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.

ALL PROJECTS Art Pro Samdani Artist-Led Initiatives Forum 2020 Artpro’s projects mobilise artists to work with less visible segments of society, often working to bridge expressions of urban and rural culture. Nakshi Katha: Interwoven Dialogues (2019–2020) exemplifies their collaborative process. This research-based project involved 4 Dhaka based artists and 24 Jamalpur based Nakshi Kantha embroiderers through storytelling workshops. In the Nakshi Kantha tradition, communities (primarily of women) share stories and pass time together embroidering closely linked linear stitches on found fabrics. Bangladesh once had 6 seasons which are depicted in its songs and folk culture, but climate change has reduced this number to 4 or 5 (depending on who you ask). Artpro engaged with the community in Jamalpur to share memories about these seasons, collaborating with the artisans to then stitch these on a saree that was divided into 6 individual panels. The depictions of Boishahk (Summer), the Rainy Season, Autumn, Winter, and Spring are joined by the ‘missing season’ of ‘Late Autumn’ created by the artisans during the first 2 days of DAS. Visitors share memories tied to this lost period of the year and these are memorialized in textile form through the expressions of the artisans.

ALL PROJECTS Rehearsing The Witness: The Bhawal Court Case, A Talk By Zuleikha Chaudhari Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, Dhaka, 21 April 2017 The Bhawal court case was an extended pre-independence Indian court case that revolved around the identity of a sanyasi (or Hindu religious ascetic), claiming to be the second Kumar of Bhawal (the heir of one of the last large zamindari estates in Dhaka), who was presumed dead a decade earlier. The claim was contested by the British Court of Wards and by the widow of Ramendra Narayan Roy (the second Kumar of Bhawal) Bibhabati Devi. The case was in trial from 1930 – 1946. Over the course of sixteen years, the physical attributes, birthmarks, portraits and testimony were collated as forensic evidence to establish the claimant/sanyasi’s identity as being the Kumar. Hundreds of witnesses, including doctors, photographers, artists, prostitutes, peasants, revenue collectors, tenants, holy men, magistrates, handwriting experts, relatives and passers-‐by were deposed. The case went from the District Court in Dhaka to the High Court of Calcutta to the Privy Council in London, finally ending in 1946 with a victory for the plaintiff, who died a few days after the verdict. Rehearsing the Witness: The Bhawal Court Case uses this trial about a possible impostor to re-examine the enormous archive that the case produced, through performance as a means of problematising the notions of evidence, archive and identity. Both the domains of the law and theatre/acting frame larger questions that pertain to the production of truth and reality, assumptions of stable, consistent and believable identities and the construction of a credible narrative. The project explores the questions of law as performance, the role of performance in law and the performativity of legal truth-production. The talk at the Pathshala South Asian Media Institute described the three-day performance at the Dhaka Art Summit 2018 which drew a relationship between re-enactment, (crime-scene) reconstruction and retrial; the complex tension between forensic evidence, the act of speculation/imagination and truth-finding and truth-making. . Zuleikha Chaudhari is a theatre director and lighting designer. Her current research uses archival documents (texts and photographs) to develop theatrical performances as a way of thinking about the relationship between production of memory and the role of the archive and how this pertains to the retrieval and reliving of an event. The constructed narratives within the works looked at the relationship between personal lived experience and memories and larger historical events and narratives. These works use a combination of reportage, portraiture, documentary and fiction - the editing, re-interpretation and re-positioning of speculative ideas, opinions, beliefs and anecdotes towards the production of new narratives is central to these investigations about the relationship between history and theatre. Her ongoing research considers the structures and codes of performance as well the function and processes of the actor as reality and truth production. It investigates the tension between looking or watching and doing or acting. Her current projects include three court trials – The Bhawal Court Case (1930-46), The Trial of Bahadurshah Zafar (1858) and the India National Army Trials (1945-46) within the framework of law as performance; the role of performance in law and the performativity of legal truth-production. Her works have been shown at performance festivals, galleries and exhibitions in United States, Germany, France, Belgium, Vienna, South Africa, South Korea, China, Japan, The Netherlands, Pakistan and India.

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

ALL PROJECTS A beast, a god, and a line Curated by Cosmin Costinas A beast, a god, and a line was woven by connections and circulations of ideas across a geography with Bengal at its core. This geography - arbitrary as any mapping - is commonly called the Asia-Pacific, but it could also be defined by several other definitions, which this exhibition explored and untangled. The issues summoned aimed to mark the current historical moment. Perhaps the most visible among these is the development and spread of politicised religion and its structures: Salafi Islam across several countries, extremist Buddhism in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, Hindu ethno-fascism in India, and revivalist Christianity among many indigenous communities in the Philippines, to name just a few examples in the region. In close connection to politicised religion is the rising tide of populism and nationalism across continents. These are all intimately connected to a generalised loss of confidence in the ideals and certainties of Western liberal democracy, and to rising alternatives and challenges to the liberal consensus, often based on various attempts to create parallel narratives to Western modernity. Western hegemony was also challenged from a fundamentally different premise, that of unfinished processes of decolonisation and resurgent Indigenous identities, which were reflected both in the subject matter and in the aesthetic choices of several exhibited artists. Throughout the exhibition, artists investigated traces of colonial domination, as well as the different ramifications of that hegemony today, when cultural and environmental genocides continue to unravel landscapes, communities, and worlds. These broad stories circulate across South and Southeast Asia on routes going back several historical eras, the first being the early Austronesian world that has woven a maritime universe surpassed in scale only by European colonialism, from the Pacific to Madagascar, with Taiwan as its origin and Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines at its core – which was taken as the speculative and approximate geographical perimeter of this exhibition. These historical journeys also served as an introduction to a major political reality that defines many contexts today and is often manipulated by the rising nationalist discourses: the contemporary waves of migration and refugee crises. This exhibition questioned how we should negotiate common ground in the context of the overall political and ideological fragmentation discussed above. How can an aesthetic basis for the language of contemporary art be maintained if the ideological bases of contemporary art are questioned? How can positions that claim disparate and conflicting genealogies sit together in a shared exhibition space? One tenuous leading line across the different aspects of this exhibition were textiles. A material and language common to different cultural spaces, textiles also have a firmly routed history in art, being possible sites for parallel processes of historiography. Moreover, textiles hold a different position in negotiating relationships with places and contexts, in ways that the individual agency of artists escapes. While this exhibition included artists and practices of various historical, cultural, and geographical contexts, it was not based on an ethos of discovering or introducing artists from presumably marginalised regions, but worked within the premise of an already fragmentary and decentralised art world. Ampannee Satoh (b. 1983 in Pattani; lives and works in Bangkok, Thailand) Lost Motherland (2016) Pigment print on paper Courtesy of the artist The work addresses the recent history of forced migrations of Muslims, from Myanmar and Syria to the artist’s native Pattani, a Muslim majority region in Southern Thailand, where an insurgency has been taken place for more than a decade. Satoh attempts to capture the sense of displacement and alienation that accompanies exile, imbuing her photographs with a feeling of loss. The figures in her photographs seem gathered to mourn a collective pain, standing as mute witnesses to tragedy. Anand Patwardhan (b.1950 in Mumbai, India; lives and works in Mumbai) We Are Not Your Monkeys (1997) Video Courtesy of the artist This music video was jointly composed by the filmmaker along with renowned poets Daya Pawar and poet-singer Sambhaji Bhagat, giving a Dalit/indigenous perspective to the Hindu epic Ramayana. After German indologists in the 19th century created the myth of an Aryan invasion of the Indian sub-continent by a superior race and hailed the Vedic (Brahminical) period as representing a Golden Era in Indian history, many upper caste Indians felt proud to be considered the racial equivalent of the white man. At the same time those who questioned both race and caste began looking at what may have existed in the region before the Aryans supposedly arrived. The Ramayana itself, composed in the ancient Brahminic period in praise of Lord Rama, depicts characters who reveal traces of a pre-Aryan culture that was subjugated. The song and the film We Are Not Your Monkeys is a subaltern reading of history that uses poetic license (like the Ramayana did) to turn the Ramayana epic on its head. Anida Yoeu Ali (b.1974 in Battambang, lives and works in Phnom Penh, Cambodia) From right to left: Secret Lagoon (2014) Coconut Road (2012) Campus Dining (2012) Roll Call (2014) Sun-dried Landing #1 (2014) On the River (2013) From the Buddhist Bug Series Digital c-print Courtesy of the artist The work is an ongoing project encompassing performance and photography, mapping interfaith relations between the Muslim minority to which the artist belongs and the Buddhist majority in her native Cambodia, against the background of the rise of Buddhist fundamentalism in Southeast Asia. Ali devises a seemingly magical creature (alluding to the religious myths of Islam, Buddhism, as well as the traditional animistic beliefs of the region) that occupies spaces of community gatherings, such as canteens and sites of prayer, rendering these ordinary activities surreal. Apichatpong Weerasethakul (b. 1970 in Bangkok, lives and works in Chiang Mai, Thailand) Chai Siris (b. 1983 in Bangkok, lives and works in Chiang Mai, Thailand) Dilbar (2013) Single-Channel Video Installation, suspended glass pane Courtesy of the artist and the Sharjah Art Foundation Commissioned by the Sharjah Art Foundation The work is an affectionate portrait of Dilbar, a Bangladeshi construction worker in the UAE, whose name means 'full of hearts’. Throughout the work he is seen to be asleep, while the viewer is mesmerised by the pace of the video and its light spilling over the edges of the screen. His sleeping is a gentle yet clear act of defiance to the logic of workers exploitation. There are over two million Bangladeshi workers currently living in the Gulf countries. Apichatpong Weerasethakul (b. 1970 in Bangkok, lives and works in Chiang Mai, Thailand) Photophobia 1-4 (2013) Photo etching and Chine-collé Courtesy of the artist The work is based on photographs documenting scenes of violence taken during the Takbai Incident in Thailand’s restive South in 2004. Around 1,500 demonstrators had gathered before the local police station to protest the detention of six men, only to be brutally repressed, resulting in 85 deaths. The photographs reveal the violence with which the Thai government has been handling insurgents and civilians alike in its Muslim-majority southern provinces. Art Labor Collective Thao-Nguyen Phan (b. 1987 in Ho Chih Minh City, lives and works in Ho Chih Minh City, Vietnam) Truong Cong Tung (b.1986 in Dak Lak, lives and works in Ho Chih Minh City, Vietnam) Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran (b.1987 in Berlin, lives and works in Ho Chih Minh City) In collaboration with Rocham Djeh, Rolan Loh, Siu Lon, Rahlan Aleo, Kpuih Gloh and Rocham Jeh Jrai Dew Sculpture Garden (2016-ongoing) Wood sculptures, mural Commissioned by the Samdani Art Foundation, Para Site and Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie. Art Labor Collective works within different communities, bringing in practitioners from diverse disciplines such as medicine, film-making, education, to bring to questions ideas of labour and social practice. The Jrai Dew Sculpture Garden is part of an ongoing series of sculptural presentations realized in collaboration with the Jrai Dew community of the highlands of central Vietnam, where Art Labor collective member Cong Tung hails from. The project takes inspiration from Jrai spiritual beliefs of the transfiguration of the human after death. In the Jrai philosophy, humans go through many cycles of existence, where the final stage is to transform into dew (ia ngôm in Jrai language) evaporating into the environment – the state of non-being –signaling the beginning particles of new existence. Charles Lim (b. 1973 in Singapore, lives and works in Singapore) Stealing the Trapeze (2016) Video installation, books Courtesy of the artist With support of National Arts Council Singapore Catamarans were seldom constructed in the temperate West before the 19th century, but they were in wide use as early as the 5th century CE in what is today Southern India. The word ‘catamaran’ is derived from the Tamil language (from kattu ‘to tie’ and maram ‘wood, tree’). In England, one of the earliest mentions of the ‘catamaran’ is made by the 17th century adventurer Willian Dampier who encountered this peculiar manner of relating to water when he reached south-eastern India during this first circumnavigation of the globe. The outrigger and catamaran was prevalent from equatorial South to Southeast Asia (including the artist’s native Singapore) and well into the Pacific as a design solution to stabilise and allow for narrow hull shapes which drew shall drafts. They were the primary vehicles that made the first migrations of Austronesian people to the islands of the Pacific possible. Today, the catamaran is raced in the America’s Cup. The artist, a former Olympic sailor, recounts how in his studies years he came across the autobiographical accounts by one Peter Scott about the circumstances surrounding the invention of the sailing trapeze. Scott claims that he and his fellow sailors invented the trapeze in 1938 along the Thames River in England. Peter Scott was the son of Robert Falcon Scott (the explorer who perished in the Antarctic) and sculpture Kathleen Scott. In his last letter to his wife, Robert Scott is said to have written, “make the boy interested in natural history if you can; it is better than the game”. Cian Dayrit (b. 1989 in Manila, lives and works in Manila, Philippines) Feudal Fields (2018) Mixed media and embroidery on canvas Courtesy of the artist Mapa de la Isla de Buglas (2017) Mixed media and embroidery on canvas Courtesy of the artist and Tin-aw Art Gallery Taking as the point of departure the 2004 Hacienda Luisita Massacre, when protesting farmers and workers of the sugar estate were killed by agents of the Cojuangco family, these tapestry maps look into the role of sugar production in the country’s colonial past up to the neocolonial and neoliberal present as well as the country’s part in the global market as producers of raw material and consumer of excess goods including culture and education. Addressing feudalism and landlessness by pointing out ownership via imperialist interests and bureaucrat capitalist landlords within the format of a fabric map which functioned historically as nomadic murals brought to one colonized state to another by warrior-kings. Daniel Boyd (b. 1982 in Cairns, Queensland, lives and works in Sydney, Australia) WTEIA2 (2017) Oil, archival glue on canvas Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney WTEIA2 (2017) Oil, archival glue on canvas Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney WTEIA3 (2017) Oil, oil pastel, archival glue on linen Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney These paintings reference the stick-charts of the Marshall Islands, which were used by indigenous communities to navigate the sea by mapping the positions of islands as well as patterns of swell and disturbance in the water. These charts were not taken aboard during voyages, but rather memorized in advance by the sailors. Boyd, who is of Australian indigenous heritage, as well as a descendant of a Vanuatu slave forcibly taken to Australia, alludes through these paintings to the many modes of navigating land and sea that existed in the Pacific region. These forms of navigational knowledge were erased by colonialism, and replaced with the unidirectional model of the map, used primarily as an instrument of control. Dilara Begum Jolly (b. 1960 in Chittagong, lives and works in Chittagong, Bangladesh) The War that Never Went Away (2016-2017) Pierced photographs Courtesy of the artist The work revisits traumatic histories of the Bangladesh War of Liberation in 1971. The artist pierces holes in photographs of the Physical Training College of Dhaka, which was used as a site of torture of Bangladeshi freedom fighters by the Pakistani army during the conflict. Through this work, she traces histories of trauma, examining what she terms the haunting of history in the present. Garima Gupta (b. 1985 in New Delhi, lives and works in Bengaluru, India) Cabinets of Curiosity (2017) Home 02 (2017) Lesser Bird of Paradise in a Vitrine (2017) Hunting Implements from Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinea (2017) Twelve-wired Bird of Paradise (2017) Hunting Implements from Arfak Mountains, West Papua (2017) Home 01 (2017) Kombayorong Dance (2017) Two Studies of a Broken Mountain (2017) Magnificent Riflebird (2017) Giclee print on cotton paper Courtesy of the artist and Tarq, Mumbai Jakarta Markets (2017) Red Bird of Paradise (2017) Lesser Bird of Paradise (2017) Chinese Taro (2017) Giclee print on cotton paper Courtesy of the artist and Tarq, Mumbai Hamas? (2017) Charcoal on Manjar-Pat cotton cloth Courtesy of the artist and Tarq, Mumbai The work is an ongoing journalistic and archival research in the island of New Guinea,examining the wildlife trade in Southeast Asia and its effects on the communities and ecology of the island. The core focus of this body of work is the Bird of Paradise, an avian species endemic to New Guinea with a long history as the embodiment of the exotic in European colonial imagination. The research casts light on the socio-economic history of the erstwhile trade which spanned from New Guinea to Europe and traces its effect on the contemporary state of wildlife trafficking in Southeast Asia. Idas Losin (b. 1976, in Taiwan; lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan) Traveler (2014) Rano Raraku (2014) Moai (2014) Island (2014) Ku (2017) Oil on canvas Courtesy of the artist The artist’s background, belonging to the Truku and Atayal aboriginal people of Taiwan is an an important aspect of her work. The Austronesian community originated among the Aboriginal people in Taiwan, from which this language family extended through sea migrations over the past millennia, reaching as far away places as Easter Island, Hawaii, New Zealand, Philippines, Indonesia, and Madagascar where related languages are still spoken, making this migration the most extensive expansion of a linguistic group outside Western colonialism. The artist’s work is part of an effort to reconnect with her roots and contribute to a shaping of contemporary Taiwanese indigenous identity, after several waves of colonialism and cultural oppression, when one of the most significant aspects of Taiwanese history, being the original homeland of hundreds of millions of people spread across a third of the world’s surface, was ignored. She decided to travel to the furthest points of the Austronesian speaking world and paint her impressions, in a subversion of the position of the European explorer. Presented here are paintings she did in Easter Island and Hawaii. Ines Doujak (b. 1959 in Austria, lives and works between London, UK and Vienna, Austria) Loomshuttles, Warpaths (2010-2018) Mixed media Courtesy of the artist This project was produced in cooperation with Phileas – A Fund for Contemporary Art. The work started life as a collection of 48 Andean textiles, tools, and accessories, and developed as an eccentric archive. Its world, in which textile culture reached exceptional levels of sophistication and significance, was battered and distorted by the European invasions of the early 16th century. It survived, but the impact of those invasions remain as dirty footprints in the production and trade of the ’globalized’ world. The archive traces workers' fights against exploitation through time and geographies, and looks at how types of cloth, dyes, and colour are tied up with the history of colonialisms, revealing both their beauty and their ugly. To stay grounded, the modern figure of the Investigator travelled the Andean region, and in the belief that items of the collection can talk, posters have been created in response to them, inviting people, both close and far away from the Andes, to communicate with them. Fires: The War Against the Poor (2012-2013) Mixed media Courtesy of the artist This project was produced in cooperation with Phileas – A Fund for Contemporary Art. The silkscreen printed cloth is a fresco from the global war against the poor, who are often locked in with overloaded electricity circuits, living under threat of death and horrible injury by fire while fulfilling skin-tight clothing contracts. It directly refers to several incidents of the past years, in Pakistan and Bangladesh, which have brought little improvement to working conditions. Jakrawal Nilthamrong (b. 1977 in Lopburi, lives and works in Bangkok, Thailand) Zero Gravity (2013) Single channel video Courtesy of the artist The film journeys in the borderland between Thailand and Burma, and the borderland between fiction and truth, past and present. Set in Ratchaburi, not far from Bangkok, it follows a man on a journey into the history of that place. Ratchaburi Hospital was the site of a 2000 incident, when the hospital was occupied and staff taken hostage by the Karen Christian militia "God's Army" from neighboring Burma, lead by two 12-year old twins, Johnny and Luther Htoo. Jamdani Jamdani is one of the fifinest textiles of Bengal, produced in the region of Dhaka for centuries, and was originally known as Dhakai (a name still common for the fabric in India). The historic production of Jamdani was patronized by imperial warrants of the Mughal emperors, under which the Persian term Jamdani came to be in popular use, since it was the court language. Under British colonialism, the Bengali jamdani, and the similar, albeit fifiner, muslin industries rapidly declined due to colonial import policies favoring industrially manufactured textiles from Britain. In more recent years, the production of jamdani has witnessed a revival in Bangladesh, using traditional techniques and often natural dyes. However, muslin, one of the most coveted fabrics in Europe in the 19th century, widely depicted in the academic portraiture of the time, was decimated by British economic policy to the point of biological extinction of the cotton subspecies used for making muslin. Jamdani is the closest version that remains of the famed muslin. The traditional art of weaving jamdani has been declared by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Jimmy Ong (b. 1964 in Singapore; lives and works in Singapore and Vermont, USA) Seamstress Rafflffleses #7 – Mr. Florent (2016) Cotton and Dacron stuffiffing Courtesy of the artist and FOST Gallery Test Batik #1 , Printed Test Batik #2 , Test Batik #3 and Printed Batik #4 Textile Courtesy of the artist and FOST Gallery Sketches for Fallen Tiger Batik motifs Watercolour on paper Courtesy of the artist and FOST Gallery The work refers to the figure of Thomas Stamford Raffles, one of the most infamous British colonial figures in South East Asia, who nevertheless remain largely revered in Singapore. His crimes are well remembered in Indonesia, which has suffered from Raffles' invasion of Java in 1812. He is also the author of "The History of Java", containing the chapter "Ethics of Javan", from which the artist quotes: "A caterpillar has its poison in its head, a scorpion in its tail and a snake in its teeth, but it is unknown in what part of the body the poison of man is concealed: a bad man is therefore considered poisonous in his whole-frame.” The textiles shown here replicate the batik technique of cloth painting, a technique which has become associated with Java and has reflected in its development the many layers of colonialism and occupation of the island in the last centuries. Jiun-Yang Li (b. 1967 in Taitung, lives and works in Taichung, Taiwan) Get the Sword (2006) The Magical Performance (2009) Forcing Me to Leave (2000) The Immortal Kid (2014) The Golden Immortals (2014) The Stinky-Headed Kid (1996) Black and White Impermanence - The Deities of the Two Paths (2005) Ink on paper Courtesy of the artist Fairy-Fairy-Fairy 35 (2011) Acrylic on canvas Courtesy of the artist The Immortal White Ape of the Snow Mountain (2016) The Yin and Yang Swordsmith God (1995-2017) The Knight of Black Flowers (1998-2017) Wood, fabric Courtesy of the artist The Playground of Childhood Dreams (2008) Wood Courtesy of the artist The selection of works is representative for the artist’s distinct practice, engaging with traditional Taiwanese art forms, diverse religious representations and vernacular culture on the island. The son of a movie posters painter, Li has himself worked on movie posters, temple painting, calligraphy, Taiwanese glove puppets, as well as multimedia installations. Hailing from Southern Taiwan, where a distinctive cultural environment, influenced by Taiwanese indigenous people and Hoklo (descendants of the first Chinese migrants on the island, speaking the Minnan variety of Chinese languages), is the basis for promoting a Taiwanese identity distinct from the Chinese Nationalist idea that sees Taiwan as part of the Chinese cultural world. Joël Andrianomearisoa (b. 1977 in Antananarivo, Madagascar, lives and works between Antananarivo, Madagascar and Paris, France) Duration: continuous loop (2016) Remember Iarivo (2016) Yesterday. Repeat (2016) Your eyes tell me stories of Paris (2016) Where have you been? (2016) Do you remember? (2016) Repeat. (2016) Last Year in Antananarivo, 2016 Inkjet print on Hahnemühle paper Courtesy of the artist and Sabrina Amrani Gallery, Madrid Last Year in Antananarivo takes as its point of departure a series of photographs of a ball held by the French colonials in 1900 in Antananarivo. In the images, Malagasy aristocrats are dressed in elaborate costumes reflecting the colonialists’ idea of a ‘civilised’ people. The work points to the ambivalent position of colonized elites in the process of imperialism, oscillating between complicity and resistance. The colonial ball was used by the imperialists to register their dominance over the bodies of the colonized elites, rendering the Empire as spectacle, another notable example being the infamous Delhi Durbar of 1911, staged while the Bengal Famine ravaged populations elsewhere in the country. When the day belongs to the night I, II and III (2016) Textiles Courtesy of the artist and Sabrina Amrani Gallery, Madrid The triptych is part of the artist’s practice of reinterpreting and recomposing fabrics into abstract and seductive compositions, which nevertheless bare the traces of their making and the stories of their makers and traders. The works presented here combine remains of cloth purchased in a market in the artist’s native Madagascar and of saris from Jodhpur in India's Rajasthan. The artist is interested in connections between people, places, and objects, in flows that often avoid the normative paths. While his native Madagascar has ancient connections to Asia, as the westernmost point of Austronesian expansion, Malagasy language being a close relative of languages spoken in Borneo, more recent connections between the island and India are evoked in this work. Gujarati traders, once a leading group of merchants throughout the ports of the Indian Ocean have settled in Madagascar since the 19th century and 70,000 descendants of African slaves and mercenaries, the Siddis, still live in India. Joydeb Roaja (b. 1973 in Khagrachori, lives and works in Chittagong, Bangladesh) Searching My Roots (2017) Pen and ink on paper Courtesy of the artist The series draws from the artist’s performance practice, and the beliefs of his native Tripura community in Chittagong Hill Tracts, to inquire into the possibilities of the survival of indigenous knowledge systems in the face of violent modernities. The artist, referencing painful memories of growing up in a region that has seen many conflicts, moves like an uprooted tree, walking through a landscape devoid of any markers of place, speaking to a sense of dislocated identity. Limbs become branches and sprout leaves, drawing from the traditional spiritual practices of the indigenous group to which he belongs, where the forest plays a central role in acts of becoming. Lantian Xie (b. 1988 in the UAE , lives and works in Dubai, United Arab Emirates) Taxidermy Peacock (2014) Taxidermy Peacock Courtesy of the artist and Grey Noise, Dubai Peacock Tiles (2016) Mahjong Tiles Courtesy of the Jameel Art Centre Collection of mahjong tiles, each from a different set. Each set is made up of 144 tiles, among which is one Bamboo #1 tile, or ‘peacock tile’, often featuring a depiction of a peacock, or sometimes a sparrow, crane, or other bird. Meridian (2014) Two 1950s lithographs by John Fabreau from 1920s drawings by Danial G. Elliot Courtesy of the artist and Grey Noise, Dubai The work is based on 1950s lithographs by John Fabreau from 1920s drawings by Daniel G. Elliot. The hallways of Le Meridien Hotel in Garhoud, Dubai are filled with depictions of thirty six different pheasants, among which is this same Golden Pheasant. Dubai’s rise as a shining metropolis at the crossroads of the global neoliberal era’s new trade routes continues the old cycle of metropolitan cultural capital accumulation seen throughout history. Lavanya Mani (b. 1977 in Hyderabad, India, lives and works in Vadodara, India) Travellers Tales – Blueprints (2014) Natural dye, pigment paint, applique and cyanotype on cotton fabric Courtesy of the artist and Chemould Prescott Road This series of paintings on cotton cloth evoke the sails of ships and remind of the complex role that textiles and dyes played in the history of colonialism in South Asia. They are realised using the kalamkari technique of cloth painting, the popularity of which, under the name of chintz, in 17th century Europe was such that French and English governments outlawed it to protect local mills. Inserted into the paintings are the texts of letters written by Western travellers to India who attempted to decode kalamkari and other techniques in order to replicate them back in Europe. Also used in these works is cyanotype, an early photographic medium which, when applied on cloth and exposed to light, produces blue colour, evocative of both the ocean and indigo - a dye that was a coveted commodity in the Indian Ocean trade and later colonial extraction from India - the origin of indigo’s name in Europe from ancient Greek times. Malala Andrialavidrazana (b. 1971 in Madagascar, lives and works in Paris, France) Figures 1816, Der Südliche Gestirnte Himmel vs Planiglob der Antipoden (2015) Figures 1862, Le Monde – Principales Découvertes (2015) Figures 1899, Weltverkehrs und Kolonialbesitzen (2016) Figures Figures 1889, Planisferio (2015) Figures 1817, Eslam or the Countries which have professed the Faith of Mohamet (2016) Figures 1838, Atlas Elémentaire (2015) Figures 1853, Kolonien in Afrika und in der Süd-See (2016) Pigment Print on Hahnemühle Cotton Rag Courtesy of the artist The artist creates complex collages of 19th century European maps, products of the Age of Western Imperialism and fragments of banknotes from around the world, illustrating the vision of whatever ideology those countries nurture on the ideal society, its citizens, and their struggles. Maps themselves are hardly accurate representations of places but rather the product of hegemonic ideas about the world, drawn to control and posses. These stunning compositions become a reflection of the myths and illusions, as well as the upheavals, clashes, and transformations of the world in the age of colonialism and its aftermath. Manish Nai (b. 1980 in Gujarat, lives and works in Mumbai, India) Untitled (2017) Synthetic indigo-dyed burlap Courtesy of the artist and Nature Morte The artist references the material histories of indigo in the subcontinent, tied to colonialism and the institution of debt-based slavery. British colonialists wrecked social and ecological havoc on the population of Bengal by forcing farmers to cultivate indigo instead of the food crops they required for their survival, and charged huge rates of interests to farmers on loans for indigo farming. This eventually lead to the Indigo Revolt of 1859, where indentured indigo farmers from Burdhwan, Birbhum, and Jessore rose up against the ruling colonial and land-owning classes, before being brutally suppressed, as chronicled in Dinabandhu Mitra’s play Nil Darpan, published in Dhaka the same year. Nai’s work layers these histories of labour, anti-imperialist struggle, and the materiality of culture in his sculptural installation. Ming Wong (b. 1971 in Singapore, lives and works in Berlin, Germany) Bloody Mary's - Song of the South Seas (2018) Mixed media installation, single channel video Courtesy of the artist The work is part of the artist’s practice of using fragments from and references to popular culture and cinema, often impersonating in his works different characters from original films, irrespective of gender or racial background. "Bali Ha'i" is a show tune from the 1949 musical South Pacific, made into a 1958 movie by the same title from which the artist extracted the footage. The name refers to a mystical island, an exotic paradise, visible on the horizon but not reachable, and was originally inspired by the sight of Ambae island from neighboring Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu, where author James Michener was stationed in World War II. The matriarch of Bali Ha’i, Bloody Mary, sings her mysterious song "Bali Ha’i", with its haunting orchestral accompaniment, as an enticement to the American troops. The scene, as well as the entire film, exemplifies the construction of the exotic - often woven together with sexual desire - crucial instruments in the process of Western colonialism. Bloody Mary, a caricatural non-specific Pacific Island character, was played in the original film by the pioneering African-American actress Juanita Hall, who appears in this work intermittently with Ming Wong’s impersonation of her. Moelyono (b. 1957 in Tulungagung, lives and works in Tulungagung, East Java, Indonesia) Benang Benang (diptych) (2016) Acrylic on canvas Courtesy of the artist and Ark Galerie Noken Noken (2016) Noken bag Courtesy of the artist and Ark Galerie The artist, known for his pioneering social practice, has been working in West Papua, Indonesia for more than a decade, in social activities mainly based on education, engaging with communities of women in the region’s villages. From them, he studied the history and philosophy of Noken (the traditional woven bag of Papua), and how it became an important part in the narrative of women's struggles in Papua, within a complex social and political situation. Moelyono realized his works through collaborations and meetings with Papuan communities on their native island as well as the ones settled in Java, facing a distinct set of issues as migrants, often subjected to discrimination. He does not see his works as illustrations of the "Noken" or the struggles of the people of Papua. They are a way to tell the story of encounter, learning, friendship, and movements with his communities in Papua. Mrinalini Mukherjee (b. 1949 in Bombay, d. 2015 in New Delhi, India) Kamal (1985) Hemp Courtesy of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art Presented here with additional support from the Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation Mrinalini Mukherjee’s sculptural work references traditional idol-making practices of Bengal, whose sensuous iconicity she alludes to. Mukherjee began working with knotted hemp while studying under the artist KG Subramanyam who organized the Fine Arts Fair of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda, which focused on revisiting and learning from traditional art practices, during which time she made small toys and other works with hemp. She continued her dialogue with the material, expanding it to the monumental scale we see here. Kamal (Lotus) presents a form that seems to be at once a deity and a carnivorous plant, referencing the complex relationship between the sacred and the forest in the religious practices of South Asia. Munem Wasif (b.1983 in Dhaka, lives and works in Dhaka, Bangladesh) Machine Matters (2017) Single channel video Courtesy of the artist and Project88, Mumbai Assistant Cinematographer: Ferdous Ahmad & Joe Paul Cyriac Sound Design: Saddul Islam Production: Kauser Haider The artist maps shifting histories of labour in the production of jute in Bengal, through the colonial, post-colonial, and neoliberal periods. Wasif’s film focuses on now-defunct machines of a jute mill in Bangladesh, speaking to the country’s transformation from a producer of textiles to a site of assembly of cheap, mainly polyester, garments as part of a globalized, out-sourced supply chain. The proverbial ‘silencing of the looms of Bengal’ by the British, who devastated the textile manufacturing during the Raj to the point of biological extinction of the muslin producing cotton sub-species, echoes in Wasif’s film, which speaks to the subtle insidious violence of an unfulfilled modernity. Nabil Ahmed (b. 1978 in Dhaka; lives and works in London, UK) INTERPRET (2018) Installation Courtesy of the artist Commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21)–Academy. Nguyen Trinh Thi (b. 1973; lives and works in Hanoi, Vietnam) Letters from Panduranga (2015) Single channel video Courtesy of the artist The essay film is an experimentation between documentary and fiction portraying a Cham community in Vietnam, living on the most southern and last surviving territory of Champa, an ancient kingdom dating back nearly two thousand years and conquered by Vietnam in 1832. The film, made in the form of a letter exchange between two filmmakers, was triggered by the Vietnamese government’s plans to build Vietnam’s first two nuclear power plants in Ninh Thuan, right at the spiritual heart of the Cham people, threatening the survival of this ancient matriarchal Hindu culture. Public discussions regarding the project have been largely absent in Vietnam due to strict government controls over public speech and media, and local communities have also been excluded from consultations. The film also alludes to the legacy of colonialism and war, including the United States’ destructive and deliberate bombing of cultural heritage during the Vietnam War and the perspectives of ethnography and of artifacts from colonial exhibitions and art collections. Nontawat Numbenchapol (b. 1983 in Bangkok, lives and works in Bangkok, Thailand) Mr. Shadow (2016-2018) Inkjet print on paper Courtesy of the artist Assisted by Korn and Chan; post-produced by Nutcha Pajareya In the middle of a mountain range at the border between Shan State in Myanmar and Northern Thailand, in the buffer zone where many Shan refugees live, a motorcycle moves along the steep and winding path. The dust from the red dirt road kicks up behind the motorcycle, ridden by a young man in an all green army suit. The warm sunshine illuminates the dusk and the breeze blows gently as the young man parks his motorcycle at a spot from which he can see the terrain below the mountains. They stretch to infinity, toward the horizon tinged with the vibrant hues of the setting sun. The young man slowly removes his hat, but there is no head underneath, nothing, not a face. He then removes his shirt but his body is transparent. The clothes come off piece by piece until his body completely disappears. All that remains are the mountains and the setting sun as they welcome the darkness of the night. Norberto Rolodan (b. 1953 in Bacolod, lives and works in Manila, Philippines) Himagsikan (2018) Tapestry/banner with embroideries, old Catholic vestment (humeral veil), and metal amulets and chains Courtesy of the artist and Silverlens Gallery Kalayaan (2018) Tapestry/banner with embroideries, old Catholic vestment (humeral veil), and metal amulets and chains Courtesy of the artist and Silverlens Gallery Erehes (2017) Old Catholic vestment (cape) with embroideries and soft amulets Courtesy of the artist and Silverlens Gallery This series of pseudo-religious banners revisits the Philippine Revolution against Spain. The uprising began in 1896 after Spanish authorities discovered the Katipunan, the underground organisation that served as catalyst of the independence revolutionary movement. As an underground organisation, it made use of different strategies to expand its influence and gain support from the people. Among these was operating behind the infrastructure of the Catholic church that was under the Spanish hierarchy. By practicing as Christian converts and becoming part of the laity, Filipinos aided the insurrection unsuspected. Himagsikan (revolution) and Kalayaan (independence) are banners that made use of parts of Catholic ceremonial vestments re-embroidered and re-embellished with symbols of the uprising. They mimic and subvert the pompous display of colonial power. Signifying made-up churches like Iglesia de la Revolution, and Iglesia de la Independencia, the banners are likened to battle flags rallying resistance against Spain. Paul Pfeiffer (b. 1966 in Honolulu, Hawaii, lives and works in New York, USA) Incarnator (2018) Video and installation Courtesy of the artist Supported by Bellas Artes Projects, Philippines Encarnador (Incarnator) is the old Spanish term for the carver of Santos, or devotional images of the Catholic saints that is particularly revered in the former Spanish colony of the Philippines, which also has a pre-colonial and still surviving tradition of sacred wooden figures. Encarnador particularly refers to the craftsperson specializing in the final step of Santo production in which the image is finished with a skin of paint, turning carved wood into human flesh. The video hones in on a particular workshop of wood carvers from the town of Paete, the centuries-old center of Santo production in the Philippines. The repetitive gestures of the carvers at work are explored visually in relation to the surrounding landscape, where the rice-planting season is underway. Timeworn traditions of manual labor are recast as a metaphor for the production and consumption of images in today’s global marketplace. Justin Bieber is treated as a modern day incarnation of the Santo Nino or Infant Jesus, embodying the complex relationship between innocence and complicity, the sacred and profane in the perverse spaces and temporalities of global capitalism. Praneet Soi (b. 1971 in Kolkata, lives and works between Amsterdam and Kolkata) Footpaths: Srinagar 2018 (2018) 9 hand-painted papier-mache tiles, 16 images on paper, looped video, 4 tables, LCD screen Courtesy of the artist Commissioned by the Samdani Art Foundation, Para Site and Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie. The work, resulted from a collaboration between the artist and the workshop of craftsman Fayaz Jan in Srinagar is part of Soi's ongoing process of engagement with craftsmen in the troubled Indian state of Kashmir and of researching the recent political situation there. The 9 interlocking papier-mache tiles are drawn with floral details whose forms are reminiscent of the many cultural influences that have layered in Kashmir over the centuries. The craft of papier mache that Kashmir is renowned for was itself introduced to the region by the Sufifi preacher Saha Hamdani in the 13th century. The tiles are accompanied by research materials, sketches, and drafts produced by the artist within this project, including a study of the tomb of the mother of Ghiyas-ud-Din Zain-ul-Abidin, built in 1430 CE. Its unique architecture points to the many connections and exchanges between South and Central Asia which often crossed through Kashmir. A large optical diagram related to the phenomena of anamorphoses reflects Soi’s intention to personalise the depiction of political uncertainty – a process that is underlined within the video that is part of the installation. Raja Umbu (lives and works in Kampung Uma Bara, Sumba) Skirt with Kadu motif (2010) Textile Raja Umbu, a traditional weaver and member of the royal (raja) family of Uma Bara village on Sumba island in Indonesia weaves an ancestral story of migration to Sumba, a collective foundational myth that continues to be reconstructed on the island amid rapid cultural change. The languages of Sumba, as well as the majority of languages in Indonesia, including Bahasa Indonesia, belong to the Austronesian language family. Her native eastern part of Sumba is known for its unique dyeing and ikat techniques. Rashid Choudhury (b. 1932 in Faridpur, British India; d. in 1986, in Dhaka, Bangladesh) Untitled (1980) Untitled (Allah Hu) (1981) Untitled (year unknown) Tapestry Courtesy of the Samdani Art Foundation Rashid Choudhury began working with tapestries after his return to Bangladesh in 1964 following studies in Paris. The works here were made quite late in his career, after he had established the first single loom tapestry factory in Chittagong. Choudhury referenced folk narratives from Bengal in his works, drawing equally from Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic sources. Many of his tapestries began as watercolours or paintings, growing into woven forms. While he references Islamic calligraphy in this work, we see none of the geometric abstraction typically associated with it; instead Chaudhury creates a vibrant image that seems to reference ecstatic Sufi and Fakiri forms of devotion. Sarat Mala Chakma (b. 1932 in Rangamati, Bangladesh; lives and works in Bangladesh) Sarat Mala Chakma is a master weaver belonging to the Chakma community who was awarded the Master Craftspersons Lifetime Award in 2016. Presented here is the textile which won her the National Award in 1998, which uses traditional motifs from the repertoire of Chakma textile culture, upon which she innovates to produce this magnificent work. Additionally, other textiles from the Chittagong Hill Tracts are presented, courtesy of Rani Yan Yan. They include the black Pinon-Haadi, which is part of the traditional attire of the Chakma community, woven on a handloom known as bein, and the red and white head band from the Tanchangya community. Traditional textiles from the Chittagong Hill Tracts have many points in common in terms of materials, dyes, techniques, and motifs with textiles produced in a broad contiguous mountain area spreading to Myanmar, India, South-West China, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, revealing the many cultural connections that have existed before and in parallel to the modern nation-states. Sawangwongse Yawnghwe (b. 1971 in Shan State, lives and works between Berlin, Germany; Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Chiang Mai, Thailand) Rohingya Boat Portrait (2015) Oil on paper Courtesy the artist Supported by Canada Art Council There Were Light Bulbs So We Could See Them (2012) Oil on paper Courtesy of the artist They Were Buried In The Mud Anther The Bridge (2012) Oil on paper Courtesy the artist He Was Also Shot In The Head (2012) Oil on paper Courtesy the artist Untitled (2015) Oil on silk Courtesy the artist Supported by Canada Art Council The artist, descendent of a prominent family leading the struggle for the rights of the Shan people in Eastern Myanmar, is committed to expose the hidden and repressed histories of violence and oppression in his country. He critiques dominant Bamar-centric artistic and historical narratives by presenting a personal, counter-historiography, often in solidarity with other oppressed or excluded communities in Myanmar. The works in this exhibition include portraits of Rohingya as well as a mass grave of bodies, based on eye-witness accounts of Rohingya refugees. The works resonate with the poem "The Earth Is Closing on Us", by Mahmoud Darwish: The earth is closing on us, pushing us through the last passage, and we tear off our limbs to pass through. The earth is squeezing us. I wish we were its wheat so we could die and live again. I wish the earth was our mother So she’d be kind to us. I wish we were pictures on the rocks for our dreams to carry as mirrors. We saw the faces of those to be killed by the last of us in the last defense of the soul. We cried over their children’s feast. We saw the faces of those who’ll throw our children Out of the windows of the last space. Our star will hang up in mirrors. Where should we go after the last frontiers? Where should the birds fly after the last sky? Where should the plants sleep after the last breath of air? We will write our names with scarlet steam. We will cut off the head of the song to be finished by our flesh. We will die here, here in the last passage. Here and here our blood will plant its olive tree. Sheela Gowda (b. 1957 in Bhadravati, Karnataka, lives and works in Bangalore, India) Of Becoming (2018) Installation Courtesy of the artist Commissioned by the Samdani Art Foundation, Para Site and Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie. The newly created work inscribes in the artist’s long standing explorations into the field of materiality and space, offering nuanced and vibrant means of understanding the world. She is interested in the power that objects and forms carry in capturing aspects of reality, with its social and cultural narratives, that are otherwise unseen by and unspeakable through other languages of representation and analysis. Materials for Gowda can be at the same time complex metaphors and ends in themselves, forgetful of their many cultural and spiritual investments attributed by human practice, but charged with a potential spiritual tension of their own. Her vocabulary is constantly discovered and invented in the things that surround her and that she respells into her works, like the gamcha, the ubiquitous towel cloth in Bangladesh and throughout South Asia, which form the basis of this work. Sheelasha Rajbhandari (b. 1988 in Kathmandu, lives and works in Kathmandu, Nepal) My Great-Great-Grandmother’s Shawl (2017) Photographs, recreated hand-printed muslin ‘Damber Kumari’ shawl, counterfeit and original clothing tags The artist traces socio-political changes in her native Nepal through changes in cultures of clothing in her family. She references her maternal great- great- grandmother’s traditional Damber Kumari shawl, which contained pieces of fabric from Nepal and Varanasi, and imitated textiles from Dhaka. Adding to these layered histories, she embroiders real and counterfeited brand tags from cheap mass-produced clothes from India and China, juxtaposing these with images of her grandmother wearing the shawl. Rajbhandari raises questions of authenticity and copying that go into the production of culturally significant items, producing an artifact for the contemporary moment, where diverse textile cultures are being flattened out by mass-production. Simon Soon (b.1985; lives and works in Kuala Lumpur) King Kalakaua's Hawaiian Travels (2018) Wood Courtesy of the artist In collaboration with RJ Camacho, Antonia Aguilar, Lauro Penamante, Arnold Flores, Joseph de Ramos Supported by Bellas Artes Projects, Philippines Melayu Pono’i In 1881, the last King of Hawai’i, Kalakaua, embarked on a round the world trip to encourage the importation of contract labor for plantations and brought the small island nation to the attention of world leaders. King Kalakaua was also fired by the concept of the Malay race and its political future, or in the words of the U.S. Consul 'inflamed by the idea of gathering all the cognate races of the Islands of the Pacific into a great Polynesian Confederacy’. This series of four carved panels capture four incidents across the Asia Pacific rim.They recount episodes of diplomatic exchanges premised on political recognition and imagined kinship loosely based on William Armstrong's Around the World with a King (1904). These episodes follow the travel of King Kalakaua to San Francisco, Japan, Siam and Johore. The creation of the reliefs was also a relay of sorts, from idea to conception. The idea was a long standing interest of writer Simon Soon, who provided research details and mood boards. These materials were then passed on to illustrator RJ Camacho, who decided to base his design on Filipino modernist painter Carlos ‘Botong’ Francisco’s theatrical tableaux that elevates the folkinto national consciousness. Finally, the carving is executed by Ka Celing, a master woodcarver from Paeta, Laguna. Besides being adept at carving religious statuary, Paeta craftsmen had also produced one of the most iconic diorama of Filipino history at the Ayala Museum. By collaborating with a Filipino illustrator and craftsman, the relief panels take poetic license in connecting the political ambition of King Kalakaua to the fifirst political uprising in Asia, the Philippine revolution.In this instance the stylistic reference to both an art and craft history connected to nation-building is deliberate. One might speculate if Filipino novelist and patriot Jose Rizal’s imagined community of Malay races owes part of its imagination to King Kalakaua’s desire to establish Pan-Polynerian confederacy? Panel 1 During his time in San Francisco, King Kalakaua was feted to a lavish Chinese banquet in Hang Fen Lou restaurant,San Francisco. The banquet was hosted by the Consul-General of China in recognition of Kalakaua's kind treatment of Chinese workers in Hawai'i. Panel 2 While in Japan, Kalakaua visited a Shinto temple of Shiba. In a moment of tranquility, he drew the Japanese Emperor aside and suggested, ‘Not only are Japanese Emperors descended from the Sun Goddess, so are the Hawai'ian kings.’ Panel 3 When it was time to depart Siam, King Kalakaua and his party were driven to the landing. They were then seated in the royal barge, with the stately movements of its twenty-four oars, that carried them to a steamer called ‘Bangkok’. Kneeling Buddhist monks were invited yo give a blessing to the ship and all aboard her as the ship set sail for Singapore. Panel 4 In Johore, the setting is a reception hall of the Istana. The valet of King Kalakaua is made to wear the ceremonial feathered cloak. The Sultan of Johore and the King of Hawai’i greeted each other warmly. For they recognised each other as 'long lost brothers'. To commemorate the renewal of kinship, King Kalakaua received a green and gold Koran. Simryn Gill (b. 1959 in Singapore, lives and works between, Sydney, Australia and Port Dickson, Malaysia) Pressing In (2016) Relief prints on butterflfly paper Courtesy of the artist and Jhaveri Contemporary Pressing In (2016) Relief prints on ledger paper Courtesy of the artist and Jhaveri Contemporary Pressing In (2016) Relief prints on ledger paper Courtesy of the artist and Jhaveri Contemporary Sweet Chariot (2015) Silver Gelatin Print Courtesy of the artist and Jhaveri Contemporary The artist creates a series of prints using collected lumber washed up from the sea at Port Dickson, Malaysia. Weathered and degraded by exposure to the sea and the sun, they bear traces of their origins, as parts of oars, or ships, and of their journey, becoming part of the ecosystem of the waves, encrusted with organisms and microbes that eat away at it. Gill presses these pieces of found wood onto a collection of papers, including wage records, star charts, accounting ledgers and reference books sourced in junk shops, markets, and online. In doing so, she entangles the drift of these pieces of wood which trace the rise and fall of markets, human and celestial movements to create images of histories adrift. Su Yu-Hsien (b. 1982 in Tainan, lives and works in Tainan, Taiwan) Hua-Shan-Qiang (2013) Colour video with sound; Giclee prints Courtesy of the artist and TKG+ In collaboration with Rajiuddin Choudhury (b. 1963 in Dinajpur, lives and works in Dinajpur) Beast (2018) Paper mask Courtesy of the artist Taloi Havini (b. 1981 in Arawa, Autonomous Region of Bougainville, lives and works in Sydney) Kapkaps (Pendants) from the Mysterious Isles of Melanesia (2015) Porcelain, copper and gold lustre Courtesy of the artist and Andrew Baker Art Dealer The artist references in this work histories of colonialism, and the use of museological display within it. Consisting of four kapkaps, hand-carved, shallow relief porcelain disks, with gold lustre and copper glazes, it mimics the customary clamshell and tortoise shell inlay. Kapkaps were articles of signifificant cultural and sacred value in the Hakö practices of Bougainville island in which Havini was raised in, and were obtained by force or by trade across the Moananui by colonists, and locked away in glass cabinets such as the one seen here in museums in Europe. She challenges the inaccessibility of these spaces and objects to the very people they were wrested from and honors the generations of ecological and cultural trauma whose trace they now bear. Than Sok (b. 1984 in Takeo, Cambodia; lives and works in Phnom Penh) Srie Bun (2016) Installation of five clerical garments (cotton, chemical dye), five garment hooks Courtesy of the artist and MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum Five Buddhist clerical garments hang on the wall at the same height. The different colors belong to two sects within Cambodia’s Theravada Buddhist system and signify ranks within each sect: three orange colors of Maha Nikaya and darker maroon and ochre colors of Thammayut. The Buddhist monk, wearing robes, is believed to delineate a merit field comparable to the fertile rice field, where seeds are sown for reaping. The word veal srie in the Khmer language means rice field, and bun refers to merit making, which the artist notes is increasingly synonymous with monetary and this-world offerings. The robe’s rectilinear form and seams imitate those of the rice field: paddies framed by dikes. In Srie Bun, the artist has carefully cut away measured fields of fabric, revealing deliberate holes. His gesture questions the robe’s symbolic power atop mortal male bodies, and if peace can be advanced when hierarchical notions of sect and rank remain at the moral core of society. Thao-Nguyen Phan (born 1987 in Ho Chih Minh City; lives and works in Ho Chih Minh City) Man Looking Towards Darkness (2014) Curtain made from Indigo dyed jute fabric, silk, hand embroidery, framed Courtesy of the artist The work engages with the history of jute cultivation and manufacture in Vietnam. During the Japanese occupation of Vietnam from 1940-1945, the Dai Nam jute factory was built and industrial plantation campaigns to “uproot rice, grow jute” were implemented, resulting in the horrific famine of 1945 that killed 2 million Vietnamese. The artist presents an indigo dyeing jute curtain woven by Tay women using traditional methods. Next to it lies a photograph of three stones under an ancient banyan tree, which were used to detach jute fiber for factory use. Today, these stones lie undisturbed under the tree, carrying within them the painful material histories of occupation and forced labour. Untitled (Heads) (2013) Dried shredded jute (hemp) fifiber and jute stalks, bronze, thread Courtesy of the artist The work locates the jute plant as both the cause and witness of a tragic event, when Vietnamese farmers were forced to grow jute instead of rice during the Japanese occupation of then French Indochina from 1940-1945, which lead to large scale famine and the death of 2 million Vietnamese. The form of the sculpture is inspired by the Ma Mot tree, a totemic tree constructed by Tai minorities in Northern Vietnam for religious purposes where objects such as animal bones and amulets are hung, representing a dead or evil spirit. The artist reincarnates the jute plant as a Ma Mot tree, hanging on its drooping branches portraits of farmers whom she interviewed during the course of her research, in an attempt to create a ritual yet individualized space of healing from painful histories. Voyages de Rhodes N No. 1, No. 36, No. 38, No. 103 and No. 116 (2014-17) Watercolour on found book Courtesy of the Samdani Art Foundation Voyages de Rhodes No. 9, No. 30, No. 34, No. 35, No. 40, No. 42 , No. 76, No. 124 (2014-17) Watercolour on found book Courtesy of the artist and the Factory Contemporary Arts Centre, Saigon Thảo Nguyên Phan poetically traces the origin and adoption of the Vietnamese Romanized script called chu quoc ngu through the work of the French Jesuit missionary, Alexandre de Rhodes who wrote the first trilingual Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin dictionary, the Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum in 1651. Phan uses Rhodes’ travelogue Rhodes of Vietnam: The Travels and Missions of Father Alexandre de Rhodes in China and Other Kingdoms of the Orient (originally published in 1966) as the canvas for her watercolours. Drawing occasionally from episodes in the story, Phan uses the surface of the text to speculate on cultural hybridities, which bears traces of layers of violence and subjugation. The imposition of a writing system affects cultural violence, rendering knowledge inaccessible to many: having nowhere to go, stories burst out of limbs like trees. Trevor Yeung (b. 1988 in Guangdong Province, China, lives and works in Hong Kong) Acanthus Medallion (Bangladesh) (2018) Plaster, Pigment, Metal, Cotton, Porcelain Courtesy of the artist White Tower (Ceiling Medallion) (2018) Plaster Ceiling Medallion, Wood, Cotton Fabric, Silicone, Epoxy, Work Table Courtesy of the artist Commissioned by the Samdani Art Foundation, Para Site and Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie The works are part of an ongoing research on acanthus, a relatively obscure plant in its living form that is nevertheless the source of one of the most prominent motifs used in art and architecture throughout different geographies and eras, including the Greco-Roman, Classical Islamic, Greco- Buddhist, and Mughal worlds, as well as in contemporary vernacular decorations across the globe. The plant is not native to South Asia, but the ornament referring to its leaf entered the region in several distinct waves. The Victorian era style plaster used, among others, in ceiling medallions, is still commonly used - often adapted and combined with other aesthetic references - in interior decorations in Bangladesh, in a complicated relationship with its colonial past. The work references these hybrid medallions, and adds a white porcelain cast of an actual acanthus leaf on the decorative leaves which carry in their shapes the many historical and cultural layers of interpreting this motif. Supported by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Hong Kong Arts Development Council fully supports freedom of artistic expression. The views and opinions expressed in this project do not represent the stand of the Council. Truong Cong Tung (b.1986,Dak Lak, Vietnam; lives and works in Ho Chih Minh City, Vietnam) Blind Map (2013) Canvas, eaten by termites Courtesy of the artist and the Factory Contemporary Arts Centre, Saigon Truong Cong Tung engages with the traditional spiritual practices of Vietnam, some of which are also influenced by Buddhism, to investigate modes of being with non-humans, including plants, insects, and spirits, which emerge within these traditions. In Blind Map, he invites a colony of Termites occupy a length of canvas, and present to us the traces of their vigorous activity. Through this process, a transfiguration takes place where the artist becomes termite, and the termite becomes a painter, creating a space of indistinction of identity across species. Tuguldur Yondonjamts (b. 1977 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, lives and works between Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia and New York, USA) Smuggled landscape #09 , #10 and #13 (2015) Charcoal on paper Courtesy of the artist Antipode Suit #4 (2017) Textile Courtesy of the artist and Richard Taittinger Gallery Inspired by his training in Buddhist thangka painting, the drawings embody the Buddhist idea of maya—or modes of shifting perspectives. The painstakingly drawn territory is created using a technique of shading that forms illusions of snow-covered mountains and deep valleys. On closer inspection, they reveal semblances of many images at once, faces of monsters, animals or possible mythological figures and, above all, immense, uninhabitable, and seemingly dangerous frozen expanses. These abstractions illustrate the Mongolian struggle after the end of communism in 1990, retrieving repressed shamanistic practices and mythological history. In addition, fossils and mummies found embedded in the Mongolian permafrost have reignited links to the vast steppes of Eurasia and older histories of migratory and temporary dominance over their trade routes. More recently, the unlikely discovery by scientists of the remains of an alligator in the frozen Altai Mountains bordering Mongolia have greatly impacted the artist’s imagination. Yajnopaveeta Thread The yajnopaveeta or janeu is a white thread worn exclusively by the Brahmin caste in Hinduism, always from the left shoulder to waist. It is a sacred object conferred through specific ceremonies and it has become the recognisable marker of the upper caste in traditional Hindu society. Cast remains a leading factor in the stratification of society in India and cast related violence has increased in recent years. Zamthingla Ruivah (b. 1966 in Manipur, lives and works in Imphal, Manipur) Luingamla Kashan (1990 - ongoing) Textile Courtesy of the artist Mazui Kashan Textile Courtesy of the artist Phor-Re Textile Courtesy of the artist Zamthingla Ruivah created the Luingamla Kashan in memory of Ms. Luingamla of Ngainga village who was shot dead while resisting rape by two officers of the Indian army on 24 January 1986. Using motifs from the weaving traditions of the Tangkhul, she wove a kashan (a traditional garment) that pays tribute to Luingamla, and the spirit of a community ravaged by state violence. Nagaland has been under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act since 1958, when Naga separatist groups attempted to secede from India; since then it has been abused by security personnel to shield themselves from prosecution for crimes committed against the populace. Today, many members of the Tangkhul community wear the Luingamla Kashan as a symbol of solidarity.

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

ALL PROJECTS Architecture In Bangladesh Curated by Aurélien Lemonier A JOURNEY THROUGH ARCHITECTURE IN BANGLADESH (1947-2017) THE LEGACY OF MUZHARUL ISLAM Curated by AurÉlien Lemonier How to present the challenges that contemporary architecture faces in Bangladesh? The fluvial landscape of the Ganges Delta and the Brahmaputra could be a starting point. The incredible paradoxes of the country’s economic development could be another. Bangladesh is just as much concerned by the climatic changes of today as it is by the consequences of globalisation that followed the decolonisation of the Indian sub-continent and the subsequent struggle to build an independent nation. Muzharul Islam (1923-2012) was an architect who would pursue, from as early as the 1950s, a “humanist modernity” in Bangladesh’s architecture. The producer of public edifices of great quality, his commitment made him a prominent cultural figure in the country. For instance, it was he who called upon Louis Kahn to construct the Dhaka parliament building, rather than accept the commission himself. However, Islam’s achievements are not limited to simply enabling the construction of this masterpiece of modern architecture. A group of intellectuals emerged from Islam’s initiative, bringing forth in the 1980s the millenary culture of Bengal in order to contribute to the emergence of a new architecture for the country. All creative fields were summoned to partake in the reconstruction of a continuous cultural consciousness that had been affected by Partition. The “archaeology” of Bengali monuments (Buddhist, Mughal and modern), undertaken by architects, is synchronous to the regionalist theories that develop in Europe, the United States and India. For the last fifteen years, as Bangladesh has been taking part in the free market economy, a third generation of architects is now trying to redefine the terms of contemporaneity. As the urbanism of large cities demands new housing strategies, the concepts of sustainable and responsible development require the creation of new modes of action. An exhibition on the Bangladesh contemporary architecture scene would precisely respond to these ambitions: the identification and diffusion of architectural endeavours that are of great formal quality, as well as the work of the “Bengal School” which explores strategies of responsible development, through a social, economic and environmental scope. Architects: Bashirul Haq Shamsul Wares Raziul Ahsan Saif Ul Haque Jalal Ahmad Uttam Kumar Saha Nahas Khalil Chetana Rafiq Azam Ehsan Khan Nurur Rahman Khan Mustapha Khalid Palash Enamul Karim Nirjhar Kashef Chowdhurry Urbana Marina Tabassum Salauddin Ahmed Potash Stéphane Paumier

ALL PROJECTS World Weather Network Climate can be seen as a collage of world weathers, and we are a proud member of this global coalition of 28 arts agencies around the world formed in response to the climate crisis and biodiversity loss. Learn more about the World Weather Network. Please watch our recent contributions to the network which include Echoes , a new video contribution by Gidreebawlee Foundation for the Arts, and the Dhaka Art Summit panel discussion on Artistic Process and Climate Change . Echoes is an inter-regional performance project that engaged young people aged 13–18 years from Thakurgaon and Khulna and created a collaborative art performance by exploring their collective voices with their respective experiences of climate change.

ALL PROJECTS Planetary Planning Curated by Devika Singh Out of gallery In 1969 visionary architect and designer Buckminster Fuller delivered the Nehru memorial lecture, entitled ‘Planetary Planning’, in which he claimed that South Asia could be conceived as a form of axis-mundi and a cradle for all humanity. Using Fuller’s lecture as a point of departure, this exhibition explored notions of world-making that have been articulated in and from South Asia by three generations of international artists since the 1940s. Planetary thinking, pensée-monde, and worldliness are some of the concepts that have been put forward to describe globalisation as a historical process and the worldview that accompanies it. Sometimes folded into more specific geographical units (Asia, South Asia, and the Indian Ocean), trade, empire, and economic exchanges, as well as scientific innovations, have been some of its crucial vectors. Against this complex and historically unequal canvas of exchanges, but also of imaginary ‘immobile movement’ to use Edouard Glissant’s term, artists have projected alternative, at times utopian thinking, and located themselves within it. By including the works of artists whose trajectory has been marked by travel and migration, this exhibition explored how artistic itinerancy has challenged fixed identities and their inherent hierarchies. Reflecting on trade connections and aesthetic networks, the lines of transfer drawn in this exhibition examined the historical junctures and disjunctures of South Asia. They also looked back at cross-regional exchanges, for example between Bangladesh and Japan, the United States and India, from the 1940s until now. The point is one of convergence. The works that result reflect on the interconnection of geographical spaces. Some of the artists in this exhibition have sustained close relationships, while others were juxtaposed for the first time. Yet they all belong to different stages of an aesthetic exploration on line and architecture. Many exhibited artists conceive of architecture both as a bearer of place and as a language holding the possibility of worldly affiliations. Through the descriptive potential of drawing, photography and film, they probe how architectural imagination can be the repository of cultural memory and planetary planning from South Asia- ARTISTS Amie Siegel Ayesha Sultana Buckminster Fuller Desmond Lazaro Hera Büyüktaşçıyan Isamu Noguchi Lala Rukh Mohammad Kibria Muzharul Islam Novera Ahmed Seher Shah Zarina Hashmi