ALL PROJECTS To Enter The Sky Curated by Sean Anderson To Enter The Sky Curated by Sean Anderson (Associate Professor and Undergraduate Program Director at Cornell University’s Department of Architecture) Weather, when visualized, relies on the interaction of multiple forces enacting potential acts of benefit as well as destruction. Sometimes predictable, and even mapped, more often, spaces inherit weather in unpredictable patterns that suggest tumult, a conjuring or a question, in defiance of the unknown. For example, airplane pilots depend on degrees of turbulence to achieve lift, to enter the sky. Likewise, for architects and builders, turbulence presents a manifold of acts for the body and the landscape to confront, with which to bend and flex, and from which one may achieve improbable balance. With sea level rise and the increased intensity of unprecedented weather systems, the world has witnessed recent devastating floods in Northern Pakistan and Bangladesh, the ongoing strengthening of cyclones in the Bay of Bengal, and the anticipated disappearance of Maldivian atolls as well as those throughout the South Pacific. The invention of land for real estate development adjacent to the oceans and seas simultaneously destroys sensitive ecosystems while displacing vulnerable human and non-human settlements. A perpetuation of cataclysmic events tear at the definitions of geography, of fixed temporalities, for an architecture and urbanism subject to extremes continually redefined on the ground, in the water and the air. Recent years have also shown us that a global pandemic can challenge nearly every aspect of humanity and expressions of collectivity. Refugees and asylum seekers traverse the planet while confronting the fixity of imposed boundaries. Architecture can be reimagined to consider how and with whom we seek common grounds among spaces of repair, comfort and joy. With livelihoods unfolding over screens large and small, and those landless and nationless continue to seek refuge, the built environment presents itself as a backdrop, stage and as an agent for change. We all share one sky. Drawings by children situate both the vulnerability and strength of future selves who, in a spirited display of potential, of beauty, of imagined spaces and buildings, can also aspire to elevate and share possible futures. Just as we navigate the unknown, architecture must activate new encounters with economies of materiality, ecology, community, sovereignty, and citizenship. How do we design and build for the inevitability of conflicts, past and future? How does architecture establish belonging in landscapes of devastation and transit? This exhibition responds to those insecure conditions that allow architects, artists and designers to engage with the dimensioning of turbulence as a catalyst for addressing how we encounter each other. To Enter the Sky brings together examples of architectures and artworks of resilience, of trust, while not discounting fear, entropy, and destruction. The exhibition centers Bangladesh as part of a broader reckoning of what it means to be human in and of the built environment today. We know that various turbulences will persist. Architecture need not be resistant. Rather, the exhibition asserts how a spatial medium, with its multitudes of hope and chance, can begin to disseminate radical stories of becoming to help us understand our own fragile inheritances as individuals, communities, nations. LOCATION: FIRST FLOOR SOUTH PLAZA Sumayya Vally Ceramic vessels activated by performance Performance 7pm daily Commissioned by Samdani Art FoundationCo-curated by Diana Campbell and Sean Anderson as an overlay of “To Enter the Sky” and “Bonna” Pavilion and performance conceptualisation by Sumayya Vally Sound in collaboration with Shoummo SahaChoreography in collaboration with Arpita Singha Lopa oletha imvula uletha ukuphila Translation: “They who brings rain, brings life” IsiZulu proverb Wielding the comings of rain is a tradition practiced by cultures across geographies. To possess the power to command rainfall is by inference possessing the power to dictate the flow of the natural cycle and climatic conditions. Across Southern Africa, rain-making rituals are directed towards royal ancestors because they were believed to have control over rain and other natural phenomena. One of these rare and powerful individuals is the Moroka of the Pedi tribe in South Africa: the traditional rain-making doctor. Here, a series of fired and unfired clay vessels are assembled as a temporal space to hold gatherings. Over the course of DAS, a series of performances which draw on the traditions of rain-making and harvest are performed in the space where the hands that formed the pots also work to un-form them. The rituals include the use of water, which allows the un-fired pots to dissolve over time, revealing areas and niches of gathering contained by the pots, as well as rhythmic drumming that evokes the sound of thunder at the end of each day. Vally’s design, research and pedagogical practice is searching for expression for hybrid identities and territory, particularly for African and Islamic conditions. Her design process is often forensic, and draws on the aural, the performative and the overlooked as generative places of history and work. b. 1990, Pretoria; lives and works in London LOCATION: SECOND FLOOR Ali Kazim Untitled (Cloud Series) 2018 In his 1949 novel, A Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles writes about the precarities of individuals: “How fragile we are under the sheltering sky. Behind the sheltering sky is a vast dark universe, and we're just so small.” The sky, that which envelops us, is an arbiter of all life on the planet. It is that which comforts or destroys and always reminds us of where we are and where we can be. While the horizon is a measure of the sky, clouds, as condensations of molecules, are signs of life and its potentials; they signal transformations. The cloud is a sky’s signature. Detached from the ground and horizon, the clouds presented in these drawings suggest both movement and stasis. Caught in a moment of change, the clouds are suggestive of temporary presence, just as the weather conditions that they indicate and the individual lives that may be affected among spaces below. What may be discovered behind these scaleless formations? They are emboldened by forces large and small while also having the capacity to reveal new worlds. The works of Ali Kazim are embedded in the spatial histories of Pakistan’s landscapes and the civilizations that once inhabited the region. In works that use a variety of materials and techniques to evoke bodily and emotional experiences, Kazim’s work reimagines multiple narratives that are at once metaphors for human connectivities that may be hidden among unexcavated remains, long-abandoned cities, and the spaces that may be exposed or still buried. Ali Kazim b.1979, Pakistan Agnieszka Kurant Risk Management Commissioned for the New York Times 2020 Post-Fordite Fossilized automotive paint, epoxy resin, powdered stone, steel 2021-22 Sentimentite Digital NFT and physical sculpture Various pulverized objects, powdered granite stone, resin 2022 How can we redefine methods for understanding and responding to precarity at multiple scales throughout the world today? Materials extracted from the ground are but one illustration of how natural resources are continually pillaged in order to support unsustainable population growth and unfair labor practices, which is coupled with environmental devastation. The works in this exhibition speculate about the consequences of economies in parallel with digital capitalism, in which entire societies have become distributed factories of data production and exploitation, where everyone is a worker producing digital and carbon footprints. Risk Management presents a geographical map of a history of outbreaks of social contagions based on fictions spanning the last thousand years. The work draws on the inability of risk-prediction models to consider irrational human behavior and other largely impactful social phenomena. Post-Fordite takes up a recently discovered hybrid, quasi-geological formation created as a natural-artificial byproduct, through fossilization of thousands of layers of automotive paint accumulated and congealed on production lines at automobile factories since the opening of the Henry Ford Motor Company manufacturing plants in the early 20th century. Recently, these fossilized-paint configurations , named Fordite or Detroit Agate, by the former workers of now defunct factories, began circulating online and accruing value. Since Fordite can be cut and polished, it is often used like precious stones to produce jewelry. Post-Fordite embodies more than 100 years of amalgamated human labor and the collective footprints of workers, past and present, translated into geology. S entimentite is a speculative mineral-currency investigating the relationship between digital capitalism and geology in which a future mineral could become more precious than gold and become a currency. Kurant collaborated with computational social scientists who used Artificial Intelligence sentiment-analysis algorithms to harvest data from hundreds of thousands of Twitter and Reddit posts related to recent historic seismic events, including the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Brexit, the Arab Spring, Black Lives Matter, the pandemic global lockdown, and Bitcoin’s meteoric rise. These aggregated emotions of millions of people shaped the forms of 100 sculptures, which were cast in a new mineral created by pulverizing 60 objects used as official and informal currencies throughout the history of humanity: shells, Rai stones, whale teeth, corn, Tide detergent, electronic waste, soap, beads, mirrors, batteries, playing cards, phone cards, stamps, tea, and cocoa pods. Invested in exploring how “economies of the invisible” bolster fictions about humanity’s survival in the face of such destructive socio-political and economic processes, Agnieszka Kurant’s sculptural and mapping works speculate on how value is translated and can transgress conventional definitions. Her work challenges how objects today are mutated through their global circulation and production while also questioning modernist conceptions of aura, authorship, production, and hybridity. Many of her works emulate nature and behave like living organisms and self-organized complex systems. b.1978 Łódź; lives and works in New York Aziza Chaouni Projects Rehabilitation of Modern Public Buildings in Africa Sidi Harazem, Morocco Old Fourah Bay College, Sierra Leone (1827) CICES, Dakar, Senegal (1974) Throughout the world today, modern architecture, especially those examples in rapidly developing areas of the Global South, remains at risk of demolition due to economic, political, and societal forces that consider its buildings not worthy of preservation. Modern buildings are often judged unattractive, too far removed from “traditional” architecture and building types while overlaid with memories of a traumatic colonial past. How do contemporary architects reimagine the ways in which modernism is understood today? How can spaces imbued with societal traumas be rewritten with the goal of transforming their value to communities and publics? These three rehabilitation projects are actively engaging with and responding to the design of community-centered spaces that are envisaged as cooperative, reparative and responsive for all that participate in their making. In Morocco, Sierra Leone and Senegal, like in other areas subject to the simultaneity of post-colonial transition meeting neoliberal economic drivers, buildings and landscapes are continually being questioned as productive zones for living today. Designed between 1959 and 1975 by prominent Moroccan architect of Corsican origin, Jean-François Zevaco, the Sidi Harazem Thermal Bath Complex, located near the city of Fez, is the first example of public post-independence leisure architecture designed for Moroccan inhabitants. Unfortunately, villagers whose ancestors had lived on the same land for generations were forcibly moved several miles away to accommodate the new tourist destination.Deploying a long-term phased masterplan that accounted for the memory of these historical events while also attending to environmental sensitivities with the use of water in a drought-prone area of the country, the Complex moves beyond the rehabilitation of the buildings themselves to adaptively reuse the spaces for the local population. Since 1827, Old Fourah Bay College was a laboratory and educational setting in which western ideas of governance, political organization and public service were shared as experiments with populations across Sierra Leone and West Africa. The onset of conflict throughout the 1990s radically altered this building and it was occupied by displaced families fleeing a brutal ground war. Working with local school and university groups to rethink what a “dream school” might look like, new methods of design centered in active conversations and designed interactive spatial exercises have established new shared narratives from which the College can once again return to being a space of civic and educational learning. Designed by the architects, Jean-François Lamoureux and Jean-Louis Marin, the CICES was commissioned by the first president of Senegal Léopold Sédar Senghor, who sought a universal African architectural language, shed from Western referents. The CICES complex uses Modernist principles in its circulation and layout, and simultaneously embraces Senghor’s ‘asymmetric parallelism’ theory, that he defines as "a diversified repetition of rhythm in time and space,” which allows for unique spatial experiences. Working with local stakeholders to reconsider what a “masterplan” for such an iconic complex affected by environmental and economic issues will be, ensures its continued use as a productive site for international exchange and commerce into the future. Aziza Chaouni was born and raised in Fez, Morocco and is trained both as a structural engineer and as an architect. Through the integration of users and stakeholders across the design process, Chaouni’s office, Aziza Chaouni Projects, offers alternative processes for imagining and designing empathetic spaces that move past staid aesthetics to articulate human and material-centered approaches to sensitive areas throughout North and West Africa. b.1977 Fez; lives and works in Fez and Toronto Coral Mosques of Maldives Mauroof Jameel and Hamsha Hussain Among the Maldivian atolls and islands, there are at least 26 documented mosques and compounds that have been constructed using coral stone. Assembled from porite coral stone ( hirigaa ) hewn from the reefs and integrated with interior structures fashioned from timber and crafted by lacquer work, itself a unique Maldivian artform, these buildings represent an architecture of resilience found nowhere else on the planet. Akin to other monumental structures found in India and Southeast Asia, the mosques coalesce building, material and artistic practices that point to the transit of ideas and typologies. While historical uses of coral in building construction have been discovered among the Mayan communities of Central America between 900-1500 BCE and among the coastal communities of the Red Sea between 146-323 BCE, among the Maldives, the coral used is both unique to the islands while the building conveys spatial and spiritual resonances found across the Indian Ocean and its sub-continent. These buildings illustrate how the use of localized materials at any scale can maintain long standing spaces for communities. The continued use of the coral mosques today is emblematic of a nation’s peoples and their unwavering faith in the face of environmental calamity. The images of six primary coral mosque compounds included in this exhibition are in use across the islands today and were nominated for UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 2013. Each example embodies architectural forms that are both specific to their island location while also expressing discrete art practices including exterior coral carving, calligraphy, and lacquer work that speak to the movement of Islamic artistic practices across the ocean. With carpentry techniques in the mosques no longer extant and coral mining forbidden for environmental sensitivities, these buildings are recognized for their integration of construction techniques and artforms that speak to the Indian Ocean realm as a space for visual, material, and spatial exchange. Ihavandhoo Old Friday Mosque Miskiy Magu, Ihavandhoo, Haa Alifu Atoll6º 57' 17.33" N and 72º 55' 38.33" EIhavandhoo Old Friday Mosque was completed in 16 December 1701 CE (15 Rajab 1113 A. H.) during the reign of Sultan Ibrahim Muzhiruddin (1701-1705). Meedhoo Old Friday Mosque Hiyfaseyha Magu, Meedhoo, Raa Atoll5º 27' 27.80" N, 72º 57' 16.41"EAccording to local oral history, the mosque was probably built during the reign of Sultan Muzaffar Mohamed Imaduddin around 1705. It is the only surviving coral stone mosque with Indian clay roofing tiles. Malé Friday Mosque Medhuziyaaraiy Magu, Henveiru, Malé, Kaafu Atoll4º 10' 40.77" N, 73º 30' 44.57" EMalé Old Friday Mosque and its compound comprise one of the most important heritage sites in the country. It is also the biggest and one of the finest coral stone buildings in the world. The present mosque was built in 1658 during the reign of Sultan Ibrahim Iskandhar I, replacing the original mosque built in 1153 by the first Muslim sultan of the Maldives. Fenfushi Old Friday Mosque Hiriga Goalhi, Fenfushi, Alifu Dhaalu Atoll3°45′15″N 72°58′35″EFenfushi Friday Mosque was built during the reign of Sultan Mohamed of Dhevvadhu (1692-1701) on the site of an earlier mosque. It is a well-preserved compound with a unique coral stone bathing tank, coral stone wells, a sundial, and a large cemetery with grave markers of fine quality. Isdhoo Old Mosque Isdhoo, Laamu Atoll2° 7′ 10″ N, 73° 34′ 10″ EIsdhoo Old Mosque was built prior to a renovation in 1701 during the reign of Sultan Mohamed of Dhevvadhoo (1692-1701). This is the mosque where the 12th century royal copper chronicles 'Isdhoo Loamaafaanu' was kept in a special chamber. The mosque is built on a pre-Islamic site and analysis of the architectural details of the mosque indicates that the stonework could be even older. Hulhumeedhoo Fandiyaaru Mosque Koagannu, Hulhumeedhoo, Addu City0º 34' 51.6" S and 73º 13' 42" EHulhumeedhoo Fandiyaaru Mosque located in the Koagannu area in the island of Hulhumeedhoo (Addu City) was probably built around 1586 during the reign of Sultan Ibrahim III. The Koagannu area is the largest and the oldest cemetery in the Maldives with more than 500 coral grave markers, a sheltered mausoleum and 15 open mausoleums. It had six small mosques but now four small mosques remain. They are Koagannu Miskiy c.1397, Boadhaa Miskiy c.1403, Athara Miskiy c.1417 and Fandiyaru Miskiy c.1586. Felecia Davis and Delia Dumitrescu Computational textiles are textiles that are responsive to cues found in the environment using sensors and microcontrollers for the making of a textile that uses shape-shifting properties of the material itself to communicate information to people. In architecture, these responsive textiles are transforming how we communicate, socialize, and use space. For instance, they can be used in making temporary and more permanent manifestations of shelter in conflict and environmentally devastated areas. Davis, a trained engineer and architect, with Dumitrescu, a textile designer, asked with this project, ‘How can we design lightweight textiles for use in architecture that can translate responses to their environment? Further, how might we make textiles that dilate if the temperature surrounding the textile becomes hot, or if one wants more transparency in that textile to see the view?’ With her experimental lab, SOFTLAB@PSU, Davis creates responsive textiles that defy conventional structural and representational modes for the material itself and its applications. At the Smart Textiles Lab in Sweden, Dumitrescu has been developing responsive artistic effects in textile design that reshape an understanding of textile as a material that operates at different scales. In this project they consider ‘how’ and ‘what’ textiles can be ‘when’—much like individuals and communities. The first typology of material developed for this work was pixelated, designed with yarn that melts at high temperature; accordingly, the fabric opens or breaks when it receives current. Openings allowed the designers to ‘write’ upon the fabric making apertures, collecting foreground and background through the qualities of the material. The second material has been designed with yarn that shrinks or closes into solid lines in the fabric when it receives current. Shrinking is activated by the material while also revealing more opaque patterning in the textile closing parts of that textile off, transforming the material and the quality of space framed by that material. Davis’ work bio responsive textiles questions how we live while she re-imagines how we might use textiles in our daily lives and in architecture. Davis and her lab are interested in developing computational methods and design in relation to bodies in locations that simultaneously engage specific social, cultural and political constructions. Her collaborative lab is dedicated to developing soft computational materials and textiles alongside industry and community partners to establish a culture of hands-on making and thinking through computational materials not only as a future but also as a holistic approach to living within uncertain circumstances. Central to Dumitrescu’s research is the topic of material and textile design, focusing on new materials expanding from computational textiles to biodesign and biofabrication. Through the notion of textile design thinking, her research expands the textile methodology; it includes systematic work with: colour, materials, texture, structure, pattern, and function to explore and propose new design futures for sustainable living from material to spatial design. b. United States and Romania; Lives and works in State College, Pennsylvania and Borås Marshall Islands Navigation Charts Beijok Kaious The Marshall Islands in eastern Micronesia of the Southern Pacific Ocean consists of thirty-four coral atolls composed of more than one thousand islands and islets spread out across an area of several hundred miles. The islanders have mastered an ability to navigate between and among the almost-invisible islands—since the land masses are all so low that none can be seen except from a short distance away. In addition to closely observing wave and swell patterns, the Marshallese used the celestial constellations to navigate the ocean. They also determined the locations of the islands by observing the flight of the birds that nested on them. Song was also used to estimate the distance that the navigators traveled. Navigation is a form of storytelling and placemaking. For thousands of years Marshall Islanders used complex navigation techniques with charts made from coconut midribs and seashells. There are three kinds of Marshall Island “stick charts”: the Mattang , the Rebbelib , and the Meddo . The mattang was specifically designed to train individuals in the art of navigation while the Rebbelib covered a large section or the entirety of the islands. The charts consisted of curved and straight sticks. The curved sticks represented ocean swells and the straight sticks represented the currents and waves around the islands. The seashells represented the locations of the islands. Marshallese navigators memorized the charts and did not take them with them on their canoes. Each chart was unique and could only be interpreted by the person who made it. Today, different configurations of the charts are still being produced across the islands and used by young navigators learning to “read” the ocean. Beyond maps, the charts are thus built stories that speak to the past, present and future simultaneously. The examples of charts ( meddo ) presented in the exhibition, while made as souvenirs on the island of Majuro by Beijok Kaious and facilitated by others, still speak to the continuities and difficulties of navigating across oceans and territories that are rapidly disappearing with the onset of global climate crises. Olalekan Jeyifous How can one envision and design potential? Rather than observing historically overlooked areas of cities such as Crown Heights, Brooklyn or within megacities such as Lagos, Nigeria as impoverished, exclusionary, and open to demolition, as is commonly depicted for underserved areas throughout the world, Jeyifous’s immersive images and spaces speak to the potential for questioning present conditions and future possibilities. Many of the spaces in such locations are also subject to the extremes brought about by environmental instability. Such alternative futuristic visions are simultaneously based in real spaces and conditions while also shifting the gaze of top-down “development” efforts in the same cities that gentrify, displace and erase. These works recenter individuals and collectives as plural complex communities understood as fundamental contributors to the forging of the built environment. The politics of architecture is presented as an extension of how people build themselves as much as their communities. Recognizing that architecture can be built and imagined by these communities, buildings and infrastructures are configured not in opposition to each other but appended to and effectively built among existing real estate projects, socially-constructed spaces and historical monuments. Trained as an architect, and now working at the intersection of art, spatial practices, and public art, Nigerian-born Olalekan Jeyifous explores how the conventions of immersive digital renderings, collages and videos open spaces for critique and revelation of the contemporary built environment. b.1977 Lagos; lives and works in New York Rizvi Hassan Collaborators: Minhajul Abedin, Khwaja Fatmi, Prokolpo Shonapahar, Rohingya Artisans: Kamrunnesa & Jaber, Khairul Amin, Aminullah, Hosna Akhter & Shofiq, Nurul Islam, Shahabuddin, Imam Hossain, Ali Johor, Faruk, Artisans from Sylhet & Shonapahar: Rehana Akhter, Khatun begum, Rita akther, Nikhil Architecture, for Rizvi Hassan, has the capacity “to connect life, to strengthen mental health, to enhance culture, to mitigate conflicts, to enrich the ground, or just to ensure the basic but very important needs to have a better quality of life.” Among the sustainable structures constructed in the world’s largest refugee camps housing Rohingya refugees in and around Cox’s Bazar, Hassan approached these community-centered designs that amplify quality of life for both non-human and human beings. Each of the buildings is responsive to regional climate and environmental precarities, including cyclones, while also establishing safe spaces for vulnerable women and children. Collaborating with members of these communities as well as those building the structures often without the aid of technical drawings, Hassan deploys tools and processes that may be considered antithetical to conventional Western-based architecture practices. His work is as much a facilitator as a designer. Rather, utilizing regenerative materials such as bamboo and thatch, but also overlooked products including mattresses for insulation, Hassan’s buildings emphasize how the use of non-extractive materials alongside minimal industrial intervention encourages sympathetic design processes, dynamic interior spaces, and much-needed shelter and respite for countless individuals. Rizvi Hassan and his collaborators established their practice to work in precarious zones including camps as well as flood-prone districts in Bangladesh. He has stated that “the nation didn’t prepare me to be just an architect, but to be an educated person who can contribute to society. For that, it is important even just to be present, in places where people will need us.” His work reimagines buildings and spaces that empower all community stakeholders while also creating inclusive spaces for the perpetuation of beauty, belonging and survival. b. 1993 Dhaka; Office based in Dhaka and Cox’s Bazar Rohingya Cultural Memory Centre (RCMC) Camp Life, 2022-2023 Hand-embroidered tapestry with stories of Rohingya refugee camp in BD. Participating Artisans: Yasmin, Shobika, Shomima, Roshida Facilitator: Sadya Mizan, Khurshida Permanent collection of RCMC Future Life, 2022-2023 Hand-embroidered tapestry with dream of future life of Rohingya refugee’s in BD Participating Artisans: Yasmin, Shobika, Showmima, Fatema, Ajida, Hosne Ara, Setara, Shamsunahar, Rokeya Facilitator: Rowson Akter, Asma Permanent collection of RCMC British physician and geographer, Dr. Francis Buchanan-Hamilton, published an article in 1799 that states, “the Mohammedans, who have long settled in Arakan, call themselves ‘Rooinga’, or natives of Arakan… the other are Rakhing … who adhere to the tenets of Buddha.” This early description not only establishes that there was an indigenous Muslim minority in the Arakan province of present-day Myanmar with the name Rohingya, but it further distinguishes them from the majority Rakhine Buddhist population. In 1982, the Burmese government enacted the 1982 Citizenship Law with a document that identifies 135 ethnic groups, which the government asserts had settled in Burma prior to 1823. The Rohingya, however, are not included as one of them. Subsequent decades of displacement and discriminatory policies incited by military coups and political brinkmanship has led to more than a million Rohingya refugees settling across numerous camps in Cox’s Bazar. Underlying their mass exodus into a country and spaces that are not their own, is the risk of negative psychosocial impacts stemming from, among other factors, a loss of cultural identity. Rohingya people have many stories, knowledge and wisdom that are rooted in mutual cooperation and care. “There is a dominant narrative that the Rohingya are poor and simple village people who don’t really have art or a developed material culture, and we want to show the world that this is not true,” describes Shahirah Majumdar. In 2022, the estab lishment of the Rohingya Cultural Memory Centre (RCMC) in Camp 18 was designed in tandem with extensive community participation and led by architect Rizvi Hassan. The RCMC is a Rohingya-led institution that collects, preserves, and disseminates the importance that knowledge narratives create goodwill among displaced communities. Even in the most unsettled conditions, cultural practice expressed through art is a significant mode through which generations of displaced communities can maintain their identity. The RCMC encourages empowerment across gender and social lines. Embroidery workshops provide an essential outlet for women artists, who gather to share personal experiences that are subsequently then stitched into tapestries. These are stories of being and becoming that further confer Rohingya histories into tangible forms. Women are trained by Bangladeshi artists who have helped them expand their artistic repertoire beyond traditional floral and faunal motifs, to even include human depictions. The embroidered tapestries presented here are powerful evocations that move past fear, anguish, and insecurity to illustrate stories of building that cannot be erased or forgotten. Sarker Protick jxb, OF RIVER AND LOST LANDS 2011 – 2023 [Ongoing] Inkjet Prints on Archival Paper ‘Of River and Lost lands’ is a series of photographs that surveys the River Padma (Ganges) and the waterborne land of Bangladesh. Made over a period of 12 years and continuing, the series describes a complex relationship of intimacy and ruthlessness between nature and humans on the margins. The life and ecology of rural Bengal, like much of both non-urban and urban worlds, have seen a continuous slow decay. It is a story of loss which begins with a hostile river resulting in devastating frequent erosion. With these occurrences, the landscape disappears and along with it, its many ways of life. Residents witness the river making abrupt changes in its course, drowning their villages, and resulting in forced migrations to other parts of the banks which too can erode without warning. Overnight, a stretch of land, and with it houses, farmlands, and livestock, will collapse and flow off in different directions. As uncontrolled sand mining proliferates, erosion increases at a fast pace. Now the River is not only a potential source of hostility, but also of casualty. Masses of land vanish and the river’s ecosystem changes in ways that cannot be undone. Shallow mud banks (chars) will emerge along with the influx of new sediments. The shore forms new land with the possibility to restart and build new communities for environmental and ecological refugees. Most places seen in these photographs have ceased to exist. As a result, the photographs survive as visual documents of these vanished and vanishing lands. Protick's works are built on long-term surveys rooted in Bangladesh. To make decaying memory tangible, to define the disappearance of a place without confining it, Protick’s often minimal, suspended, and atmospheric photography, video, and sound, explore how form and materiality often morph into the physicality of time. Accompanying its raptures and our inability to grasp or hold time, the process of image-making is a way to expand time, to make space for more subdued moments, or hint at the possibility of an embodied life. b. 1986, Dhaka; lives and works in Dhaka Storia Na Lugar / [un]Grounding NarrativesPatti Anahory and César Schofield Cardoso Among the islands that comprise the nation of Cabo Verde in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, increasing territorial segregation, socioeconomic disparities, a general lack of quality of the built environment, are all present despite development indices for the country indicating one of the best performances in Africa. Ongoing phenomena including the rapid and asymmetrical growth of cities, large investments in mass tourism, the lack of alternatives of materials and construction techniques, are having an irreversible effect on people’s lives throughout the world. Coupled with an increasing desire to build tourist resorts on already environmentally sensitive areas of the archipelago, this video work explores how both sea and sky are becoming compromised in the pursuit of unsustainable, destructive economies. Given this, [un]Grounding Narratives focuses on communities facing exclusion, insecurity, or marginalization, while engaged with various forms of negotiation that reflect how social and natural environments can be repaired through cultural practices of affirmation and belonging. Storia Na Lugar merges the analytical visual languages of an architect and a visual artist alongside a joint pursuit of social and environmental ethics with multidisciplinary art and architectural works that explore forms of environmental and structural precarity in West Africa. Through engaging an international network of researchers, social activists, artists and professionals to engender action, Anahory and Schofield Cardoso seek to influence policy makers and promote a more inclusive development approach for the world’s cities and islands. Patti Anahory b. 1969 aboard a ship at Latitude 26o 50’ N Longitude 17o 05’ W; Based in New York City and Praia César Schofield Cardoso b. 1973 Mindelo; Based in Praia, Cabo Verde Suchi Reddy Reddymade Architects Between Earth and Sky Experiences found within architecture and the (built) environment play an essential role in shaping our capacity to engage with agency, equity, and empathy. Suchi Reddy’s guiding principle is “form follows feeling,” privileging human engagement as a mode for conceiving, designing, and building architectures that invite wonder and discovery. While working toward broader yet critical notions of “design justice,” alongside investigations of machine learning, the holistic design of spaces is recognized as an asset for the benefit of all and not just for some. Reddy considers how we, as individuals and collectives, encounter space as both a constructed and imagined phenomenon. The “mirages” installed as part of this exhibition are an exploration of how belief and the reimagining of boundaries through architectural intervention may contain limitless possibilities. Mirages become metaphors for societal rupture and repair. What is a building or space but an extension of who we are and who we wish to become? Uniting the architect’s wide-ranging portfolio of architecture and artistic work is a multidisciplinary approach guided by a belief in the power of architecture and spatial experience to impact how we feel, how we shape society, and the positive contribution we can offer through design. Interested in the complexities of uniting scientific studies of neuroaesthetics with overt spatial and haptic experiences found in building, the experiential works of Suchi Reddy and her office Reddymade, are at once built manifestations of extensive research of the interplay of human behavior with the material, metaphysical and structural forms that build us. b. Chennai; lives and works in New York We Are From Here Collective Conceived with the collective We Are From Here based in the Slave Island (Kompannaveediya) area of Colombo, Sri Lanka, this work highlights how deeply interconnected communities continually find their homes threatened by gentrification for State and corporate interests. Focused on Slave Island, a rapidly developing location in the center of Colombo where Rahman grew up and now resides, the ongoing project explores the threat of socio-political intersections that are gradually being erased for inequitable economic and political drivers that subsequently are displacing residents. While many residents are of Malay origin, the suburb has been home to multiple cultures, languages, and religions for generations. The area was first described under British Colonial rule as a holding area created by the Portuguese to hold slaves from the African continent. Such historically rich yet seemingly overlooked areas are not only disappearing throughout Colombo but also across cities throughout the world due to the misalignment of definitions of value based on land and property and not for humans. The collective’s multi-media work spotlights how entangled threads of multiple narratives that offer both sources for and representations of intimacy, precarity and memory. The project focuses on mobilising a creative peace-making movement that would help participants and beneficiaries alike to socially engage in their own unique realities through artistic and spatial production. We Are From Here is a multidisciplinary artist’s collective formed by Firi Rahman in 2018 including Parilojithan Ramanathan, Manash Badurdeen (and earlier including Vicky Shahjahan) whose work includes drawing, photography and sculpture, considers the threatened codependent relationships that people and endangered species have with their natural, lived and built environments. Their work has questioned the rise of endangered species in Sri Lanka. The collective and Rahman are particularly interested in the interactions between animals and urban environments, and the responsibility societies share in protecting biodiversity. b. 1990(Firi Rahman), Colombo; Collective established in 2018; lives and works in Slave Island (Kompannaveediya), Colombo Jaago Foundation One Thousand Futures Drawing has been a universal language that both children and adults share since time immemorial. From one’s first attempts at drawing, including the random marking with lines and scratches, and even after the first representations of the world around them, individuals are communicating to establish reciprocal meanings through images. Children of all ages use drawing to express their individual interpretations of experiences near and far. Yet, drawings, as language, can also be “read” and translated. For architects in particular, drawings are tools with which to imagine, capture and define ways of inhabitation. They possess scale, contain volumes, indicate varying temporalities, relay environmental considerations and “speak” to multiple audiences through commonly accepted forms. Our eyes and bodies can occupy the spaces found in a drawing. The project at the heart of this exhibition relies on drawing, as both an artform and as perhaps the most widespread language in the world, to transcend age, gender, background, culture, and other markers of identity. One thousand school-age children from schools across Bangladesh were asked by the Curator to respond to one question with their drawings: What might the future look like? According to governmental agencies in 2022, with around 98% of Bangladeshi “children of primary school age” enrolled in school, many students still have difficulty with basic reading skills. While education is essential to improving the economy of any nation, many people lack foundational lessons for living if they do not receive proper schooling. But all children, when provided with the materials, can draw—or at least create a visual means by which to communicate and thus establish complex meanings for both themselves and others. The drawings presented here are not fictional as they are responsive to an individual’s personal experience and vision while also sharing in multiple images of hope, of joy, of the possibility for becoming and living without the fear of environmental catastrophe. The drawings are active reminders that beyond the structures and boundaries that continually define us, we can draw a future for and about ourselves. JAAGO Foundation began in a single room in the Rayer Bazar slum area of Dhaka. In April 2007, Korvi Rakshand and a group of friends rented a room in Rayer Bazar, with a vision of improving the lives of the local youth. Rakshand and his friends began teaching 17 local children from the area. The first project of the JAAGO Foundation was born from providing relief supplies in response to a flood that destroyed part of the Rayer Bazar in 2007. Since then, the JAAGO Foundation has expanded to actively work toward the integration and participation of all youth in nation building through activities that support inclusion, transparency, and accountability. More than 50,000 volunteers today are working across the country in 11 schools and other sectors to ensure the participation of youth to support and ensure equitable access to education, environmental stability, and women’s rights throughout Bangladesh. Neha Choksi Sky Fold 2, 2013 Sky Fold 8, 2013 Folded paper and light cyanogram Collection of the Samdani Art Foundation What might be the dimensioning of the sky? Across time and geography, the sky has been both a backdrop and a foreground for countless civilizations. Centuries of song and poem have accessed the sky as an arbiter for the faithful and is never complete. It can be made invisible and while at other times, it is a preface for events to come. For some, the sky is a limitless expanse, continuous, open. And yet, for many others, the sky cannot be accessed, it is felt as the origin of sorrow, or even imminent danger. These works at once suggest the fragility and difficulty to contain the sky, its temporalities, and its power. While the grid may be understood as an ordering system, a mathematical invention that is supposed to relay equanimity while also potentially demarcating both economic and political conditions upon the ground; when imposed upon the sky, one is confronted with the possibility of its boundaries, both real and imagined. Choksi’s interest in forging temporary presence is, for the artist, “an affirmative act of destruction.” The Sky Fold cyanograms are photographic works that are embodiments of the means of their own production, folded paper, and light. Like a blueprint of the sky, these photographic prints capture those creases in time—perhaps moments of rupture—when the sky which we all share is made a reflection of the multiple worlds in which we live and dream. Neha Choksi deploys interdisciplinary approaches including performance, video, installation, and sculpture to redefine the poetics and transience of everyday life. Often reflecting on absence, her works employ an uncertain gravity that suggests an uneasy groundedness. Centered among logics that respond to the dialectics of socio-cultural contexts and their variable scales, Choski’s interdisciplinary multi-format works are both interventions into and responses to intersections of time, consciousness, and context. b.1973, USA and India

ALL PROJECTS My Oma 8 December 2023 — 1 September 2024, Kunstinstituut Melly, Netherlands Sheelasha Rajdhandhari's remarkable piece, 'My great-great-grandmother’s shawl,' from the SAF collection was featured at Kunstinstituut Melly, Netherlands, as part of the 'My Oma' exhibition. 'My Oma' was curated by Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Rosa de Graaf, Jessy Koeiman, Julija Mockutė, and Vivian Ziherl. Its key producers were Shana Lewis, Pilar Mata Dupont, and Wendy van Slagmaat-Bos. Advisors to the research and planning process of "My Oma" include our Artistic Director, Diana Campbell, alongside Edward Gillman, Sun A Moon, and Manuela Moscoso. In the performative artwork titled 'My great-great-grandmother’s shawl,' Kathmandu-based artist Sheelasha Rajbhandari intricately weaves together the threads of change embedded in fabric and time. The three sets of photographs depict generations of women in the artist’s maternal family, tracing the evolving clothing preferences that mirror broader political and economic transformations within Nepal. The first image features the artist's great-great-grandmother, Purna Kumari Vaidhya, adorned in a Dambar Kumari Shawl, a 19th-century textile composed of a block-printed fabric sandwiched between fine muslin. The second and third portraits depict her grandmother, Chiniya Devi Bijukchhe, and the artist herself, both framed in the same posture and draped in a shawl. However, these two shawls are replicated by the artist, evident by the clothing tags. This visual narrative explores the growing influence of capitalism and ready-made items, prompting an interrogation on notions of authenticity and mimicry in the production of culturally significant items.

ALL PROJECTS Talks Programme Dhaka Art Summit 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zDuO7erQ2fyBY4VQk6FcYEe&v=k75XZ_3YWA0 Bonna And Her Sisters Discuss Names, Collaboration, And Institutional Relevance In A Newly Born World The opening panel brought Bonna together with her sisters, those from Natasha at Singapore Biennale, EVA of Ireland’s Biennial, and Melly of Kunstinstitut Melly in the Netherlands together in conversation as sisters who consider the shift in how they see themselves as institutions and exhibition platforms, learning and unlearning how to be relevant in a world that shifted seismically since the closing of DAS 2020, especially in the wake of climate catastrophes pummeling the planet. Binna Choi (Natasha, Singapore Biennale, and CASCO in Utrecht), Diana Campbell (Bonna; Dhaka Art Summit), Sebastian Cichocki (EVA International, Ireland’s Biennial, and the Museum of Modern art in Warsaw), Vivian Ziherl (Kunstinstitut Melly, formerly Witte de With). Venue: Auditorium, Dhaka Art Summit, National Art Gallery, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Time: 2pm Date: 3rd February 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zDuO7erQ2fyBY4VQk6FcYEe&v=LfGN_Ftw11s The Power Of Orality; Lore, The Loristic, And Living Memory Introduced by Sharlina Hussain-Morgan Cultural Attaché, U.S. Embassy Dhaka Foregrounding the spoken word and the auditory over the written, this panel engages with the oral as a vast resource holding together the folk and indigenous cultural expressions and way of life. As community scholars, folklorists, oral discourse experts, and writers embedded in the retellings of the folk, the invited speakers address different aspects of oral/oralities, its joys, performativity and form of instituting knowledge and transference from one body to another. This first gathering is organized as part of Transcultural Folklore Research Forum, a parallel appendage to Very Small Feelings. Esther Syiem (North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong), Kanak Chanpa Chakma (Artist, Rangamati), Mohammad Rezuwan (Folklorist and Writer, Cox’s Bazaar), Michael Bevacqua (University of Guam, Guam Museum), Somi Roy (Culture Conservationist, Writer and Translator, Manipur). Venue: Auditorium, Dhaka Art Summit, National Art Gallery, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Time: 5 pm Date: 3rd February, 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zDuO7erQ2fyBY4VQk6FcYEe&v=kKJq5HA8DCI Srihatta In Sylhet, A Journey From An Idea To A Context, To A Building, Towards An Institution The Samdani Art Foundation shared inspiration and details of its soon to be open first permanent art center in Sylhet, Bangladesh, slated for January 2024. Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury (URBANA), Diana Campbell (Samdani Art Foundation), and Nadia Samdani (Samdani Art Foundation) with Beatrix Ruf (Hartwig Art Foundation) Venue: Auditorium, Dhaka Art Summit, National Art Gallery, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Time: 2pm Date: 4th February 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zDuO7erQ2fyBY4VQk6FcYEe&v=kmZ4Ia5OJR0 On Making Sculptures And Buildings Dance This panel brought together practitioners who tend to be defined as sculptor, theater practitioner, architect, artist, and curator, but whose practices confound categorization. Dancing across disciplines, they discussed their DAS commissions and their ongoing collaborative work which seeks to expand the reach of what art can be in life. Antony Gormley, Miet Warlop, Suchi Reddy, Sumayya Vally, Yasmin Jahan Nupur with Diana Campbell Venue: Auditorium, Dhaka Art Summit, National Art Gallery, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Time: 3:30pm Date: 4th February, 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zDuO7erQ2fyBY4VQk6FcYEe&v=NXwF220bV48 Artistic Pedagogies This panel brought together artistic practices that lie at the intersection of community engagement and experimental pedagogy, creatively filling in for the infrastructural, social and ecological gaps that alienate large numbers of communities and groups from access to education and learning. Panelists addressed the role and power of facilitation, the economy of sources and resources in spaces/contexts of abundance and scarcity. Ahmet Öğüt, Anga Art Collective, Ashfika Rahman, Lokesh Khodke, Marzia Farhana, moderated by Akansha Rastogi The panel was supported by Goethe Institut Dhaka Venue: Auditorium, Dhaka Art Summit, National Art Gallery, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Time: 11 am Date: 5th February, 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zDuO7erQ2fyBY4VQk6FcYEe&v=irRf9wH58Jc Padma Book Launch With Kazi Khaled Ashraf The session launches the new book The Great Padma: The River that Made the Bengal Delta, and discusses the river as an existential phenomenon in the life of Bengal. The Padma draws us to the ancient reservoir of our existence; it is the very theater of the creation of land and life. Often called Kirtinasha, the destroyer of human glories, the Padma has also gifted the land that makes the Bengal Delta exist in a perpetual dynamic of flow and overflow, and accretion and erosion. Edited by Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, with a preface by Amitav Ghosh, the book The Great Padma reveals the magnificence and diversity of the great river, assembling historians, geographers, anthropologists, architects, photographers, and people from other cultural disciplines to tell the monumental story of the Padma. Kazi Khaleed Ashraf in discussion with Arijit Chatterjee, Syed Manzoorul Islam, David Ludden, and Parsa Sanjana Sajid Venue: Auditorium, Dhaka Art Summit, National Art Gallery, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Time: 2 pm Date: 5th February, 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zDuO7erQ2fyBY4VQk6FcYEe&v=4yJMjCaO8Qc Living In Impermanence: Designing Spaces In A Refugee Response Life in a refugee camp is often seen as an impermanent thing, where in reality it actually becomes a big part of a person living as a refugee’s life. An inclusive and healthy environment in a camp is thus very important for the well- being of both the displaced and host communities. From 2018 to 2022, working with the Rohingya refugees as well as the surrounding Bangladeshi hosting communities in the Ukhiya-Teknaf area, has never been about one particular space, but rather about collaborating together in a crisis situation to overcome unexpected challenges over time. Khwaja Fatmi, Rizvi Hassan, moderated by Shahirah Majumdar Venue: Auditorium, Dhaka Art Summit, National Art Gallery, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Time: 7 pm Date: 5th February, 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UULF-duNdwn9I0FUTz9_WK0J4Q&v=qz5-RouVMBA The Duality Of The Delta Diverse life experiences manifest in our deep sensory connections with the environment. While communal resilience enables people to be one with their land, activism reinforces shared and proactive practices. An Ornithologist, Advocate, Community Architect, Artist and AN Environmental Economist will engage in collective storytelling to expand micro and macro details of their shared journeys to evoke varied insights, and elaborate on the tremendous creative opportunities we have to contribute to a better environment. Bishwajit Goswami, Enam Ul Haque, Khondaker Hasibul Kabir, Shouro Dasgupta, Syeda Rizwana Hasan, moderated by Huraera Jabeen Venue: Auditorium, Dhaka Art Summit, National Art Gallery, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Time: 5:30pm Date: 10th February, 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zDuO7erQ2fyBY4VQk6FcYEe&v=Z_KVYjATvxs ON GATHERING by Nikima Jagudajev In collaboration with WIELS in Brussels, Nikima Jagudajev is developing work inspired by how people gather in Bangladesh in Dhaka Art Summit, and this talk will delve into their experience interacting with the visitors and watching visitors interact with each other during the Summit. Jagudajev's process based collaborative practice looks at social forms; social relations as spatial relations and how we assemble in fulfilling and considerate ways. Harnessing the choreography of play as a framework, performers (Conduit) and visitors (Arrivor) are incorporated into an open-ended game. World building is aided by a group of artists who shape the playground with elements such as live music, food, a deck of collectable cards, secrets and nonlinear dance choreographies that fold in on themselves like portals through time. These elements work as informal invitations to engage in different ways, shifting attention and offering agency and ontological transformation. Like 3-dimensional Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG) this mythopoeic world is both serious and playful, enchanted with meaning and full of mods. One’s experience is determined by the games’ formal properties as well as the interaction of various interpreting subjectivities. Nikima Jagudajev, Helena Kritis and Ruxmini Reckvana Q Choudhury Venue: Auditorium, Dhaka Art Summit, National Art Gallery, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Time: 5 PM Date: 11th February 2023

ALL PROJECTS Critical Writing Ensembles- Sovereign Words Curated by Katya García-Antón 2-10 February 2018 | Dhaka Art Summit The Office of Contemporary Art Norway returned to the Dhaka Art Summit 2018 with ‘Sovereign Words. Facing the Tempest of a Globalised Art History’: a platform of panel discussions, lecture performances, group debates and readings during DAS 2018. ‘Sovereign Words’ is a new iteration of the ‘Critical Writing Ensembles’, committed to the strengthening of critical writing within and across communities of the world. This edition was focused on writing by peers from Indigenous communities around the world contesting the Western canon. ‘Sovereign Words’ was conceived by OCA, and organised in partnership with DAS, Artspace Sydney and the Australia Council for the Arts. Keynote Lecture by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zAtoGiUHDQedOjac6kYSjw9&v=AEDqz-T8BHk Date: 9 February 2018, 6.00 – 7.15pm Venue: 3rd Floor Auditorium, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Dr Spivak’s presentation addressed the precarious situation of the Rohingya people in relation to Indigeneity in the world today, with a special emphasis on the languages of the Bengal region. Rohingya are stateless people who are Indigenous to nowhere, and who speak a different language from Bengali; Spivak connected their current situation to the history of the region. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is one of the world’s foremost literary theorists. She is a University Professor at Colombia University and a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. Spivak is best known for her essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” and for her translation of, and introduction to, Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976). In 2012, Spivak was awarded the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy as a critical theorist and educator speaking for the humanities against intellectual colonialism in the face of the globalised world. In 2013, she received the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian award given by the Republic of India. She has published a number of articles and books, including Readings (The University of Chicago Press, 2014); An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalisation (Harvard University Press, 2012); Other Asias (Blackwell Publishing, 2008); A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (Harvard University Press, 1999); The Post-Colonial Critic – Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues (Routledge, 1990); and In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (Routledge, 1987). She will be the 2018 recipient of the Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award from the Modern Language Association of America. She has received eleven honourary doctorates and the Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Government of France. Presentations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zAtoGiUHDQedOjac6kYSjw9&v=-DLhTEPoy-I Máret Ánne Sara Session Date: 5 February 2018, 11.00am - 4.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy In the afterword to her debut book Ilmmiid gaskkas (In Between Worlds), Máret Ánne Sara writes “People say they don’t believe in such things anymore. Still, they don’t dare to deny it either.” Ilmmiid gaskkas explores Sami beliefs vis-à-vis contemporary reality through the voices of teenagers and their experience of Sami worlds. In her presentation, Sara read sections of her book that speak about the traditions of Sámi storytelling, the use of this philosophy in modern literature and in a political settings. She also made use of her artwork to showcase how she addresses the same topics through different artistic forms and approaches. Máret Ánne Sara is an artist whose work deals with political and social issues affecting the Indigenous Sámi people and their reindeer-herding communities. Sara has created posters, CD/LP covers, scene visuals and fabric prints for numerous Sámi artists, designers and institutions and has exhibited in the field of visual arts since 2003. Furthermore, she is an editor, journalist and published novelist. Her first book Ilmmiid gaskkas (In Between Worlds, 2013), was nominated for the Nordic Council’s Children’s and Young People’s Literature Prize in 2014. She is one of the founding members of the Dáiddadállu / Artists’ Collective Kautokeino. Sara’s ongoing project Pile o’Sápmi was showcased, amongst others, as part of the documenta 14 exhibition at the Neue Neue Galerie, Kassel 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zAtoGiUHDQedOjac6kYSjw9&v=EfevtOVp5v4 Djon Mundine Session Date: 5 February 2018, 11.00am - 4.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy The exhibition To Strike – To Leave My Mark (2017–18), celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative through the work of its ten founding members: Michael Riley, Bronwyn Bancroft, Arone Meeks, Euphemia Bostock, Fiona Foley, Brenda L. Croft, Jeffrey Samuels, Tracey Moffatt, Avril Quaill and Fern Martins. The exhibition's curator, Djon Mundine, explained; “The group is interesting from several angles in that the group was across all genders, ages, and training –all had, or were attending, Western art courses or art schools, most members were women (7/10), almost half were refugees from Joh Bjelke-Peterson’s Queensland (4/10), the other half were from New South Wales (NSW), most weren’t teenagers anymore, and the two ‘gay’ men members had been ‘out’, proud and well known nearly all their lives. I really, first met several of this group who were in the Koori Art 84 exhibition at Sydney’s Artspace in 1984. I was living and working as an Art and Craft Advisor in central Arnhem Land then and had just curated an exhibition of the Art Gallery of NSW’s bark painting collection in 1983. Following the Koori Art 84 show, several artists started to correspond with me and wanted to visit. They were travelling to the Tiwi Islands as part of their Western style art courses to be exposed to ‘real’ Aboriginal art. About half of the ten visited and worked and formed relationships with Ramingining or Maningrida communities.” A number of the original ten members moved on to great achievements in terms of global art world recognition, as much as they left their mark in establishing the co-operative that has influenced and provided openings for so many Aboriginal artists: Tracey Moffatt presented a solo exhibition within the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2017. In this presentation, Mundine honoured both her and the rest of the ten for their struggle and triumph. Djon Mundine, OAM (Medal of the Order of Australia), is a curator, writer, artist and activist. He has held prominent curatorial positions in many national and international institutions, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane. In 1993 he received the OAM for service to the promotion and development of Aboriginal arts, crafts and culture. Between 2005 and 2006 he was Research Professor at The National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku) in Osaka. He is a member of the Bandjalung people of northern New South Wales, and currently an independent curator of contemporary Indigenous art. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zAtoGiUHDQedOjac6kYSjw9&v=Y2qsI7wiFGY Léuli Eshraghi Session Date: 5 February 2018, 11.00am - 4.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy In Léuli Eshraghi’s words, “This piece reflected my many journeys in recent years connected with relations across the coasts and inland mountains rimming the Great Ocean. A third of our planet’s surface, home to millions of Indigenous and migrant beings, including plants, fish, animals, birds, spirits and humans: this is a continent rendered invisible in dominating Euro-American military and economic endeavours." Eshraghi aimed to approach diasporic yearning for homelands / waters / intergenerational trauma and mourning for repeated genocides / epistemicides / ecocides / linguicides, alongside the development of contemporary Indigenous sovereignties as part of responsible belonging, caring and visiting. This presentation brought sensual lessons and languages to the fore in understanding how curating / artmaking / writing by Indigenous peoples of the Great Ocean are practices of leadership through service, and healing through cleansing. Léuli Māzyār Luna’i Eshrāghi (Sāmoan, Persian, German, Chinese ancestries) is an uninvited guest in unceded Kulin Nation territory, and a PhD candidate at Monash University Art Design Architecture (MADA). Hailing from the Sāmoan villages of āpia, Leulumoega, Si’umu, and Salelologa, his work centres on ceremonial-political renewal, languages, embodied futures, and diasporic and local indigeneities. He has undertaken residencies at Para Site, Hong Kong; the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity; the University of British Columbia, Okanagan; and the Tautai Pacific Arts Trust, Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland in English). He serves on the board of the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective / Collectif des commissaires Autochtones; the editorial advisories for Broadsheet, Tardanyangga (Adelaide in English) and un Magazine in Narrm (Melbourne in English); and the Pacific Advisory Group for the Melbourne Museum. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zAtoGiUHDQedOjac6kYSjw9&v=fr4Z-N_OEAs Megan Cope Session Date: 5 February 2018, 11.00am - 4.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy This presentation of Cope's artistic practice, focused on the transition from mapping practices to her most recent sculptural work. Looking into mapping practices as colonial tools, and mining industries which both alter Indigenous landscapes and their economic, relational and ecological systems, she discussed the impact of Australia’s colonial settlers on the artist’s traditional Quandamooka country and offered a snapshot of an industry that has relied heavily on both Aboriginal aqua-cultural systems and labour in the region. This presentation explored the role that contemporary art has in the promotion of Indigenous culture and provided legal documents to challenge the notion of the hegemonic state. Megan Cope is a Quandamooka woman from North Stradbroke Island in Southeast Queensland. Her site-specific sculptural installations, video work and paintings explore the myths and methods of colonisation. Her diverse practice also investigates issues relating to identity, the environment, and mapping practices. Most recently Cope’s large scale sculptural installations have been curated into three major national survey exhibitions: The National, Art Gallery of New South Wales (2017); Defying Empire: 3rd National Indigenous Art Triennial, National Gallery of Australia Parkes (2017); and Sovereignty at ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art), Melbourne (2016). Her work has been exhibited widely, in exhibitions at Next Wave Festival Screen Space, Melbourne (2014); Incinerator Gallery, Sydney (2013); My Country: I Still Call Australia Home, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2013); Para Site, Hong Kong (2013); Tony Albert Wellington City Gallery, New Zealand (2010); and the ARC Biennial, Brisbane (2009). In 2014 she was selected for the Victorian Aboriginal Art Award, in 2011 she won the Churchie National Emerging Art Prize, and in 2009 was a finalist for the Clayton Utz Travelling Scholarship and won the Sunshine Coast Art Prize. Her work is present in many national public art collections, including: Australian Parliament House, Canberra; Mater Hospital, Brisbane; Gold Coast University Hospital, Gold Coast; Redlands Art Gallery, Redlands; and the NEWflames Anne Gamble Myer Collection, Brisbane. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zAtoGiUHDQedOjac6kYSjw9&v=IlDLbk2jpaY Santosh Tripura Session Date: 5 February 2018, 11.00am - 4.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Indigenous people’s survival and existence are associated with the lands where they have lived since time immemorial. The importance of lands is the very survival of Indigenous cultures and their articulated ideas of communal stewardship over land, as well as their deeply felt spiritual and emotional nexus with the Earth and its fruits. Hence the claiming of land rights means ensuring the security of land ownership which guarantees the economic viability and development of such communities. Land is the central issue when discussing Indigenous peoples’ empowerment as it is the basis for the enjoyment of their cultural rights and ensures their basic rights while respecting their distinct identity. The Indigenous notion of the ownership and management of land is based on the customary laws which are considered more or less a collective property. This presentation offered a brief glimpse into the status of Indigenous peoples’ land rights in Bangladesh. Sontosh Bikash Tripura is a scholar and researcher, working in the field of development studies. He studied Anthropology for his BSS Hons and MSS degrees at the Dhaka University. He also received a M.Phil. in Indigenous Studies from UiT (Arctic University of Norway), Tromsø, under the Norad fellowship programme. His M.Phil. thesis is titled Blaming Jhum, Denying Jhumia: Challenges of the shifting cultivators land rights in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Between August 2009 and February 2017 he worked for UNDP (United Nations Development Programme). Belonging to the Tripura Indigenous community in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh, his research interests explore Indigenous peoples’ rights, land rights and development. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zAtoGiUHDQedOjac6kYSjw9&v=UPiAr8246SM Irene Snarby Session Date: 6 February 2018, 11.00am - 4.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy For many Sámi people, duodji (commonly translated as Sámi handicraft, the word was used extensively to define the community’s creative activities) is one of the strongest indicators of Sámi identity. Their relationship with their traditions signify deep collective values and norms. Intangible knowledge is an important part of both the process and the experience of duodji. Consequently, Sámi traditions and the practice of duodji are subject to varying degrees of knowledge and understanding. Iver Jåks stressed the importance of duodji as not being exclusively associated with memories, keepsakes and the past, and was concerned with giving his art relevant content as contemporary art. In this presentation, Snarby elaborated on how a deep and specific notion of duodji and ancient Sámi thinking incorporated with avant-garde art practices informs Iver Jåks’s three-dimensional works. Through his practice, which was closely associated with a broad, holistic understanding of duodji, he gave a voice to Sámi methods, traditions and experiences in an arena that had previously rejected Sámi art as ethnology rather than art. Irene Snarby is a Doctoral Research Fellow in Art History at SARP: The Sámi Art Research Project at UiT (Arctic University of Norway), where she is carrying out research into the works of the artist Iver Jåks for her PhD thesis. Snarby has worked as a curator within the Art Department of Riddo Duottar Museat (Sámi Museums of Western Finnmark) in Kárášjohka (Karasjok in Norwegian) and has been a member of the Sámi Parliament’s Art Acquisitions Committee for Contemporary Art. For the last 20-years, she has written essays, given lectures and been an editor for several publications of Sámi art. Snarby has also been an advisor on important art projects such as the International Indigenous Art exhibition Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada, in Ottawa, and There is no, at the Sámi Art Museum at Northern Norwegian Art Museum. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zAtoGiUHDQedOjac6kYSjw9&v=ka6ToIwK4Cc Daniel Browning Session Date: 6 February 2018, 11.00am - 4.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Decolonisation is at least intellectually and aesthetically possible, even though the power structures of colonialism persist. However, colonialism transmutes; it shifts and rebalances, forever finding a way to maintain its power and hegemony. Post-colonial thinking, the process of re-imagination, is evident in public artworks in Australia and the impetus to challenge historical amnesia is being driven at a superficial level by arts funding bodies, with philanthropic money from urban development sectors and such resources. This presentation attempted to outline the ways in which public memory is being challenged to rethink the colonial meta-narratives: that of discovery, the terra nullius and White Australia. Daniel Browning is an Aboriginal journalist, radio broadcaster, documentary maker, sound artist and writer. Currently, he produces and presents Awaye!, the Indigenous art and culture programme on ABC RN, a specialist radio network of Australia’s national broadcaster. Awaye! surveys contemporary Indigenous cultural practice across the arts spectrum. A visual arts graduate, Daniel is also a widely-published freelance arts writer. He is a former guest co-editor of Artlink Indigenous, a publication produced regularly since 1990 by Artlink Magazine, a quarterly Australian contemporary arts journal. He is the curator of Blak Box, an immersive sound installation in the newly-redeveloped precinct on the western foreshore of Sydney Harbour. He studied English and Art History at the University of Queensland before graduating with a degree in visual arts from the Queensland University of Technology. Daniel is a descendant of the Bundjalung and Kullilli peoples of far Northern New South Wales and Southwestern Queensland. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zAtoGiUHDQedOjac6kYSjw9&v=GuZ3cmBoBC0 Santosh Kumar Das Session Date: 6 February 2018, 11.00am - 4.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy From a personal perspective, Santosh Kumar Das’s presentation gave insight into his practice: “I focused mainly on the freedom that being a speaker of the folk or Indigenous language of Madhubani has given me as an artist and as a human being. It is like when an idea comes to me, in the mind it has a certain language, a certain form. I watch it for some time carefully and realise it is in the language or form which I have known so intimately all my life. It is always in the folk language (read visually as ‘form’) of my place. At times, the source of the idea may be quite diverse and strange. Maybe a film poster or maybe the figure of a bridge seen from a distance. But ultimately as it begins to solidify, it starts to take on the form of Madhubani. It is like a mother tongue; speaking in it comes more naturally to a child. We don't think much while speaking in our mother tongues. We feel and express. There is no strain and risk. It is the same for me as painting in the style of Madhubani. It is the language of my thought. And the form itself has been a rewarding experience for me. All these years, I have just tried to be honest to the medium, i.e., that of the lines drawn with a pen nib on paper.” Santosh Kumar Das is an artist from a village in the Madhubani region. His work draws inspiration from the traditional folk language of Madhubani, using various iconological figures and symbols, and creating a unique artistic language. Kumar Das has a BA Fine Arts in Painting from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. During the 1980s he conducted a research project on folksongs of Mithila, together with the ethnomusicologist Naomi Owen from the USA, and assisted Dr. Raymond Lee Owens on a film about Mithila painters. In 2017 Tara Books published Kumar Das’ Black: An Artist’s Tribute, a memoir of his growth into art and a tribute to his personal muses that transformed him into an artist. Between 2003 – 2008 he served as the First Director of the Mithila Art Institute in Madhubani. In 2005 he travelled around several universities in the USA where he gave a number of artist talks. His work has been exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally, and is included in the collections of the Oberlin College and Conservatory, Oberlin, and the Ethnic Arts Foundation, Berkeley, among others. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zAtoGiUHDQedOjac6kYSjw9&v=fqce2fIxV3g Kimberley Moulton Session Date: 6 February 2018, 11.00am - 4.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy In this presentation, Kimberley Moulton looked at the past seven years of her research into ancestral belongings in international and national collections. Through imagery, journal entries and critical engagement with the history of collecting and institutions, in Moulton’s own words this presentation “highlighted the personal effect working within these spaces has had on me as a Yorta Yorta woman and looked at how the intersection of First Peoples’ contemporary art practice and cultural material work can decentre the white paradigm.” This presentation also reflected on the legacy of Captain James Cook’s maiden voyage to trace the path of Venus and the mission of Terra Australis 250 years ago, which resulted in the very first cultural objects to be stolen from Australia. Kimberley Moulton is a Yorta-Yorta woman with a curatorial and writing practice which has engaged with many museums and contemporary art spaces. She is Senior Curator of South Eastern Aboriginal Collections for Museums Victoria at Melbourne Museum, focusing on the intersection of contemporary First Peoples art and cultural material in museums. Prior to this, Moulton was Project Officer and Curator at Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre, Melbourne Museum between 2009 and 2015, and Assistant Curator for First Peoples exhibition at Melbourne Museum in 2013. Alongside her institutional curatorial roles, she has independently curated: where the water moves, where it rests: the art of Djambawa Marawili, Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, Charlottesville (2015); State of The Nation, Counihan Gallery, Brunswick (2016); A Call From The West: The Continuing Legacy of Mr William Cooper, Footscray Community Arts Centre (2016). She was also co-curator for Artbank Sydney Social Day 2016, RECENTRE: sisters, City Of Melbourne Gallery (2017); and co-curator with Liz Nowell of Next Matriarch, ACE Open Adelaide and TARNANTHI Festival (2017). Kimberley is an alumna of the National Gallery of Australia’s Wesfarmers Indigenous Arts Leadership Programme 2010, British Council ACCELERATE programme (2013), National Gallery of Australia International Curatorial Fellow at Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Collection (2015), and a Victorian Curatorial Representative for the First Nations Exchange Programme at the Venice Biennale and First Nations Exchange Canada (2017). Kimberley’s current project is lead curator on Mandela: My Life at Melbourne Museum and guest curator of the Gertrude Contemporary, Octopus, exhibition (2018). https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zAtoGiUHDQedOjac6kYSjw9&v=eVKvkCXzFII Hannah Donnelly Session Date: 7 February 2018, 2.30pm - 7.30pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Hannah Donnelly asked: “How would our art histories be archived in Indigenous Futures?” This presentation explored future tense methodologies used to interview artists about the imagined collective representation of their work. Hannah Donnelly (Wiradjuri) is a writer and artist. Renowned for her ‘cli-fi’, she works with text, sound and installation exploring Indigenous futures and responses to climate trauma. Hannah is the creator of Sovereign Trax, a record label promoting First Nations music through energising decolonisation conversations and community in music. She is currently working as an associate producer at Next Wave, a biennial festival based in Melbourne, Australia, which promotes and showcases the work of young and emerging artists. Donnelly recently held the solo exhibition Long Water, at the Yirramboi Festival, Arts House, North Melbourne (2017). Her recent group exhibitions include: The Future Leaks Out, Liveworks, Sydney (2017); Future Eaters, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne (2017); Feedback Loop, Blak Dot Gallery, Melbourne (2017); and State of the Nation, Counihan Gallery, Melbourne (2016). https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zAtoGiUHDQedOjac6kYSjw9&v=Tk7OlKNpKcA Kabita Chakma Session Date: 7 February 2018, 2.30pm - 7.30pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy This presentation traced the emergence of Indigenous cinema in Bangladesh, particularly in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), positing it into the framework of the global Indigenous cinema movement: known as the Fourth Cinema. Chakma linked CHT cinema with a wider discussion of representation of Indigenous subjects as ‘others’ in the mainstream media, and discussed critical questions raised against this representation by intellectuals of the Global North and the Global South, highlighting what might be considered sovereignty in relation to CHT’s Indigenous Cinema. Kabita Chakma comes from the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh. Chakma is the largest indigenous group in Bangladesh. She belongs to the clan of Raange goza, Bhudo guttthi on her maternal side and Borbo goza, Phoraa daagi on her paternal side. Kabita is a freelance researcher, architect, writer and occasional guest lecturer and teacher at the School of Design, part of the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). She is a Coordinator of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Indigenous Jumma Association Australia (CHTIJAA), and a Community Adviser to BODHI (Benevolent Organisation for Development, Health and Insight) Australia, a charity organisation. Kabita’s interests include the history, culture, art and architecture of disadvantaged communities, particularly Indigenous peoples of the CHT, Bangladesh, and environmental sustainability. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zAtoGiUHDQedOjac6kYSjw9&v=_4_vBaKjePI Prashanta Tripura Session Date: 7 February 2018, 2.30pm - 7.30pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Is there, or should there be, something called ‘Indigenous art’? Or is ethnicity a necessary or sufficient criterion for a practitioner of art to be categorised as an ‘Indigenous artist’? Tripura explains: “I wanted to explore such questions by talking about how I have dealt with them personally, such as when I once found myself resisting being labelled as an ‘Indigenous poet’, though I have also written a lot in support of the contested category of ‘Indigenous peoples’ in Bangladesh.” In this context, this presentation focused on how Tripura came to be interested in, and started writing about the identities and struggles of the self-identified ‘Indigenous peoples’ of Bangladesh: “My personal account was meant to serve as a window to the larger questions that concern academics, artists and activists alike in the contemporary world, e.g. how can art and literature help the Indigenous peoples assert and establish their identities and rights?” Prashanta Tripura is an academic anthropologist who currently teaches part-time at the Department of Economics and Social Sciences at BRAC University, Dhaka. Previously he was an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka, where he taught for ten years before switching over to the development sector, where he worked for over a decade. He received his academic training in the USA, majoring in anthropology at Brandeis University, Waltham, and went on to pursue graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his MA. He has contributed many articles – in both Bangla and English – that have been published in academic journals as well as magazines and dailies. A collection of his essays – in Bangla – titled Bohujatir Bangladesh (Bangladesh of Many Peoples) was published in 2015. He also expresses himself in Kokborok, his first language, which is spoken by the Tripuras, an Indigenous people of Bangladesh and India (he is from the Bangladesh side, but was born and brought up in the Khagrachari hill district of the Chittagong Hill Tracts region). He is also the principal author of a research monograph which has been published as a book in Bangla, titled Shifting Cultivation in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zAtoGiUHDQedOjac6kYSjw9&v=rKrVdFfsYO0 Biung Ismahasan Session Date: 7 February 2018, 2.30pm - 7.30pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy This presentation explored the ethno-aesthetic nature of Taiwanese Indigenous performative arts and the works of Truku performance artist and activist Don Don Houmwm, Rukai sculptor Eleng Luluan, and Bunun curator Biung Ismahasan (Truku, Rukai and Bunun belong to three of Taiwan’s sixteen Indigenous groups). They are examined as a contribution to the discourse of Indigenous and cultural sovereignty. This presentation examined their performative approaches, practices and curatorial strategies relevant to Indigenous artistic practices, particularly those pertinent to cultural loss, recovery and activation. It firstly questioned how Houmwm performs Indigeneity, sorrow and solitude, exposing hybrid identities; then demonstrated how Luluan uses her Indigenous minimalist installations to explore multiple social discrepancies between intrinsic and extrinsic performativity amid material objects and soft sculptures; it finally showcased how Biung Ismahasan himself structures a performative encounter of Taiwanese Indigenous contemporary art by curating an off-site and culturally resonant space. Biung Ismahasan is a curator and researcher, currently working on his PhD in Curating at the University of Essex’s Centre for Curatorial Studies. Belonging to the Bunun Nation of Taiwanese Indigenous groups, he is awarded PULIMA Art Award (the first national art award dedicated to Indigenous contemporary art), and exhibited at Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in Southern Taiwan. His research involves issues of contemporary Indigenous curatorial practice and aesthetics, focusing on the curation of Taiwanese Indigenous contemporary art. His current research emphasises the issues of participation, performativity and the historiography of Indigenous curation and exhibition design. His most notable curatorial projects includes, Anti-Alcoholism: an Indigenous performative encounter 2014-2018, an international performance art exchange of Indigenous artists from Taiwan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zAtoGiUHDQedOjac6kYSjw9&v=vrmr0rGUkNY David Garneau Session Date: 8 February 2018, 5.30pm - 7.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy ‘Indigenous’ is not just a term that attempts to corral thousands of local identities but one that announces a new way of being Native. Indigenous is a collective identity in formation that includes, but goes beyond, traditional identities. While it is the form through which local communities are mostly known, championed, and advanced, it can also be co-opted and distorted by dominant, non-Native cultures and discourses. How do Indigenous writers, thinkers, artists, curators, activists and other cultural workers negotiate the complex identity called Indigenous? In this presentation, David Garneau offered suggestions that have arisen from his own experience and recent projects. David Garneau (Métis) is Associate Professor of Visual Arts at the University of Regina. His practice includes painting, curation, and critical writing. With Kathleen Ash Milby, he recently co-curated Transformer: Native Art in Light and Sound, at the National Museum of the American Indian, New York; Moving Forward, Never Forgetting, with Michelle LaVallee: an exhibition concerning the legacies of Indian Residential Schools, other forms of aggressive assimilation, and (re)conciliation, at the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina; and With Secrecy and Despatch with Tess Allas: an international exhibition about the massacres of Indigenous people and memorialisation, for the Campbelltown Art Centre, Sydney. Garneau has given numerous talks in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and throughout Canada. His work is part of a five-year SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) funded curatorial research project, ‘Creative Conciliation’, and he is working on a commissioned public art project in Edmonton, Alberta. His paintings can be found in numerous public and private collections. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zAtoGiUHDQedOjac6kYSjw9&v=5oKt45NNJPw Ánde Somby Honouring National Sami Day Session Date: 8 February 2018, 5.30pm - 7.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Ánde Somby is a writer, yoiker (yoik is the Sámi way of singing or chanting; and the musical modus of yoiks differs from what is commonly known in Euro-American music) and Associate Professor of Law at UiT (Arctic University of Norway) where he specialises in Indigenous rights law. Somby was born in 1958 in Buolbmat in the Deatnu (Tana in Norwegian) municipality on the Norwegian side of Sápmi. He is the former Chair of the Centre for Sámi Studies at UiT and former leader of Sámiid Nuoraid Searvi (Sámi Youth Association in Kárášjohka, 1976–78). Somby has performed extensively as a yoiker since 1976, and has occasionally also lectured on the subject. His writings include: “How to recruit Samis to higher education and to research, items on an agenda of actions” (Sin neste som seg selv: Ole D. Mjøs 60 år 8. mars 1999, ed. by Arthur Arntzen, Jens-Ivar Nergård, and Øyvind Norderval, 1999) and “The Legal situation of The Nordic Indigenous Peoples” (paper presented at the 35th Nordic Jurist Assembly, 1999) and “Yoik and the Theory of Knowledge” (Kunnskap og utvikling, ed. by MagnusHaavelud, 1995).

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

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

ALL PROJECTS Nobody Told Me There Would be Days Like These Curated by Mustafa Zaman Assistant Curator: Ruxmini Reckvana Q Choudhury The 1980s was a decade during which art played an increasingly social-political role in Dhaka’s art scene. This defiant point of departure from ‘surface painting’, which saw its emergence in the 1960s, can be seen as a tectonic shift since this strain of artmaking continues to inform the discourses and debates across the cultural horizon in Bangladesh to this day. Artists sought detours and vocalised antagonistic positions primarily to dislodge art from its elite academic perch. Dehumanisation and storytelling became twin conduits for artists to formulate new strategies to articulate dissent. In artist-curated exhibitions, access to ideas and information on art and artists was supplied with the intention to edify the public. This ‘critical turn’ left its influence on many disciplines – it effected a change in how artists, poets, as well as theatre and film activists perceived the relationship between their works and society. Thus, the 1980s witnessed a determined detour through reframing of the ‘social’ and invocation of the ‘political’. New idioms were born out of the resistance movements waged against the longest-ruling military dictatorship in Bangladesh – the regime of the recently deceased general H.M. Ershad that lasted from 1981 to 1990. The dictator’s unscrupulous move to align with those who collaborated with the Pakistani army during the Liberation War in 1971, the pseudo-Islamic garb that came with the emerging brand of populism he was responsible for, the opening up of the economy to global market forces, and rising corruption coupled with political repression provided the backdrop for the subsequent resistance movements leading to the final overthrow of the dictator in 1990. To parse the developments of the 1980s, one can say that in the arts, it was the decade of radicalisation as interrogation won over introspection and action over passivity. It was an era of political resistance as well as cultural re-organisation. In the arts, this critical turn resulted out of the conviction that to topple the dictator one must spread antagonism in all spheres of life. After the fall of the dictator in 1990 – the fate of ‘democracy’ in Bangladesh became entangled with issues of corruption and flawed elections, and art and activism of the 1980s were carried over to subsequent decades to be reframed and re-organised to bear on various different goals. As DAS mounts its fifth edition, in which a synergy of the newest samples of South Asian art provide fodder for the public eye/mind, ‘Nobody Told Me There Would be Days Like These’ maps the history of groups that laid the ground for art and theatre, film and literary movements in the 1980s with the hope that we do not collectively renege on our promises made in favour of life. The exhibition’s title is a nod to a song from the same era by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Visual Arts In the visual arts, Quamrul Hassan (1921–1988) set a visual language into motion that sought to critique the emerging ruling elite of the early 1970s. Otherwise well-known for his pleasant depiction of rural life, Hassan, who belonged to the first generation of artists in East Bengal when Pakistan was formed, tackled what may be termed as the gentrification of urban society and the concomitant loss of social values. His political art, which articulated a critical voice by crowding his canvas with symbolic motifs where the dominant minority or alienated elite is represented in both human and animal form, was the first attempt in Bangladeshi art to instrumentalise ‘social fact’. Later in the 1980s, a group of young artists calling themselves ‘Shomoy’ emerged fresh out of art institutions. The group’s politically cast art once again brought storytelling to centre stage and sought to redefine narrative painting in South Asia. Shomoy, which literally translates to time, sought political salvation, hoping to end the military misrule which coloured life in Bangladesh in the 1980s. Their creative acts percolated into a critical analysis of their time, often reflecting the prevailing mass discontent, seeking to restore the ethos of the 1971 Liberation War. The members of Shomoy were Dhali Al Mamoon (b. 1958), Wakilur Rahman (b. 1961), Habibur Rahman (b. 1958), Shishir Bhattacharjee (b. 1960), Nisar Hossain (b. 1960), Dilara Begum Jolly (b. 1960), Aziz Sharafi (b. 1956), Saidul Haque Juise (b. 1960), Ali Morshed Noton (b. 1958), Lala Rukh Selim (b. 1963), Tawfiqur Rahman (b. 1959). Shomoy works lay at the intersection of many fields of emerging discourses and forms. The most active Shomoy members, including Shishir Bhattacharjee, Dilara Begum Jolly, Nisar Hossain, Dhali Al Mamun, and Wakilur Rahman also transported their creative energy to activities which lay beyond the scope of their respective disciplines. To understand the drift, one must take into account how the idea of dissent began to redefine cultural production of the era. The most active protagonists of theatre, cinema and poetry began to respond to the unfolding political events and the marketisation of the economy. Shomoy artists worked simultaneously through various themes and trajectories, utilising the power latent in little-noticed popular culture of South Asia. They devised their own brand of social realism – a way to attend to the ‘here and now.’ The works of Shishir Bhattacharjee, Wakilur Rahman, and Nisar Hossain unveiled the decadence and dehumanisation of the era while throwing up sharp critiques of the dictatorial and imperial political scheme. Both Dilara Begum Jolly and Dhali Al Mamoon’s figurative motifs began to break down into mangled entities referring to what was rotting in society, while Nisar Hossain’s insect-like predators were set against a backdrop teeming with references to rickshaw paintings. The belief in secularism and democracy was of prime importance to the generation of artists that came to maturity in the 1980s. Pitted against the destructive power unleashed through subsequent regimes, their conviction to create a secular social sphere fuelled their creativity, although the zeal for the ‘real’ assumed many different dimensions in theatre, cinema and even in poetry. If secular logic was the common thread to all this, artist’s voices often turned sarcastic while talking back to power. Architecture Networks of knowledge also kept people in sync with one another although they were working from within their respective disciplines. Chetana, a platform that grew out of a study circle that was presided over by late architect Muzharul Islam (1923–2012), often hosted their programmes in the presence of poets and literary personalities as part of the group’s early advocacy for interdisciplinarity. The late poets Shamsur Rahman (1929–2006) and Belal Chowdhury (1938–2018) and late professor and educationist Kabir Chowdhury (1923–2011) attended Chetana’s inauguration event. The most important element of their activism was that they attempted to bring Bangladesh’s architecture and heritage into the conversation about modern architecture. Chetana saw the union of like-minded architects: Raziul Hassan, Nazmul Latif, Syed Azaz Rasul, Uttam Kumar Saha, Nahas Khalil, then architects working in different fields including teaching at the architecture department of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, BUET, comprised the group. Saiful Haq (b. 1958), and Kazi Khaleed Ashraf (b. 1959), were members from the time they were fourth year students at BUET and are now established architects and researchers who continue to build on the ethos of Chetana. Theatre Resistance took the most effective and potent form in the arena of the theatre. The most influential iconic theatre and literary personality Selim Al Deen (1949–2008), who initiated Dhaka Theatre, was also responsible for Gram Theatre (launched in 1983) and worked to extend urban theatre to the rural hinterland. Nasiruddin Yousuff Bacchu, an actor-director, played an important role in the creolisation of modern theatre by way of absorbing Al Deen’s ideals and activism. By the late 1980s, more than 150 theatre troupes were developed in villages across the country under Gram Theatre, although most ceased to be active over the following years. These troupes lent momentum to a country-wide cultural regeneration and in spreading awareness among the masses about the slow erosion of society and politics under military rule. As a playwright and teacher, Selim Al Deen introduced what many refer to as ‘Epic Realism.’ His extensive study on Bengali popular theatre genre called ‘jatra’ coupled with his attempt in retracing the Hindu-Buddhist performance heritage led to his renowned drama ‘Kittankhola’, which is still considered a milestone in the modern theatre history in Bangladesh. Dhaka Theatre and Aranyak among other theatrical groups were instrumental in staging dramas that either harked back to the theme of the Liberation War and the repression of the Pakistan junta, or aimed to expose the anomalies of military dictatorship. Some groups even attempted to poke fun at the then military ruler. Theatrical performances served as a means to educate and open the eyes of the masses. ‘Payer Awaj Pawa Jay’ is a case in point. First staged by Dhaka Theatre in 1976, it was written by the late writer and poet Syed Shamsul Haq (1935– 2016) and was themed around the atrocities of the Pakistan army and the abuse of power by the village elite in the name of religion. Film The Short Film Movement added a decisive layer to the cultural fabric woven since the early 1980s. Morshedul Islam and Tareque Masud debuted as young filmmakers in the 1980s and were part of a greater movement centred on the Bangladesh Short Film Forum. Formed in 1986 by a group of young independent filmmakers and activists inspired and mentored by Alamgir Kabir (1938–1989), the platform was created after years of activism and campaigning for creative and aesthetically pleasing cinema by collectives called film societies. When the forum came into being it featured some of the most notable young Bangladeshi film makers among its members at the time, including Morshedul Islam (b. 1957), Tanvir Mokammel (b. 1955), late Tareque Masud (1956–2011), Enayet Karim Babul, Tareq Shahriar, Abu Sayeed (b. 1962), Shameem Akhtar, Manjare Hasin Murad, Yasmine Kabir, Nurul Alam Atique, Zahidur Rahim Anjan, N. Rashed Chowdhury, and Akram Khan. The Forum, by way of a biennial and non-competitive International Short and Independent Film Festival, kept hope alive for independent filmmaking, beyond injecting the cultural scene with much-needed optimism in favour of cultural activism. The first festival was held in 1988 and was entirely dedicated to short films. The forum is still active and it continues to organise seminars and workshops on films and film festivals all over Bangladesh, in addition to holding film shows and film-related events at their permanent venue at Bangladesh Film Centre in Shahbagh, Dhaka. Tareque Masud and Morshedul Islam played a decisive role in the development of Bangladeshi film, they made films that at once drew critical appreciation and public attention, the former for his documentaries and latter for his short-length films. ‘Adam Surat’, a documentary on the legendary artist S. M. Sultan by Tareque Masud, and ‘Chaka’ by Morshedul Islam were among the most influential films of the era, while Abu Sayeed, an early enthusiast of short-length film, later took to making feature films. Chaka carried over the idea of the ‘witness’, a theme that runs across many of his works, from the 1980s to the new millennium while Sayeed attempted to bring ‘Kittonkhola’, a popular stage play written by Selim Al Deen, to the silver screen in the year 2000. Literature The Little Mag movement was the veritable crucible of talents where writers and poets willing to break the mainstream circuit gathered. Working as a platform for literary aspirants who were willing to look beyond already explored territories, the alternative publications that gave it its shape also created space for artists and filmmakers to work in alignment with the cultural political goals of the time. Among many who played a catalytic role, poet Sajjad Sharif (b. 1963) was particularly active in threading the literary world with the world of art and film as he was behind some specific moments of convergence between members of the Shomoy group and the filmmaker Tareque Masud. Sajjad Sharif’s contributions can be traced to the early editions of the ‘Anindya’ (meaning one who lived eternally without blemish) and ‘Gandeeb’, or ‘Gandiva’ (the bow of Arjuna, the central character of the Mahabharata). Little magazines were selfpublished zines; the writers and poets involved took turns in generating funds for printing. Sometimes they were sponsored by literary enthusiasts. They were cheap and contained works of prose and poetry by emerging poets and writers. Although not directly involved with any little magazine, Ahmed Sofa (1943–2001) inspired many in the alternative literary circuit with his outspoken nature and intellectual honesty, including Salimullah Khan (b. 1958). While Sofa was stationed at Aziz Market, a place where these magazines were conceived and sold, he nurtured a new breed of young poets and writers. These were the literary creatives of the time who fought against conventional patterns of thought that then pervaded mainstream culture. Among the little magazines that worked as nodal points through which artists, writers and poets made their presence heard, Anindya saw its beginnings in 1985 and Gandeeb had its start in 1987. Together they worked as an alternative platform where the possibility of cross-fertilisation first began to appear. The editors of the two of the most influential and long lasting alternative magazines (both are in circulation now) were respectively Habib Wahid (b. 1962) and Tapan Barua (b. 1956). Of the emerging renegades who helped develop their reputation, some became part of the mainstream at a later date.

ALL PROJECTS Purposeful Goods Curated by Teresa Albor Social enterprises are businesses with a social or environmental purpose that prioritize transformative social impact-- entrepreneurship with a mission to change society. Socially engaged practice can involve social enterprise and a social enterprise can be considered process-based, socially engaged art. Bangladesh has played a revolutionary role in social enterprise. After the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, new ways of working collectively emerged including more socially viable and sustainable business strategies and organizational forms. Two internationally known examples are BRAC, the largest collaborative network of social business in the world, and the Grameen Bank, which paved the way for decades of micro credit initiatives. Purposeful Goods featured social enterprises, collectives and not-for-profit groups associated with DAS 2023, their stories and their products, most of which were for sale along with our book sellers (who operate with low/no margins). 100% of all purchases go directly to the groups represented. We are grateful to the Bangladesh Apparel Exchange for their in-kind support. AFIELD The impetus behind creating AFIELD (founded 2014) was the fundamental belief that artists are essential to the fabric of society, as thinkers, visionaries and changemakers. Despite changing the world in profound ways, there is not a support structure or advocacy platform for this kind of work. By providing resources and support, AFIELD supports them to lead transformational change in their communities and society as a whole. AFIELD was initially conceived as a fellowship for social initiatives for arts and culture. It is now a transnational network of practitioners from the creative, literary, scientific, academic and legal fields from 28 different countries . Every year, AFIELD provides resources to artists in the form of discussions, mutual aid, incubation and community building, to help members deepen and strengthen their work in their particular contexts. As a nonprofit organization AFIELD receives grants and donations from individuals and international foundations, starting with a pluri-annual grant of a private foundation and now expanding, thanks to a group of engaged collectors and philanthropists who support the program on an annual basis. AFIELD wouldn’t exist without the volunteer work of many members and advisors involved at different levels of the project. Resources are used to give fellowships to artists-led initiatives, to increase the visibility of their projects, to create educational programs in the form of events and workshops (online and irl). Every challenge is greeted as an invitation to align practices within AFIELD with their ethics: they are currently exploring horizontality in the decision making in their network, specifically regarding distribution of funds and programming, trying to find the right balance between consensus and efficiency, to advance projects and represent the voices of their communities. Finding a shared language to communicate and fostering cross-cultural understanding is critical to their work, as members are located all over the world. Out of practicality, AFIELD defaults to English as the lingua franca. This perpetuates the hegemony of the English language in arts practice. For this reason, it’s a necessity to develop common language groups, so people within the AFIELD network can meet and organize in ways relevant to their cultural and language contexts. AFIELD would also like to explore more opportunities for in-person gatherings. There’s a consistent schedule of online meetings (called “Kitchen Calls”) for their network, one-on-one calls, study opportunities, and regular contact by email. After meeting some of their members for the first time at documenta fifteen in 2022, they became aware more physical presence with their community was needed. Their biggest challenge is securing funding and ensuring accessibility for members of the network. Afield.org Artpro Artpro (founded 2016) is a group of artists who want to explore various forms of making art to engage a diverse public. Aware of the impact art can have for social good, one of Artpro’s first initiatives was to mobilize artists to help marginalized segments of Dhaka’s society through workshops and art projects hosted within their local communities. Keen to expand the impact of their work outside of Dhaka, in mid-2017, the group began conducting Weekend Art Works, a series of daylong public art projects which takes a group of selected contemporary artists to work within a rural village community outside of Dhaka for one day. The group continues to organize public knowledge-sharing workshops; these have included ceramics, image manipulation, performance art, and video art. The group also organizes festivals. Each year since 2017 they’ve hosted the Artpro Winter Performance Festival (AWPF) and, starting in 2019, the Artpro International Video Art Festival. Artpro does not focus on selling products made by communities, instead, they showcase the work when there is an opportunity to do so. This gives the people who have made the work a bit of cash and validation. In most cases Artpro splits the proceeds with the maker, using their share to cover their own costs for materials and running workshops. Sales are modest, what is more important to Artpro is the process. artpro.com.bd FRIENDSHIP FRIENDSHIP (founded 2002) began working with vulnerable communities in the most hard-to-reach, climate impacted areas (chars – riverine islands) of northern Bangladesh providing healthcare services via a floating hospital. It soon became clear that to make a lasting impact on people’s lives a holistic approach was needed to address other issues including education, human rights, and poverty. Among other initiatives, handicraft training as a response to the lack of economic opportunities soon followed. Establishing prefabricated training centers locally, women are taught traditional handloom weaving techniques, dyeing - using natural ingredients, and hand embroidery. Because the chars where they live are highly vulnerable to sudden and forceful flooding as well as erosion the centers can be moved in two days, reconstructed, and up and running in a new location in a month. Although the primary goal was and is to provide skills through which women develop their own social identities, enabling them to stand for their rights, it soon became clear the beautiful eco-friendly products made by the communities had real market potential. Following some small corporate orders, FRIENDSHIP moved beyond simply providing training, and established a brand, FRIENDSHIP Colours of the Chars. Women are paid by the piece, giving them total flexibility; FRIENDSHIP sets the retail price, using any profits to provide further services. There are many challenges and costs, the training and production centers are remote, making it difficult to get raw materials in and finished products out. But unlike a commercial enterprise, a social enterprise does not aim to maximize profits… more important are its social goals. In 2019, FRIENDSHIP opened its first retail outlet in Dhaka. Today there are two in Dhaka and a shop in Luxembourg, run under separate management, partly staffed by volunteers. 350 women work on a regular basis and over 1700 have been trained. There are eight rural production centers, and in Dhaka, a separate management team including specialists in sales and marketing, production, design, accounts and so on. Annual fashion shows draw large crowds. Having their own ‘bricks and mortar’ outlets provides a steady revenue flow and steady work for producers, which means they maintain their manual dexterity. FRIENDSHIP is committed to ethical practice and fair trade, fair wages, and creating healthy and women-friendly working environments, ethical sourcing of raw material, and overall responsible product offerings. friendship.ngo JAAGO Foundation JAGGO Foundation (founded 2007) is committed to eliminating poverty and social inequality through providing free, quality education to underprivileged children. Influenced by the new development paradigm, which puts people before things, JAAGO Foundation follows a participatory approach in every sphere of its work. For example, volunteer and youth groups are established to empower young people and others living in the communities where they work. Besides education, JAAGO also runs climate change, governance and women’s projects. Starting with 17 students and a chalkboard; today 4500 children are in education and 50,000 youth leaders operate in 64 districts of Bangladesh. JAAGO’s innovative Digital Schooling Program, brings quality education to remote areas and others with access challenges. Its alternative learning opportunities project reflects the special needs of children and adolescents. JAAGO also provides nutrition, hygiene and health programs for their students, families and the wider community. The products on sale as part of Purposeful Goods were made specifically for the Dhaka Art Summit by JAAGO students. Taking every possible opportunity to empower the children and young people they work with, JAAGO also worked with curator Sean Anderson as contributors to ‘To Enter the Sky’, another DAS 2023 show. jaago.com.bd Jothashilpa Jothashilpa (founded 2016) is a center for traditional and contemporary arts, which considers itself a melting pot where fine art, folk art, native art, and crafts are juxtaposed and create a new art language. The group questions the notion of ‘high art’ and believes art is an integral part of society which emerges from everyday art. They work with cinema banner painters, weavers, and ceramicists among others, and their priorities include fair trade, women’s empowerment, and community development. The concept of social enterprise is central to their vision. It was not easy at first. The team had no business experience and without any investment planning they spent over a million taka in six months and had no products or sales. They had the mistaken idea that if they could somehow work with artisans to produce products someone would buy them. They now say that having a marketing strategy is critically important along with the reality of understanding operational basics. Working with and supporting over five hundred artists, artisans, and craftspeople from across Bangladesh, the group makes sure their collaborators are paid fairly and acknowledged for their work. They maintain a showroom and small shop where work made by collaborating artists can be purchased, as well as an online shop. They believe that every artist produces something that is a product, and can be sold, whether it’s an expensive painting or a notebook. They believe that we are all just doing our work as producers and they have no problem leaning into the reality of the capitalist world if it means continuing traditions. Jothashilpa wants to be a bridge between the contemporary and traditional, urban and rural, grassroots and elite and the processes of creating and selling. They believe one can be an artist and an entrepreneur. jothashilpa.com Re/DRESS Re/DRESS (founded 2021) is a response to the fact that less than 1% of the world’s textile waste is recycled into new clothing. It’s an environmental non-profit disguised as a responsible fashion brand. It has three goals: to promote cotton recycling in Bangladesh, to make sure textiles made from a high percentage of recycled fibers are readily available at factories for buyers, and to promote responsible fashion to the Bangladeshi consumer. The first task was to work with factories to develop lightweight textiles made of 100% recycled fiber. This led to developing a clothing collection made from these textiles. The clothes are retailed in both Dhaka and London and all profits support responsible fashion. In collaboration with Reverse Resources the project tracks and makes information available about cotton recycling in Bangladesh. Since the project started there’s been considerable investment in this industry, and Bangladesh is poised to become a global hub for cotton recycling. Along the way, Re/DRESS has faced many challenges: how to make a robust new textile from recycled fiber, working within the limited availability of very busy research/development departments of factories and having an all-volunteer staff. In addition, Re/DRESS’s commitment to making technical successes (i.e., the ‘formula’ for new responsible textiles) freely accessible goes against the competitive nature of the textile/garment industry. This is further complicated since, on the other hand, Re/DRESS needs to protect its designs and brand to have impact. Re/DRESS has been able to take advantage of opportunities, especially the access to and the generosity and willingness of factories who participate in the project. redress-recycle.com Rohingya Cultural Memory Centre and Artolution In the world’s biggest refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, a cultural renaissance is in swing. Fighting back against the brutal violence and attempted cultural genocide inflicted on their people, who were forced to flee their homes in Myanmar, this renaissance is led by Rohingya artists, storytellers, musicians and artisans who create healing, hope and community, reviving tradition through art. The Rohingya Cultural Memory Centre (RCMC) and Artolution are at the movement’s forefront. A project of the International Organization of Migration (IOM), the RCMC is a community center, artist workshop, and safe space for cultural expression. Located in the heart of the Kutupalong-Balukhali megacamp, it is home to a collection of cultural artifacts made by Rohingya artists and craftspeople, including embroidered tapestries, model boats and houses, farming and fishing tools, recordings of folk songs, folk tales and proverbs, themed gardens, and more... Telling their stories in their own words and making these objects promotes positive cultural identity, challenges stereotypes, and reconnects Rohingya men, women and children to their ancestral language, land and traditions. A natural next step would be for the center to evolve into a social enterprise project, connecting skilled artisans to livelihood and market opportunities making them less dependent on humanitarian aid. However, despite initial hopes that refugee-made products could be sold on a small scale, this is now on hold: the Government of Bangladesh has not approved social enterprise projects for the Rohingya, and IOM policies prohibit staff from engaging in ‘business transactions’. Moving forward will require policy shifts at governmental and organizational levels. Also on display are works by Rohingya artists who have participated in community-based art programmes run in the camps by Artolution, a global organization that, in partnership with UNHCR, strengthens communities experiencing crisis through collaborative art-making. Although not a social enterprise, the RCMC team wanted to share the platform of Purposeful Goods with these artists, a good example of working collaboratively vs. competitively, a feature of social enterprise initiatives. More work by Rohingya artisans is on display in two other shows here at DAS 2023: ‘ Very Small Feelings’ and ‘ To Enter the Sky’. Rohingyaculturalmemorycentre.iom.int artolution.org Stools and mats This is the newest project participating in Purposeful Goods … so new, in fact, it is yet to have a name. This is the first time these products are available for purchase, and in part, their existence is the result of ‘To Enter the Sky’, another DAS 2023 show, which, amongst other considerations, looks at how architecture navigates notions of community. Architect Rizvi Hassan, whose practice explores the role of design professionals in unconventional fields, responded to the provocation of curator Sean Anderson, by seeking out artisans whilst in the field with the Institute of Architects on a flood response project in Sylhet and in Chittagong for a private client. He was intrigued by the process, planning and vision of the women who weave mats– from harvesting the inputs, to planning the design through to execution. He is currently working with less than ten artisans. The intention is to continue to explore how this work can be framed as an art form. Watch this space! TransEnd TransEnd (founded 2019) aims to support the marginalized and underrepresented hijra, non-binary, gender queer, transgender and intersex community in Bangladesh. Besides their focus on social and economic empowerment through skills development, they aim to sensitize society, providing visibility with the ultimate goal of achieving broader acceptance of these communities. TransEnd did not initially consider setting up a social enterprise. However, with economic empowerment as a goal it seemed an obvious option; secondly, as a small group with a young leader it was easier to set up a social-enterprise than register as a foundation or society. To date they’ve provided life skills such as cycling, basic computer, English Language, communication, leadership, and digital literacy skills. They’ve helped people find work as paid models, and with Pathao, FoodPanda, ChalDal, and Hyundai. Their public awareness campaigns are innovative using comic strips and animation. It is TransEnd's handicrafts project that is at the center of their social enterprise work. Making things and preferring more open-ended livelihood schemes (vs. having 9-5 jobs) appeals to many in these communities. In 2020, the first 40 tie-dyed T-shirts which were produced were featured on instagram and Facebook and sold out in five days. Profits went to a person who wanted to start poultry farming. The group immediately produced 200 more T shirts, only to discover that scaling up was challenging– sales, for some reason, slowed down. Most of TransEnd’s products are upcycled, eco-friendly and sustainable: macrame bags, beaded jewelry, tote bags, tie-dye, scented candles, and handmade soap and are featured on TransEnd’s social media and e-commerce platform. Customers can pay cash on delivery or through Bkash. They also showcase work at different craft fairs– but stall fees are going up and TransEnd is determined to pay fair prices to their makers. Without an office, and no regular core funding, everything operates on a temporal basis. One of the things TransEnd has learned is the value of a unique selling point. In their case it is their transparency about how they use their profits to uplift the communities they work with. Transendbd.org

ALL PROJECTS Geological Movements Curated by Diana Campbell We may think of ‘land’ as fixed but it is constantly shifting: below us through erosion, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes; swirling above us as dust clouds. The earliest signs of life, the impetus of cellular movement, as well as aeons of extinction are inscribed in stone and fossils. Fossil fuels, created from the remains of life from the deep geological past, power much of our way of life and threaten our collective future through the violent process of extracting and burning them. Geological and political ruptures often overlap, and the artists in this movement excavate metaphors to consider our past, present, and future on this planet beyond human-bound paradigms. Their works challenge us to find commonalities and to emerge from this sediment to heal, imagine, design, and build new forms of togetherness. What will coalesce and fossilise our presence on this planet for lifetimes to come? Adrián Villar Rojas New Mutants, 2017–2020 Moroccan marble floor tiles encrusted with Devonian period micro Ammonite and Goniatites fossils; blue chroma key paint; spices (turmeric, chili powder, garam masala powder); plant-based pigments (indigo, sindoor, alta), gouache; sand; potatoes and coal, on aggregate rammed earth walls Commissioned and produced by Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2020 Courtesy of the artist, Samdani Art Foundation, Marian Goodman Gallery, and kurimanzutto Realised with additional support from kurimanzutto and Marian Goodman Gallery New Mutants is a new immersive installation by Adrián Villar Rojas where visitors enter DAS by walking over a marble floor encrusted with 400-million-year-old ammonite and orthoceras fossils. These now-extinct species of undersea creatures thrived for 300 million years, swimming across the super-ocean Panthalassa and witnessing the creation and breakup of the single continent Pangaea. A painting of a burned-out fireplace emerges from the rammed-earth walls that rise from the fossil floor, tracing the seismic shift that occurred in the evolution of humanity and our planet when we learned to control fire, invented agriculture, and began to settle and build civilisations. This work serves as a metaphor to think outside of human-bound time, and to consider common ground on which to come together. Villar Rojas creates site-specific installations using both organic and inorganic materials that undergo change over time. Tied to their exhibiting context, they generate irreproducible experiences relying on a ‘parasite-host’ relation. His team-based projects that extend over open-ended periods allow him to question the aftermath of the normalised production of art in the Capitalocene era. Fragments of this installation will be permanently on display at Srihatta, the Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park in Sylhet in a dedicated pavilion designed by the artist. b. 1980, Argentina; lives and works nomadically Elena Damiani As the dust settles, 2019–2020 Watercolour on handmade Lokta Barbour grey paper. Commissioned for DAS 2020 Courtesy of the artist and Revolver Gallery ‘There is a strange sympathy between the atmospheric particles that float through the sky and the human beings who migrate across the ground and then across the sea. Each body sets the other into motion – a pattern of movement and countermovement.’ Adrian Lahoud Elena Damiani has created a collage of watercolour renditions of storming dust particles in the atmosphere as captured by NASA. Several hundred million tonnes of dust unsettle and travel through the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans from deserts to the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. We imagine land to be static, but deforestation, desertification, and climate-change-related storms distribute dust across vast distances in our planet’s atmosphere. The handmade Nepalese paper beneath the layers of paint making up this work is a surface that could be read as stone tiles, an aerial view of a desert, or even a microscopic view of human skin. Damiani creates installations, objects, and works on paper that focus on the politics of space and memory. She portrays landscapes and geological processes to reinterpret natural stages and their generative processes. Her work draws inspiration from collage techniques and historical science books, while the stone and metal in her sculptures recall the environments she studies and refracts. b. 1979, Lima; lives and works in Lima Jonathas de Andrade b. 1982, Maceió; lives and works in Recife Pacifico, 2010 Super8 transferred in HD, 12 min Courtesy of the artist and Vermelho Through the process of animating a styrofoam board model with maps and paper, Jonathas de Andrade proposes a fictional geological solution for the political turmoil and violence that normally accompanies changes of borders. A massive earthquake erupts over the Andes, detaching Chile from the South American continent. As a consequence, the sea returns to Bolivia, restoring its lost coastline, Argentina gains coasts with both the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans, and Chile becomes a floating island adrift in the seas. The aesthetic approach of the film allows the artist to touch upon topics such as the notion of truth as an ideological construction and the fabrication of mass commotion/emotion as political artifice. De Andrade works predominantly with installations, videos, and photo-research. Addressing those overlooked in the dominant cultural narrative of Brazil, the artist ponders on the relationships between different social milieus. In collaboration with labourers, indigenous tribes, the disabled, and others, de Andrade commonly points out the inequality stemming from the discourses of colonialism and neo-imperialism. The artist co-founded the artistic collective A Casa como Convém in 2007. Karan Shrestha b. 1985, Kathmandu; lives and works between Kathmandu and Mumbai in these folds, 2019 Ink on paper, three-channel HD video Commissioned for DAS 2020 Courtesy of the artist Within Nepal’s contained geography, the landscape presents possibilities for adversity to spring from any fissure: be it a decade of revolutionary upheaval, political instability, natural disasters, economic ruptures, repressed social edifices, or perpetual state violence. Through the installation of a three-channel video and an ink drawing, in these folds addresses the resulting precariousness that has characterised Nepal’s recent past. Incorporating documentary and fiction, Karan Shreshta questions the rhetoric of progress prescribed for paving the way forward and considers how transcendental practices that have endured over time are attempts at grappling with the everyday. Shrestha’s works overlay encounters in physical landscapes on mental maps of people and spaces he comes across so as to examine and restructure notions of the present. His practice – incorporating drawings, sculpture, photography, text, film, and video – seeks to blur the oppositions that build and define our individual and collective identities. Matías Duville b. 1974, Buenos Aires; lives and works in Buenos Aires Untitled, 2019 Sanguine on paper My red way, 2019 Sanguine on paper Levitating in red, 2019 Sanguine on paper, sandpaper Courtesy of the artist and Barro Gallery Matías Duville’s earthy mud and iron-oxide-infused sanguine drawings call to mind landscapes in transition from natural disasters and also from human interference from the extraction and clearing processes needed for infrastructure development. Similar to these methods, Duville’s drawings pulse with expressive brutality, trying to represent what the end of the world might look like both in a geographical and psychological sense. These works are inspired by the mental landscapes that are created inside our heads when we look directly at the sun and close our eyes to recover from its blinding light. The artist takes us along on his journey deep into the mind, trying to connect us with the idea of a universe out of control. Duville works with objects, videos, and installations, although he predominantly employs drawing. His works evoke scenes of desolation with rarified, timeless atmospheres like those that precede a natural disaster: hurricanes, tsunamis, or situations of abandonment in the forest that act as a dreamlike vision of a wandering explorer, like a mental landscape. Omer Wasim b. 1988, Karachi; lives and works in Karachi In the Heart of Mountains, 2019 Charcoal on canvas, lacquer, wooden armatures Commissioned for DAS 2020 Courtesy of the artist In the Heart of Mountains situates us amidst Omer Wasim’s journey in the mountains of the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan, a contested terrain that he scaled with queer friends and friendships. The work, as well as his action, denounces romantic visions and imaginaries of the area perpetuated by the state, and instead relies on charcoal to make visible the mountains as witnesses to state violence, colonial and neo-colonial rule, and as sites where many death-worlds arise. These mountains anticipate their own demise, foreshadowing capital interests in the region that are in diametric opposition to nature, ecology, and people. Queer bodies and community enable this mode of inquiry, becoming, in the process, insurgents that counter state-sponsored redaction and violence. While it also stands alone as an installation, the work also becomes an environment for new readings into the future. Wasim is an intermedia artist whose practice queers space, subverting the frames of development and progress that shape human relationships to the city and nature. His work bears witness to the relentless erasure, violence, destruction of our times by staying with queer bodies as they hold space and enact desire. Otobong Nkanga b. 1974, Kano; lives and works in Antwerp Landversation, 2020 Site-specific installation and conversations from Dhaka Commissioned and produced by Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2020. Courtesy of the artist, Samdani Art Foundation, and Mendes Wood DM. Realised with additional support from Unilever Bangladesh. Project coordinator Helena Ramos Land extends beyond mere soil, territories, and earth. It relates to our connectivity and conflicts in relation to the spaces we live in and how humans try to find solutions through simple gestures of innovation and repair. As relationships with nature and people become affected, how can we find a platform to share, learn, exchange and heal? A series of tables forming a circular structure serve as the basis for an exchange between visitors and a group of people who all have close – professional, caring, vital – relationships with the earth. Otobong Nkanga weaves together strands of landversations realised in Beirut, Shanghai, and São Paulo in this project’s newest iteration in Dhaka, and her collaborators have included geologists, housing and land rights activists, farmers, and many others who transform the land itself into other realities. What is ordinarily constructed through their contact with land now forms the foundation for new situations of exchange and transmission, activating interpersonal networks that come together in DAS with the power to move the world outside the exhibition. Nkanga’s drawings, installations, photographs, sculptures and performances examine the social and topographical relationship to our everyday environment. By exploring the notion of land as a place of non-belonging, Nkanga provides an alternative meaning to the social ideas of identity. Paradoxically, she brings to light the memories and historical impacts provoked by humans and nature. Raphael Hefti b. 1978, Biel; lives and works in Zurich Quick Fix Remix, 2015/2020 Sculptures created from performance with thermite powder and sand Courtesy of the artist. Realised with additional support from Pro Helvetia Raphael Hefti uses the language of material to communicate a fascination with the behaviour of liquid metals, a material history which is part of the epic story of human civilisation across vast geographies. This performance, a spectacle between blunder and precision, is a conversation with the world of heavy industries and iron casting. The artist misappropriates thermite welding processes typically used to repair high-speed train tracks, transforming liquid steel through a blazing landscape of incisions that leaves behind a bed of solidified metal debris. Just as volcanic eruptions make visible the hidden energy properties of the molten rock and liquid metal moving deep within the earth, Hefti’s ‘artistic alchemy’ makes visible the hidden industrial practices and processes that form the machine-made landscapes powering our way of life. Working across sculpture, installation, painting, photography, and performance, Raphael Hefti explores how humans transform materials in the everyday urban landscape by pushing and testing material limits, while removing these materials from utilitarian obligations. He often works with teams of industry technicians to modify and misapply routine procedures and construction methods to open up new possibilities and unexpected beauty through guided accidents that he documents in his work.

ALL PROJECTS JOG and ruangrupa Dhaka Art Summit 2020 Jog Art Space is based in Chattogram, in south eastern Bangladesh. Unlike Dhaka, Chattogram has no commercial galleries and no network of contemporary art collectors, leaving artists to find alternative ways to sustain themselves. Jog Art Space provides the local visual arts community with mentoring support, exhibition opportunities, platforms for exchange and discussion, and access to international artistic exchange programmes. Some members of the group are teachers at the Institute of Fine Arts and see themselves as a bridge to experimental ways of working outside the confines of the academy, thus the name Jog, which translates as ‘connect.’ They advocate taking art out of the gallery, and into public spaces, which they refer to as ‘the emancipation of art.’ Since its establishment in Jakarta in 2000, ruangrupa has founded a video art festival, an online newspaper, music festivals, a library, a radio station, and an art school, among numerous other projects. ruangrupa also create installation works and other devices to investigate how the population of a city of more than 10 million people and lacking in infrastructure can appropriate the public space. ’Ruang‘ means ’space‘ in Sanskrit and Bahasa Indonesia, and ‘rupa’ means ’visual form‘. The collective includes artists, curators, architects, and writers, varying in number from 6 to 50 according to the project. Through programmes and interventions in urban space, ruangrupa exposes how knowledge is produced and shared through informal social situations — in line with their motto ‘Don’t make art, make friends’. Gerobak Cinema is a mobile rickshaw screening station created through a collaboration between Jog and ruangrupa, producing screening sessions in several spots around the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy on 14 February, taking the energy from inside the venue out into the streets of Dhaka. The equipment was collaboratively designed by artists, designers, IT technicians and created by the community according to local aesthetics to screen their own videos or selected Bangladeshi films.

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

ALL PROJECTS Charupith Dhaka Art Summit 2020 Many processes of social transformation may contribute to forms of profound structural change in society yet remain relatively invisible before attaining a critical mass. An extraordinary example from Bangladesh is Mangal Shobhajatra, a community procession to celebrate Pohela Boishakh (Bengali New Year) created in 1987 by Jessore-based collective Charupith. Today it attracts massive crowds who carry painted paper masks, crowns, traditional dolls, and large sculptures that integrate folk forms and motifs, and perform music and comedy from Bengali culture in public space across the country. This is not a generations old tradition. It is an initiative started as part of Charupith’s wider practice of drawing inspiration from the plurality of rural culture in Bangladesh and creating a festive atmosphere for people across generations to experience the potential of art to create spaces of freedom. Close to 10,000 young students have graduated from Charupith’s independent school of fine arts. This series of masks was created by senior artists with a long-term engagement in the festival, speaking to the role that artists in Bangladesh play in embodying secular values. Charupith lead a mask-making workshops for Dhaka school children on the children’s days of DAS.