant and varied, if not more than the human species. Can territorialization be temporal as well as geographical? Good Seeds | Bad Seeds is a series thinking through botanical imaginaries and their influence upon identity making. Building upon a collection of archival Pakistani postage stamps as a site of initial inquiries into marking terrain, cultivating and farming it, extracting from it, hydrating and dehydrating, and designing it in specific ways – Hira Nabi proposes an allowing for a set of future possibilities as a way to expand an inclusive, regional identity of cross-pollination and care. The work explores the arrival and transfer of seeds via colonialism, failed botanical migrations, and economies of land usage. Nabi is a filmmaker and multimedia artist. Her practice moves across research and visual production interrogating the relationship between memory, history and place. She is currently working on researching cinema houses in urban Pakistan, and on identity-making and cultural production in Lahore through a study of its gardens and botanical influences. Hlubaishu Chowdhuri b. 1992, Khagrachhari, Bangladesh; Lives and works in Chattagram Shape of Map 1, 2017 Acrylic on canvas Courtesy of the artist and Samdani Art Foundation Shape of Map 2, 2017 Acrylic on canvas Courtesy of the artist Shape of Map 3, 2019 Acrylic on canvas. Commissioned for the DAS 2020. Courtesy of the artist The Chittagong Hill Tracts in Southeast Bangladesh are comprised of three districts (Khagrachari, Rangamati and Bandarban) hosting eleven different ethnic communities with over a thousand years of diverse cultural, linguistic, and ethnic histories that differ from those of the majority Bengali population of Bangladesh. Chowdhuri’s paintings depict the map of Chattagram (previously Chittagong) division, and forms of figures and objects emerge in the voids of intertwined lines that seem to pulse like veins. In her map series, the artist paints internally conflicted lands. She explores the paradox of forced migration of indigenous people in the face of their non-severable spiritual connections to their lands, stressing the importance of overcoming conflict derived from cultural and ethnic differences in order to find new ways to peacefully coexist. Chowdhuri works predominantly with painting. As a member of the Marma indigenous community of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, her art is greatly influenced by the region’s socio-political instability and cultural history. Chowdhuri’s paintings reflect the existential crises of indigenous people over time through motifs drawn from indigenous knitting and craft techniques. Kamruzzaman Shadhin b. 1974, Thakurgaon; lives and works in Dhaka and Thakurgaon The Fibrous Souls, 2018–2020 Jute, Cotton Thread, Brass, Clay Realised in collaboration with Gidree Bawlee Foundation of Arts. Commissioned and Produced by Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Samdani Art Foundation Kamruzzaman Shadhin’s collaborative work interweaves strands of history that seem innocently distinct from but are in fact connected to present-day peasant conditions in South Asia. The artist invited ecological migrants residing in his village who moved from the ‘jute tracks’ of Southern Bangladesh to create a memorial reminding us of how the desire and pursuit of a commodity economy continues to transform the land that we stand on. Seventy giant shikas hang in a formation based upon the Assam Bengal Railway that operated under British India from 1892–1942. Railways were a form of connectivity that displaced people and their ways of life; their construction transformed Bengal’s lands from growing food to producing globally desired commodities (jute, indigo, opium). Shadhin’s participatory practice incorporates sculpture, painting, installation, performance, video, and public art interventions. His work maintains a satirical edge, dealing directly with the politics of environmental degradation and destruction and its effects on communities across Bangladesh. Migration, social justice, and local history are recurring themes in his works. He is the founder of the Gidree Bawlee Foundation of Arts (founded 2001) and a founding member of Chhobir Haat (founded 2005). Liu Chuang b. 1978, Hubei; lives and works in Shanghai Bitcoin Mining and Field Recordings of Ethnic Minorities, 2018 Three-channel video, 4K, 5.1 surround sound, 40 min Courtesy of the artist and Antenna Space.Commissioned for Cosmopolis #1 .5: Enlarged Intelligence with the support of the Mao Jihong Arts Foundation Liu Chuang observes the displacement of indigenous peoples and cultures left in the wake of harvesting massive amounts of energy from hydroelectric dams, connecting historical narratives and stories of material and immaterial profit and loss across Asia via the mountainous region known as Zomia – which extends into the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. The work links political power, the extraction of minerals and energy from deep within the earth, and new currencies seeking to evade centralised national control, moving from the fifth century BCE to present-day China through a mixture of shot and found footage, the narration of fact and fiction, and sound. Chuang works with found materials, such as window grilles and pulp-fiction books, in addition to video, installation, architecture, and performance. He critically reflects upon life in contemporary China, focusing on its culture of intensive industry and globalisation. The artist is interested in attending to larger socio-political phenomena that often go unnoticed in day-to-day existence. Madiha Sikander b. 1987, Hyderabad; lives and works between Karachi and Vancouver Majmua, 2017–18 Cloves, monofilament, glass, metal beads Courtesy of the artist The artist would like to acknowledge the labour of the students who wove with her: Habiba Saleheen, Mohammad Omer,Yumna Ahmed, Sana Zahid, Azher Khan, Aiman Rauf, Humaira Salaams, Danyal Begg, Hussain Sanjwani, Bakhtawar Majeed, Mansoor Elahi, Salman Siddiqui, Mohammad Abbas, Attika Shahab, Shanzay Ikhlaq, Zulfiqar Ali, Vimal Khatri, Mehwish John, Ayesha Sabih, Nimra Shoaib, Aniqa Sohail, Shayan Nasir, Fiza Batool, Shahrukh Shafique, Sidra Sohail, Sobia Sohail and Maisam Hussain Madiha Sikander’s Majuma (‘assemblage’ in Urdu) is an installation inspired by the similarities in the practices of miniature painting and Canadian First Nations weaving in terms of their relationship with labour and materiality. Cloves, beads, and microfilaments are woven together to create a transparent and powerfully scented curtain that invites us to consider how the world we experience today was designed by labour and trade routes drawn up by imperial powers. ‘Each lozenge refigures how the lines of the Silk Road and the routes of the Spice Trade map the Indian subcontinent, trade routes tracing to the Neolithic and extending to Southern Europe… Africa… and Asia. Each bead recalls the European expropriation of indigenous lands in the Americas and of human beings in the African continent – the ‘slave trade beads’ Europeans used in their dealings with indigenous American groups.’ (da Silva, 2018) Sikander works with found objects, such as books, newspaper images, and family photographs, as well as items from flea markets. Her work addresses historical erasure and memory, notably in relation to labour, space, and material. Through repurposing and layering familiar materials, Sikander collapses the different tenses of time and space. Mahbubur Rahman b. 1969, Dhaka; lives and works in Dhaka Transformation, 2018–2019 Two-Channel HD Video, 14:35 min Courtesy of the artist. This work will be activated by a performance on 7 February 3.30pm Unlike individuals, ideas have the potential to become immortal. Since 2004, Mahbubur Rahman’s performance, sculpture, and video work has been embodying the popular folk story of the hero Nurul Din from the Rangpur Peasant Rebellion of 1783, specifically drawing references from the late Bangladeshi writer Syed Shamsul Haq’s 1982 play Nuruldiner Sara Jibon (Nuraldin: A Life). Just as Haq revived Nurul Din (Nurul Uddin) as an allegory to fight back against the military rule of the 1980s, Rahman evokes this figure to encourage standing up against the injustices of today. Rahman’s fascination with this story begins in a scene when Nurul Din was a child accompanying his emaciated father to the paddy fields to help plough the field. Everything had been taken away from his family, including their bull, as a consequence of their unpaid tax bills to the British Raj who controlled the land and demanded it grow indigo rather than food. Straining under the hot sun, Nurul Din’s father tried to tow the land without a bull, and he collapsed and died under the weight of the plough, groaning like a bull in the process. Rahman created this two-channel video from a performance he realised with Bangladeshi indigo farmers of today, Bihari migrant rickshaw pullers in Kolkata (likened to human horses), and horse riders on the bank of the Padma river in Bangladesh (the same source of water as Kolkata’s Ganga river) surrounding the Farakka Barrage that has divided these once continuously flowing waters between India and Bangladesh since 1975. These locations and stories link East and West Bengal via their shared British colonial history; times have changed, but the stories of oppression of the working class persist. Rahman’s Transformation is a call to rise up, remembering brave figures whose ghosts (that live on through stories) can’t rest until justice is served. Rahman works across painting, video, installation, and performance and is one of the most internationally recognised Bangladeshi artists of his generation. He pushes the experience of art beyond visual pleasure, addressing wider social responsibilities in reference to his personal experience of anguish and anxiety in the context of contemporary Bangladesh. He is a co-founder of Britto (f. 2002), a non-profit space that initiated a successful alternate art scene that breaks from and challenges the persisting colonial barriers found within academic art institutions that discourage cultural reform. Munem Wasif b. 1983, Dhaka; lives and works in Dhaka Spring Song, 2017–2019 Series of 27 Archival pigment prints Sutra, 2019 Silkscreen and Pigment print on archival paper Kala Pani, 2019 Series of 14 Archival pigment prints and ambush text prints on archival paper Documents, 2017–2019 Photographs, text, found footage, archival material, variable sizes Realised with partial support of Samdani Art Foundation and NTU CCA Singapore. Courtesy the artist and Project 88, Mumbai Munem Wasif’s work has long been exploring the concept of a border, re-examining the questions around its formation. How are borders constructed? Who constructs them? How are they broken and re-formed? Wasif began visiting Rohingya refugee camps on the Myanmar/Bangladesh border in 2009. The size of the camps has grown exponentially since the violent incidents beginning in 2017 that have caused hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee into Bangladesh. The artist is unable to type the word ‘Rohingya’ correctly because his computer lacks Burmese language programming; in Myanmar the word ‘Rohingya’ is expunged from official discourse in favour of the term ‘Bengali.’ Silkscreened onto a British colonial map, the distorted typography of the word ‘Rohingya’ hints at Myanmar’s denial of the existence of this ethnic group which has been living within its borders for generations. Kala Pani – which translates to Dark Water – is a new series of black and white photographs which seems innocuous at first. The presence of dark, featureless masses of water, an empty ocean in its most ordinary form, stands as a stark reminder of what Rohingyas have gone through to escape mass extermination. Recalling harrowing details that were told to him by survivors, Wasif created texts which he paired with images to reveal the refugees’ escape at sea. The works reflect the constant flow of migration in the Bay of Bengal across many centuries, where border lines are lost in the shade of night. What can you hold onto when running away to save your life? How can you be, belong, or settle when nobody accepts you as a citizen? How do you legally prove your very existence after decades of systemic violence? Spring Song (2017–2019) is a work in progress that revolves around objects found in Rohingya camps. Placed against vivid monochromatic backgrounds, these precarious assemblages, decaying documents, and faded photographs convey fragmented memories and feelings of displacement. These objects are a testament of determination; a will to eat, to play or to simply reminisce about one's past –in other words, to have the freedom to feel human. Nabil Rahman The Taste of Tea, 2019 Collage of images, texts, objects, artworks collected from tea garden Commissioned for DAS 2020. Courtesy of the artist. Realised with additional support from Kabi Dilwar Foundation Born into Tea: Conversation and Songs with artists who currently live in Bangladeshi tea estates. Sunday 9, 5pm First Floor Nabil Rahman was born in and currently lives in the tea-district of Northeast Bangladesh, Sylhet; he was raised in New York and has experienced how value and values (mis)translate across these vastly different yet connected contexts. The least expensive cup of tea at Starbucks costs around $1.75 in the United States, while the daily wage of a tea picker can be less than the equivalent of $1.25 per day of work. Women sometimes collect more than 23kg of tea in one day, and tea is the second most consumed drink after water. The artist plays the role of facilitator when sharing his privilege with creative individuals working in neighbouring tea gardens, allowing their creativity to bloom in ways not tied to capitalist production, searching for new shared tools of expression. On Sunday 9 February at 5pm, artists who live in Bangladesh’s tea estates will perform songs and engage with visitors of DAS in the South Plaza, facilitated through the work of Rahman. Rahman’s practice archives the industrial present using found objects, mark-making and the written word. Creating ironic references to the histories and languages of abstraction, he investigates its politics by weaving traces of the global flows of material into his work, destabilising the supposed aim of abstraction in search of a ‘pure form.’ Neha Choksi The American President Travels (East), 2002 (remade 2019) Installation with wood, bamboo, paint, printed fabric. Commissioned and Produced by Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Project88 As a study of the possible ecologies of powerful males, this installation visually configures a scratchy and deteriorated archive of the 20th-century travels of nine U.S. Presidents to over two dozen eastern nations, both revealing the paper diplomacy conducted through American newspapers and revelling in the comedy of each President filling his predecessor’s shoes for the public’s family album. A sheen of romantic getaway as well as ‘I-scratch-you-if-you-scratch-me’ is lent to the many recorded moments through the use of sheer silky fabric, backscratchers, and the form of a massage table. Working across performance, video, installation, sculpture, and other formats, Choksi disrupts logic by setting up poetic and absurd interventions in the lives of everything – from stone to plant, animal to self, friends to institutions. Embracing a confluence of disciplines, she allows in strands of her intellectual, cultural and social contexts to revisit the entanglements of time, consciousness, and socialisation. b. 1973, Belleville; lives and works in Los Angeles and Mumbai Rossella Biscotti Clara, 2019 VOC document transferred on wall (cargo list ship Knappenhof, departed from Bengal on 30–11–1740 arrived in Delft/Rotterdam on 20–07–1741 passing through Cape) Realised with additional support from the Italian Embassy of Bangladesh and the Embassy of the Netherlands in Bangladesh Rossella Biscotti is interested in the power of storytelling and how this can open up a deeper exploration of untraced by history that reveals changing value systems. One of the stories that fascinates her is the story of Clara, a female rhinoceros who was brought to the Netherlands from Bengal in 1741 by a captain of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) along with a large shipment of textiles. While the detailed listings of textiles was declared and can be deduced from the reproduction of the ship’s original manifest document reproduced on the wall, Clara was not, suggesting that the captain was trying to profit off her exoticness as a separate source of income from his official VOC duties. Clara toured around Europe for seventeen years. While she is not visible in this official document, collective memory keeps stories (like Clara’s) alive. Surati and Princess of Kasiruta, 2019 Material line natural rubber, food colouring Courtesy of the artist and Mor-Charpentier. Realised with additional support from the Italian Embassy of Bangladesh and the Embassy of the Netherlands in Bangladesh Made from cast natural rubber embellished with food-colouring and batik-inspired patterns, this installation carries Biscotti’s interpretations of the powerful female characters in the Buru Quartet (1980–88), a series of novels by the late Indonesian author Pramoedya Ananta Toer while he was in prison. On a material level, the first rubber seeds were brought to Indonesia from the Belgian Congo, and batik techniques were exported to Africa via Europe as African Wax Cloth, speaking to the global scale of colonialism. Pramodeya’s novels tell the story of nationhood narrated on the bodies of women, whose only inheritable possessions were batik fabric and jewellery. Among the characters is a woman called Surati who deliberately infects herself with smallpox to avoid colonial subjugation as a concubine on a sugar plantation, and Annalies Mellema, who is shipped to Holland as property. Biscotti was inspired by the journeys and survival strategies employed by these women to resist the patriarchal colonial regimes they were born into, and imagines their characters in design motifs cast into these seductive floor-based forms. Biscotti describes the constitution of sentient beings as they are, instead of how they may be perceived, using sculpture, images and other materials. Her work explores forgotten or untraced events and the changing value systems they reveal. She explores the individual narratives of those affected by mining, exploitation and confinement, drawing from oral, technical, archival, and field research. b. 1978, Molfetta; lives and works in Brussels and Rotterdam Samsul Alam Helal Disappearing Roots, 2019 Photography, pigment prints, video with sound, 2:20 min Courtesy of the artist Samsul Alam Helal’s series Disappearing Roots considers the displacement of indigenous people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. The Kaptai Dam was built in 1962 as a hydropower source, and it produces about 5% of the total electricity consumed by Bangladesh. However, its creation displaced over 100,000 people (70% Chakma) and also submerged many homes, including the palace of the Chakma king which remains buried deep underneath a lake that is currently frequented by tourists. Globally over 10 million people per year are displaced by World Bank development projects (dams and infrastructure projects), according to an article on the adjacent video by Liu Chuang published in ArtReview. Using video and photography created through the artist’s long-term engagement with the Hill Tract communities, Helal’s work captures the remaining traces of ancient ways of life, highlighting the violence of gentrification and the trauma found in submerged symbols of cultural autonomy. ‘If even a royal palace can drown, what hope is there for ordinary people?’ asks the artist. Helal works with photography, sound, 3D models, and video to document the experiences of communities that are often part of the working class or a minority. His work explores the identities, dreams, and longings of their individual members. Helal prefers to explore these in a studio set-up, blurring boundaries between documentary photography and fiction. b. 1985, Dhaka; lives and works in Dhaka Sawangwongse Yawnghwe The Opium Parallax II, 2019 Acrylic on silk and canvas Commissioned for DAS 2020 with in-kind support from the Rijksakademie and Jim Thompson Art Centre. Courtesy of the artist. Realised with additional support from the Embassy of the Netherlands in Bangladesh In Sawangwongse Yawnghwe’s painterly practice, historical and political analyses of Shan State (Burma) are intertwined with personal and familial histories. This work contextualises the Shan State heroin-opium complex within opium’s long and invisible history of impacting the drawing of borders across vast geographies. Opium traverses not only national borders, but blurs the line between the legal and the illegal. ‘Because relationships are informal and regulated in irregular and informal patterns and because the balance of power and coalitions among the powers-that-be are unstable and shifting… no single economic-commercial actor can dominate the field… Entrepreneurial groups… operate with only one goal in mind… making and maximising profit. It is a world where the colour of flags or ideology is not as important as the colour of wealth.’ (Chao Tzang Yawnghwe, The Political Economy of the Opium Trade: Implications for Shan State, 2003) Yawnghwe works with painting and installation, addressing often fictional archives as a critique of Myanmar’s ethnocentric nationalism. Growing up in the context of the country’s patterns of military repression and domination, his work intertwines his personal experience with politics. Yawnghwe’s family history of political engagement represents a point of crossing of the two. b. 1971, Shan State; lives and works in Chiang Mai and Zuphen Shiraz Bayjoo b. 1979, Port Louis; lives and works in London and the Indian Ocean region Pran Kouraz, 2019 Mixed fabrics, dye-sublimation ink on canvas, super 16mm HD video, 14:48 min Commissioned by INIVA and Art Night London. Courtesy of the artist and Ed Cross Fine Art Shiraz Bayjoo’s immersive environment Pran Kouraz (meaning ‘take courage’ in Mauritian Creole) is inspired by his own history in Mauritius, once known as the Maroon Republic, a place created through the will and imagination to escape and overcome slavery and colonial subjugation. The story of the escaped slave becomes a wider metaphor about creating a new world on the back of migration and displacement where hybridity becomes a tool for freedom, survival, and self-transformation in the wake of trauma. Bayjoo worked with a group of eight-year-old migrant students in the UK, asking them to explore their rights as young people and to consider their own stories of courage and overcoming. The children critique the experiences of transmigratory groups today from their experiences of isolation, loss, and displacement stemming from patriarchal colonial legacies, power structures, and relationships that continue to endure and dominate. The resulting conversation, presented in the form of a film, creates a visual metaphor for the multiplicity of pressures facing humanity today. Bayjoo works with painting, photography, video, installation, and artefacts stored in public and personal archives. His work addresses ideas of nationhood and the exploration of identity tied to the history and legacy of European colonialism. Drawing from a past of complex relationships of migration and trade, he traces the meaning of postcolonial collective identity. Somnath Hore b. 1921, Chittagong; d. 2006, Santiniketan Wound series, 1979 Two Pulp Prints Courtesy of Samdani Art Foundation ‘The Famine of 1943, the communal riots of 1946, the devastations of war, all the wounds and wounded I have seen, are engraved on my consciousness…Wounds is what I saw everywhere around me. A scarred tree, a road gouged by a truck tyre, a man knifed for no visible or rational reason… The object was eliminated; only wounds remained,’ reflected Somnath Hore, an artist celebrated in Indian art history who was born in what is now Bangladesh. He transformed hand-made paper into scarred, blistered, pierced, and wounded surfaces reminiscent of human skin in the aftermath of trauma in the highly experimental Wounds Series from the 1970s. This body of work speaks not only to the violent regional history that the artist lived through in the build-up and aftermath of the 1947 partition of British India and Bangladesh’s subsequent war for independence in 1971, but also to the social scars of division found across our shared human history. Hore worked to document and reinscribe the suffering working class into public memory, testifying to his important role as an artist-witness in a time of historical crisis. His works were published in various revolutionary publications, notably those of the Communist party. Hore invented and developed various printmaking techniques in addition to working in painting and sculpture. Later on in his career, Hore worked as an educator at multiple arts institutions, such as the Indian College of Art and Draftsmanship (Kolkata), Delhi College of Art, MS University (Baroda) and Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati. Thao Nguyen Phan b. 1987, Ho Chi Minh City; lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City Mute Grain, 2019 Three-channel video, colour, sound, 15:45 min Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation for SB14. Courtesy of the artist Mute Grain (2019) examines the little-discussed 1945 famine in French Indochina during the Japanese occupation (1940–5), in which over two million people died of starvation, partly due to Japanese demands to grow jute over rice to support their war economy. This three-channel film poetically weaves together oral histories, folk tales, and lyrical chronicles to tell a story that history left behind in Vietnam, creating narratives that sit at the border of fantasy and reality. Beyond her research in Vietnam, Thao Nguyen Phan also consulted Bengali literature in creating the work, notably Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Anandamath (1882), set in the Bengal famine of 1770. Her film revolves around a young woman named Tám, who becomes a hungry ghost unable to move to the next life, and Ba, who anxiously searches for his sister. Ba (‘March’) and Tám (‘August’) represent the poorest months of the lunar calendar, when farmers once borrowed money and worked side jobs to sustain themselves. Phan works with painting, video, installation, and what she calls ‘theatrical fields,’ such as performance gesture and moving images. Utilising literature, philosophy, and open poetic spaces conducive to reflection, she highlights unconventional issues arising from history and tradition. This allows her to challenge received ideas and social conventions. In 2012, Phan co-founded the collective Art Labor, whose work can be experienced in the South Plaza exhibition The Collective Body. Yasmin Jahan Nupur b. 1979, Chittagong; lives and works in Dhaka Let Me Get You a Nice Cup of Tea, 2019–20 Antique furniture, antique tea set, embroidered textiles, tea, performance Commissioned for DAS 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Exhibit320, with support from the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem Performance is live from 7 to 12 February, 10am–1pm and 4–5:30pm Tea has impacted cultures and changed the course of world history by bringing people together and tearing them apart: from the Opium Wars and the American Revolution to the mass movement of workers as part of plantation economics; from the fostering of friendships to marriage proposals through the ritual of tea ceremonies. Yasmin Jahan Nupur has arranged a tea party through a performative process. She has harvested the tea at home and, through the act of sharing, brings participants together to think more closely about the origins of this everyday commodity. Nupur works with sketches, installations, and performances. Her work explores human relationships from various perspectives, reflecting her belief in democratic rights regardless of social position. She explores social discrepancies such as those of women and migrants in South Asia, hoping to support increased understanding between peoples of different backgrounds. Zainul Abedin b. 1914, Kishoreganj; d. 1976, Dhaka A suite of Untitled works from the Famine Sketches series, 1943 Ink on paper Courtesy of Rokeya Quader Untitled from Monpura’ 70, 1970 Ink on paper Courtesy of Anwar Hossain Manju Zainul Abedin is considered by many to be the founding father of modern art in Bangladesh. In response to the Great Famine of Bengal (1943) under the British rule of India, he made hundreds of sketches depicting starving victims, serving as a form of visual testimony. His sketches spoke to the atrocities experienced by victims under what was a man-made famine and fuelled the public’s will for independence. Throughout his artistic career, Abedin remained true to the representation of the struggles of those most vulnerable in society, notably the rural peasantry. He was actively involved in the Language Movement of 1952 and the Liberation War in 1971. Having witnessed the Bhola Cyclone devastation, he expressed solidarity through his scroll painting Monpura ’70, drawing parallels between the struggle of the victims of the cyclone and that of the people of Bangladesh. Abedin travelled extensively, depicting those suffering under oppression, often returning to his Famine sketches such as in his series on the people of Palestine. In addition to being one of the most important artists of his generation, Abedin was also an academic and bureaucrat who helped establish the first art college in Dhaka in 1947, after the partition of British India. He was given the title Shilpacharya (‘great teacher of arts’) for his contribution towards art education in Bangladesh. Abedin also established the Folk Art Museum and a folk village in Sonargaon in 1975. Zhou Tao b. 1976, Changsha; lives and works in Guangzhou Winter North Summer South (2, 3, 5, 17), 2019 Inkjet prints on paper Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space. This project extends from a film produced with support from Samdani Art Foundation and Kadist and commissioned by Council Zhou Tao spent nearly two years in an eco-industrial park at the foot of the Kunlun Mountains creating these images that swiftly alternate between natural landscapes of sandstorms, dust clouds, and the changing seasons, and realistic portraits of humans and other species fighting for survival in a state of exception. Human agency is not only manifested in transforming the external world but can also be exercised by preserving an internal, poetic space. Co-commissioned by Times Museum and Council and supported by Samdani Art Foundation and Kadist, his latest work, North of the Mountain, was shot with an 8K-resolution camera that is able to capture shades of brightness and darkness beyond the capacity of the human eye. It is the artist’s radical attempt to ecologise the body of the filmmaker as well as filmmaking technologies in a place that is largely shut off from the gaze of the world outside. Zhou Tao predominantly works with video, producing plotless events in a documentary language with a core focus on the sense and sensation of time. His works connect disparate milieus, often on the threshold between the natural and the artificial as a metaphor for the spatial multiplicity of modernism, incomprehensible to the human mind.

ALL PROJECTS EVA International - Ireland's Biennial of Contemporary Art 31st August - 29 October 2023 Sebastian Cichocki, a Samdani Art Foundation Collaborator since 2016, invited Joydeb Roaja to be a part of the upcoming EVA International , and shared some details of his research process. "My proposal for the Irish biennial takes its thematic basis on the idea and practice of gleaning – a term that for centuries refers to the act of collecting leftover crops following a harvest. I focus on practices of artists engaged in generating social change, working within and for their, often rural, communities. Joydeb Roaja is a visionary artist whose work gave me an invaluable insight into the struggles of the Tripura community in Bangladesh, its coexistence with other species and connection to spiritual forces. I saw Joydeb's work during my visits to Bangladesh and had an opportunity to meet this unique artist during the Dhaka Art Summit. I believe that his art doesn't belong only in the realm of museums and galleries, but it also brings joy and poetry to his community."

The Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) is an international, non-commercial research and exhibition platform for art and architecture related to South Asia. With a core focus on Bangladesh, DAS re-examines how we think about these forms of art in both a regional and an international context. Nadia Samdani CO-FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT Nadia Samdani MBE is the Co-Founder and President of the Samdani Art Foundation and Director of Dhaka Art Summit (DAS). In 2011, with husband Rajeeb Samdani, she established the Samdani Art Foundation to support the work of Bangladesh and South Asia’s contemporary artists and architects and increase their exposure. As part of this initiative, she founded DAS, which has since completed five successful editions under her leadership. She is a member of Tate’s South Asia Acquisitions Committee, Tate’s International Council and Alserkal Avenue’s Programming Committee, one of the founding members of The Harvard University Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute’s Arts Advisory Council and member of Asia Society’s Advisory Committee. In 2017, with her husband Rajeeb, she was the first South Asian arts patron to receive the prestigious Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage Award. She was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2022 Birthday Honours for services to global art philanthropy and supporting the arts in South Asia and the United Kingdom. She has also received the Knight of the Order of the Arts and Letters by the Cultural Ministry of France.A second-generation collector, she began her own collection at the age of 22. She collects both Bangladeshi and international art, reflecting her experience as both a proud Bangladeshi and a global citizen. She has written about collecting for Art Asia Pacific and Live Mint and has been a guest speaker at art fairs and institutions including the Royal Ontario Museum, Art Basel, Frieze and Harvard University among other institutions. Works from the Samdanis’ collection have been lent to institutions and festivals including: Kiran Nadar Musem of Art, New Delhi (2023); Hayward Gallery, London (2022); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2019); Para Site, Hong Kong (2018); Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2018); documenta 14, Kassel and Athens, (2017); Shanghai Biennale (2017); Office for Contemporary Art Norway, Olso (2016); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015); Kunstsammlung Nordrhein, Düsseldorf (2015); Gwangju Biennale (2014); and Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2014). Rajeeb Samdani CO-FOUNDER AND TRUSTEE Rajeeb Samdani is a Co-Founder and Trustee of the Samdani Art Foundation, and Managing Director of Golden Harvest Group - one of the leading diversified conglomerates in Bangladesh. Together with his wife Nadia Samdani MBE, he established the biannual Dhaka Art Summit, and Srihatta- Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park. Rajeeb is also known for his modern and contemporary art collection. He is a founding member and Co-Chair of Tate’s South Asian Acquisitions Committee, a member of Tate’s International Council and Tate Advisory Board and Alserkal Avenue’s Programming Committee, a founding member of The Harvard University Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute’s Arts Advisory Council, Delfina Foundation’s Global Council member, a member of Art SG and a member of Art Basel Global Patrons Council. In 2017, with his wife Nadia, he was the first South Asian arts patron to receive the prestigious Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage Award. He has been a guest speaker at art fairs and institutions including the Royal Ontario Museum of Art, UC Berkeley, Harvard University and the Private Museums Summit. Diana Campbell ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Diana Campbell is a Princeton educated American curator and writer working in South and Southeast Asia since 2010, primarily in India, Bangladesh, and the Philippines. She is committed to fostering a transnational art world, and her plural and long-range vision addresses the concerns of underrepresented regions and artists alongside the more established in manifold forums. Since 2013, she has served as the Founding Artistic Director of Dhaka-based Samdani Art Foundation, Bangladesh and Chief Curator of the Dhaka Art Summit, leading the last five editions of the platform with a global team of collaborators. Campbell has developed the Dhaka Art Summit into a leading research and exhibitions platform for art from South Asia, bringing together artists, architects, curators, and writers through a largely commission based model where new work and exhibitions are born in Bangladesh, adding a scholarly element to the platform through collaborations with the Getty Foundation, Asia Art Archive, Cornell University, Harvard University, RAW Material Company, Gudskul, and many other formal and grassroots educational initiatives around the world. Pacific Islands and Bangladesh are at the forefront of climate change; Campbell’s maternal family is indigenous CHamoru from the island of Guam, and her heritage inspires her curatorial practice and the development of DAS as a platform to amplify indigenous practices both in South Asia and internationally. In addition to her exhibition making and writing practice, Campbell is responsible for developing the Samdani Art Foundation collection and drives its international collaborations ahead of opening the foundation’s permanent home and community-based residency program at Srihatta, the Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park in Sylhet. Campbell’s practice specializes in building networks. She is part of the facilitation group of AFIELD, a global network of socially engaged initiatives, and leading the international development of EDI Global Forum, a global network of art education departments as an initiative of the Campania Region of Italy developed by the Fondazione Morra Greco in Naples that is convening over 150 global institutions to address needed change in art education. She is currently curating the 2023 edition of DesertX in the Coachella Valley opening in March 2023, linking the climatic challenges of droughts and floods across California and Bangladesh. Mohammad Sazzad Hossain HEAD OF ADMINISTRATION Mohammad Sazzad Hossain is the Head of Administration of the Samdani Art Foundation. Sazzad has worked for the Samdani Art Foundation since 2012 and has been a key member of the management team from the first edition of the Dhaka Art Summit, now moving into its 7th edition. He is responsible for the artistic production of DAS, along with the management of all the teams on site, as well as the production for Srihatta and its artistic program. From the outset, Sazzad has managed the production of major international artist’s projects, such as Rana Begum, Afrah Shafiq, Antony Gormley, Shilpa Gupta, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Nilima Sheikh, Damian Ortega and Antonio Dias to name a few. He was one of the key members of the Srijan Abartan, a cross-disciplinary sustainable exhibition design research programme introduced in 2020. Sazzad Hossain completed his M.A. and B.A. from Stamford University Bangladesh majoring in English Literature. DAS 2014 Team Guest Curators Others CHAIRMAN Farooq Sobhan DHAKA ART SUMMIT, BANGLADESH Nadia Samdani MBE SAMDANI ART FOUNDATION, BANGLADESH Rajeeb Samdani Organising Comittee Members

ALL PROJECTS Bearing Point 2 - Dozakh-I-Puri N'imat (An Inferno Bearing Gifts) Curated by Diana Campbell Bearing Point 2 - Dozakh-I-Puri N'imat (An Inferno Bearing Gifts) The 14th century Moroccan scholar Ibn Batuta’s description of Bengal reads as Dozakh-i-puri n'imat – an inferno bearing gifts. This Bearing Point descended into this inferno, considering the interwoven histories of Bengal to face the coming storms of ecological catastrophe and rising ethno-nationalism. Muzharul Islam once said that “independence brings in the greatest opportunity for a nation to express its thoughts, talent, and energy.” Islam designed the campus of Chittagong University, which was the birthplace of the 13-panel mural, Abahoman Bangla Bangali (The Flows of Bengal and the Bengali), painted in 1972 by members of Chittagong-based collective Oti Shamprotik Amra. These panels narrated a history of Bengal up until the birth of Bangladesh in 1971, and were part of the Bangladesh India Friendship Fest, the first exhibition of Bangladeshi art abroad in 1972 in Calcutta, which included artists, musicians and performers. The first panel is titled Ruposhi Bangla (Beautiful Bengal) after the seminal collection of poems by Jibanananda Das (1899-1954), which served as a major point of inspiration for the nationalists of the Language Movement from 1952. Music and oral performance were key in the Bangladeshi Liberation War when radio stations deemed illegal by the Pakistani government disseminated nationalist Bengali songs and troupes of performers travelled to far ends of the country to produce citizenship through music. The Bengali musicians’ collective Mohiner Ghoraguli also draws its name from a Das’s poem. Zihan Karim takes one of their songs as a point of departure to reimagine the metaphor of the body as the architecture for the soul. His 3D video installation examines what is lost when people try to erase difficult pasts, using a lens of social critique offered by the song to engage with centuries of history. Music also played a significant role in the emergence of Bangladesh into international consciousness through the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh organised by Ravi Shankar and George Harrison. The early leaders of Bangladesh were cognizant of the impoverished image of their country in the world’s eyes. Muzharul Islam once remarked: “In the 2,000 years of our history, we have been poor for only 250 years and that too, because of colonisation. If we do suffer from poverty, we suffer only from one kind of poverty– economic.” Student movements have paved the way for revolutions across history, including in Bangladesh, speaking to the role of education as a form of de-colonial practice and a vehicle for changing the course of history. One of the most radical institutions for education was Rabindranath Tagore’s Shantiniketan, where the poet and his contemporaries created an institution that focused on community-based aesthetically-oriented learning. The Otolith Group revisits Tagore’s pedagogical and aesthetic philosophy in their lecture performance which opens DAS’s talks and education programmes. Speaking to the centrality of the spoken word in the production of the law, Zuleikha Chaudhuri’s Rehearsing the Witness revisited a legal case where the identity of the presumed dead Kumar of Bhawal was disputed for over 16 years in the courts of Dhaka, Calcutta, and London. These works activated archives and oral histories, to create contexts that investigate the production of identity as a performed practice. Artists Oti Samprotik Amra (1968-mid 1970s) Sabih-ul-Alam, Tajul Islam, Syed Enayet Hossain, Safiqul Islam, Abul Monsur, Chandra Shekhar Dey, Mohammad Shawkat Haider Eternal Bangla Bangali, 1972 Locally produced paint on board Titles: 1. Beautiful Bengal 2. Strayed worshipper 3. Wisdom’s flare in hand 4. Dark Skies 5. Home searching traveler 6. Sovereign power, sovereign wrath 7. Death’s index 8. Ravenous Strike 9. Voice of resistance 10. Spectrum of life 11. Horrors of 71 12. Victory all courtesy of the Chittagong University Museum Collection Oti Samprotik Amra (We, the Contemporary) was a progressive cultural group founded by the students of the Chittagong University in 1968. Their activity included organizing theatrical shows and various cultural programmes within the university. They were responsible for the first international exhibition of Bangladeshi art (after the liberation war in 1971), held in Kolkata in 1972, which celebrated the triumph of Bengali culture. The group invited seven artists, mostly students of Chittagongian origin (Sabih-ul-Alam, Tajul Islam, Syed Enayet Hossain, Safiqul Islam, Abul Monsur, Chandra Shekhar Dey and Mohammad Shawkat Haider) to create a mural 104 ft long for the Bangladesh-India Friendship Fair which was held in Gorer Math (now known as Maidan or Brigade Parade Ground) in March 1972. This recently re-discovered 13-panel mural (of which we are only able to display 12, due to deteriorated condition of the final work) that chronicles different chapters of the country’s history was collected by the Chittagong University Museum in 1976 when the group slowly ceased to exist. These panels were reunited and reexhibited at Chittagong University Museum in 2017 as part of Dhaka Art Summit’s research initiatives, and we are honoured to exhibit this important historical marker of Bangladeshi independence and artist-led initiatives at DAS 2018. Zihan Karim (b. 1984 in Chittagong, lives and works in Chittagong Various Ways of Departure, 2017-2018 4 channel video with sound courtesy of the artist Music and oral performance were key in the Bangladeshi Liberation War when radio stations deemed illegal by the Pakistani government disseminated nationalist Bengali songs and troupes of performers traveled to far ends of the country to produce citizenship through music. Soon after Bangladeshi independence the Bengali musicians’ collective, which some call India’s rock music collective, Mohiner Ghoraguli (founded in 1975), continued in this tradition and created music deeply connected to the student movements of the 1970s-80s. Inspired by the Mohiner Ghoraguli song Saattala Bari (Seven Storied House), Chittagong based artist Zihan Karim reimagines the metaphor of the body as the architecture for the soul – an idea present across Bengali, Baul, and Sufi traditions. Karim’s resulting video installation Various Ways of Departure (2017-2018) uses this spiritual framework, viewed through lens of social critique offered by the song, to survey two historically significant seven-storied buildings in Chittagong – the Adalat Bhaban (the Courthouse) and the P.K Sen Bhaban– both of which were under threat of demolition. Karim engages with centuries of history through a poetic lens, examining what is lost when people try to erase difficult pasts, using techniques of 3D imaging to show the many layers that build up the composite image we see now. Zuliekha Chaudhuri (b. 1973 in Mumbai, lives and works in New Delhi) with Anita Rahaman Ghazi, Jyotirmoy Barua, Aneek R. Haque, Shahidul Alam, Dr Nandini Chatterjee, Rahaab Allana, Ahona Palchoudhuri, Samina Luthfa, Oroon Das and Arup Rahee Rehearsing the Witness: The Bhawal Court Case (2016-2018) Live performance, archival photographs Commissioned and produced by the Samdani Art Foundation Additional support from the Alkzazi Foundation of Photography and Brown University Courtesy of the artist and the Alkazi Foundation of Photography, New Delhi Photographs courtesy : The Alkazi Collection of Photography, New Delhi Both theatre and citizenship are performed practices; one’s performance as a citizen is either applauded or fails to live up-to expectations. To live with these conditions is to always be on trial and to know that in the eyes of the examining authority one is always an imposter unless proved otherwise. Zuleikha Chaudhuri’s Rehearsing the Witness: The Bhawal Court Case, revisits the historical court case around the Bhawal zamindari estate in Dhaka which ran between 1930-1946. She has staged previous iterations of the work at the Mumbai Art Room, as a “‘rehearsal as exhibition' ', and at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, focusing on the production of a portrait by an actor. The performance at DAS at 10am on February 3rd in the auditorium takes the form of a trial using some of the original evidence from the case. This project pulls together strands of thought from the previous iterations when moving to the “scene of the crime” in Dhaka, drawing a relationship between re-enactment and retrial; the complex tension between forensic evidence, the act of speculation/imagination and truth finding and truth making. The Bhawal Court Case takes as its point of departure a trial which revolved around the identity of a sanyasi (or Hindu religious ascetic) claiming to be the second Kumar of Bhawal (the heir of one of the last large zamindari estates in Dhaka), who was presumed dead a decade earlier. The claim was contested by the British Court of Wards and by the widow of Ramendra Narayan Roy (the second Kumar of Bhawal) Bibhabati Devi. Over the course of sixteen years, the physical attributes, birthmarks, portraits and testimony were collated as forensic evidence to establish the claimant/sanyasi’s identity as being the Kumar. Hundreds of witnesses, including doctors, photographers, artists, prostitutes, peasants, revenue collectors, tenants, holy men, magistrates, handwriting experts, relatives and passers-‐by were deposed. The case went from the District Court in Dhaka to the High Court of Calcutta to the Privy Council in London, finally ending in 1946 with a victory for the plaintiff, who died a few days after the verdict. Rehearsing the Witness: The Bhawal Court Case uses this trial about a possible impostor to re-examine the enormous archive that the case produced, through performance as a means to reconsider notions of evidence, the archive and identity. Both the domains of the law and theatre/acting frame larger questions that pertain to the production of truth and reality, assumptions of stable, consistent and believable identities and the construction of a credible narrative. It examines how identity is written into history and emerges in the domain of the law, often in opposition to the actual complexity of lived-experiences and relationships. The manner in which the State, here the British Court of Wards, one of the parties in the Bhawal case, considers identity is a central question, explored through the testimony of expert witnesses on the body as evidence (and as the site where identity is played out), in comparison to where the individual locates it. Cast Judge: Anita Rahaman Ghazi Lawyer: Jyotirmoy Barua Lawyer: Aneek R. Haque Expert Witness 1: Shahidul Alam (Artist and Writer) as J. L. Winterton (Artist and Photographer. Plaintiff's Witness No.778) Expert Witness 2: Dr Nandini Chatterjee, (Senior Lecturer in history, University of Exeter, UK.) as J.H. Lindsay (Retired ICS, Secretary of the School of Oriental Studies in London, and former Collector of Dacca. Defendant’s witness, taken on commission) Expert Witness 3: Rahaab Allana (Curator, Alkazi Foundation for the Arts, New Delhi) as Percy Brown (Artist, Secretary and Curator of the Victoria Memorial Hall, Calcutta. Defendant’s witness No.8) Expert Witness 4: Ahona Palchoudhuri (Department of Anthropology, Brown University) as Bawa Dharam Das (Defendant’s witness No 327). Expert Witness 5: Samina Luthfa (Sociologist and actor) as Bibhabati Debi (Defendant No. 1. Widow of the second Kumar of Bhawal) Expert Witness 6: Oroon Das (Actor) and Arup Rahee (Performer, activist, and writer with The Centre for Bangladesh Studies) as Kumar Ramendra Narayan Roy (Plaintiff) the second of the three Kumars, married to Bibhabati Debi.

ALL PROJECTS Shoni Mongol Adda Samdani Artist-Led Initiatives Forum 2020 Responding to a lack of spaces for the exchange and debate of ideas in Bangladesh, the open-membership artist-led initiative Shoni Mongol Adda (Bangla for ‘Saturday Tuesday Debate Group’) was formed by inviting friends to come to a quiet local café and to pay for their own food and drink (with a little extra to jointly remunerate an invited speaker) and to engage with a different guest speaker twice a week to debate topics such as ‘What is public space?’ (with a police commissioner as a guest speaker). The platform became so successful that members of the group took over management of the restaurant, which is now known as Kamor Café, and which is walking distance from the DAS venue. Here, the collective presents a new question every day at DAS in a sign-based format for the audience to consider and debate in addas organised in the discussion area of this amoeba form. It also invites visitors to join them for addas at Komor Cafe on 8 February and 11 February when they will host artistic delegations from Nepal and Australia.

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

ALL PROJECTS Stepping Softly on the Earth Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art Gidree Bawlee and Kamruzzaman Shadhin’s collaborative project ‘Kaal’ explored how we perceive time, our place within its tapestry, and how these rhythms manifest in our narratives and practices. Informed by rituals, beliefs, and mythologies that persist across generations, the community-engaged project ‘Kaal’ is a study of our surroundings where past and present intertwine, and a dialogue between our shared history and the unfolding present. It’s a journey through time’s knotted and unraveled threads, seeking the enduring connections that bind us all. The first iteration of ‘Kaal’ is ‘Pala,’ showcasing at the Stepping Softly on the Earth exhibition curated by Irene Aristizábal and Kinnari Saraiya. Pala seven intricately woven jute figures echoing the ‘Bishahari Pala’ performance, which blurs the lines between human and non-human realities. Woven by the village community in a collaborative spirit, the work captures the collective essence of participation and shared narratives. This exhibition is supported by Pro Helvetia, Jhaveri Contemporary, and Samdani Art Foundation. Stepping Softly on the Earth evolved from Baltic’s Research and Development project Cosmovisions on Land and Entangled Futures . With additional support from the British Council through an International Collaboration Project Grant towards the research and development project titled Cosmovisions on Land and Entangled Futures.

ALL PROJECTS 55th CIMAM Annual Conference Museo Moderno in Buenos Aires At CIMAM’s annual conferences, professionals from various institutions around the world meet to discuss the challenges and priorities of museums, exchange information, projects, and best practices, and strengthen the international network of museums and contemporary art. Last year's theme was “The Co-Creative Museum: Social Agency, Ethics, and Heritage”. 56 modern and contemporary art curators, museum directors, and researchers were awarded support to attend the CIMAM 2023 Annual Conference. Samdani Art Foundation was one of the supporters for the Travel Grant Beneficiaries.