ALL PROJECTS Concert From Bangladesh CONCERT FROM BANGLADESH WAS A MIXED REALITY MUSIC CONCERT CONCERT FROM BANGLADESH MERCH AND CONCERT ALBUM NOW AVAILABLE! https://youtu.be/xREcL4Nue7Y Concert From Bangladesh revisited the history of solidarity embedded in the historical Concert For Bangladesh: a concert album and ethically produced merchandise co-designed by Fraser Muggeridge and Shezad Dawood were available via Pioneer Works' website. All proceeds raised were equally distributed between the performing musicians and Bangladeshi charity organisation Friendship, which provided healthcare for climate change refugees and promoted women’s rights in Bangladesh. CONCERT FROM BANGLADESH WAS A MIXED REALITY MUSIC CONCERT, USING CUTTING-EDGE TECHNOLOGY TOOK AUDIENCES ON A VIRTUAL AUDIO-VISUAL JOURNEY THROUGH BANGLADESH PAST AND PRESENT, ENCOMPASSING MYSTICAL BAUL SINGERS FROM RURAL KUSHTIA, EXPERIMENTAL ELECTRONICS, AND HIP HOP FROM THE STREETS OF DHAKA. Concert From Bangladesh was a groundbreaking mixed reality digital collaboration between UBIK Productions (London) and Samdani Art Foundation (Dhaka) supported by the British Council Digital Collaboration Fund. The organisations commissioned acclaimed British-South Asian artist Shezad Dawood to create a virtual reality stage for a concert released on 1 August 2021 via Pioneer Works’ (NYC) website, expanding on the 50 year legacy of Concert For Bangladesh: the original charity concert initiated by Ravi Shankar and George Harrison of Beatles' fame, in aid of the relief effort and refugee crisis during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. Co-curated by Diana Campbell, Artistic Director of the Samdani Art Foundation (SAF), with Dhaka-born music producer and artist Enayet Kabir, together with assistant curators Ruxmini Choudhury and Shoummo Saha, Concert From Bangladesh updated the 1971 concert to showcased a wealth of talent across varied Bangladeshi musical traditions – from mystical Baul singing to experimental electronics and socially engaged Dhaka hip hop – and raised funds for the Bangladeshi climate change and human rights charity Friendship. The concept had been developed by Campbell together with multiple collaborators including Dawood. In the words of SAF Founder Nadia Samdani, "As Bangladesh celebrated 50 years of independence, we were delighted to be a part of producing a work that allowed the world to listen to the wealth of music and culture found in our country, and to reconsider the role that music and art could play in banding people together to fight for a better and more equal future." Miranda Sharp, UBIK Productions Director, said, “We were thrilled to be working with SAF and Shezad Dawood on this multidisciplinary, transnational project that pushed the boundaries of art and music production and developed new digital collaborative workflows.” The Concert From Bangladesh went live to audiences on the Pioneer Works’ digital platform on 1 August 2021. This was accompanied by live events at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (Wakefield) as part of Yorkshire Sculpture International and at Pioneer Works (NYC), marking 50 years since the original concert. Additional events took place with Chisenhale Gallery (London), at Leeds City Varieties Music Hall (Leeds), and Srihatta Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park (Sylhet). These institutions, located in significant diasporic or rural Bangladeshi areas, further de-centred and democratised the project's reach, amplifying the experience for diverse Bangladeshi and international communities. The concert took viewers on an expansive sonic journey spanning six centuries. It began with renowned Baul singer Arif Baul, who was accompanied by instrumental virtuosos Nazrul Islam, Saidur Rahman, and Sohel. This was followed by a composition by Enayet and Nishit Dey, which explored the shared musical language between Nazrul sangeet, classical raga, and 90s jungle. The piece blended cutting-edge electronic production and arrangements by Enayet, Provhat Rahman, and Siaminium with classical raga and Nazrul sangeet vocals by Meerashri Arshee and Moumita Haque, along with a Bansuri flute performance by Jawaad Mustakim Al Muballig and sitar by Nishit Dey. The concert concluded with a performance by the Bangladeshi hip-hop duo Tabib Mahmud and 12-year-old Gully Boy Rana, whose socially engaged lyrics highlighted some of the pressing issues the concert aimed to support through fundraising. Shot against a green screen at 3rd Space Studio by a Bangladeshi team in Dhaka, Concert From Bangladesh featured the musicians performing against shifting virtual sets that immersed audiences in vibrant Dhaka streets, and transported them to the riverbanks of Gorai River Kushtia via mangrove ecosystems and Somapura Mahavihara – one of the best known monasteries in the Indian Subcontinent built in the 8th century AD –, culminating with a performance in the iconic Beauty Boarding, a historically vibrant literary hub in Dhaka and a meeting place for intellectuals to this day. The performances were interspersed with archival and contemporary documentary footage, and the concert was amplified by Augmented Reality assets, including a free filter activated through audiences’ phones and laptops, bringing 3D objects from the screen into viewers' immediate surroundings. The Concert’s graphic identity was developed by long-time Samdani Art Foundation collaborator Fraser Muggeridge Studio. Concert From Bangladesh revisited the history of solidarity embedded in the historical Concert For Bangladesh: a concert album and ethically produced merchandise were made available via the online streaming platform on Pioneer Works. All proceeds raised were equally distributed between the performing musicians and Bangladeshi charity organisation Friendship (led by Ashoka fellow and Schwab Foundation social entrepreneur Runa Khan) which provided healthcare for climate change refugees and promoted women’s rights in Bangladesh. Musicians and Performers Siaminium (Electronics and Recording Engineer); Meerashri Arshee (Classical Raga vocalist); Arif Baul (Baul vocalist and composer); Nishit Dey (Composer, Sitar and Tabla player); Enayet (Producer, Electronics, Composer); Moumita Haque (Nazrul sangeet vocalist); Nazrul Islam (Dhol player); Gully Boy Rana and Tabib Mahmud (Hip hop artists); Jawaad Mustakim Al Muballig (Bansuri flute player); Provhat Rahman (Electronics); Saidur Rahman (Harmonium player); Shoummo Saha (Audio producer); Sohel (Percussionist). Concert From Bangladesh On Tour 1 August 2021 , 6pm Dhaka, 6pm London, 6pm New York: As-live stream across three time zones on pioneerworks.org/programs/concert-from-bangladesh 1 August 2021 , entry from 7:15pm, screening at 9:15pm - Yorkshire Sculpture Park (Wakefield): An outdoor screening of Concert From Bangladesh and associated tours of sculptures in the grounds in English and Sylheit, in partnership with artist Thahmina Begum. Book via: https://ysp.org.uk/events/shezad-dawood-concert-from-bangladesh-an-open-air-film-screening 8 August 2021 - Pioneer Works (NYC): A screening of Concert From Bangladesh as part of the Second Sundays event series, which engaged Pioneer Works disciplines through live music, food, artists' open studios, and interactive programs. 31 August 2021 , 1pm - In the Neighbourhood (London): An outdoor screening of Concert From Bangladesh - https://www.allpointseastfestival.com/nbhd/ 10 September 2021 , Bold Tendencies (London): Chisenhale Gallery hosted Concert From Bangladesh at Peckhamplex and Bold Tendencies 7pm, Peckhamplex Cinema - Screening of Concert From Bangladesh 8:30pm, Straw Auditorium at Bold Tendencies - In-conversation between Shezad Dawood and Chisenhale Director Dr. Zoé Whitley 9:30pm onwards, Concert Bar at Bold Tendencies - Live DJ set by Concert From Bangladesh electronics producer Provhat Rahman 12 September 2021 - Pioneer Works (NYC): Concert From Bangladesh as part of Pioneer Works' Second Sundays 8pm - Live DJ set by Concert From Bangladesh curator and producer Enayet Kabir 9pm - Screening of Concert From Bangladesh 16 September 2021 , 7pm - Leeds City Varieties Music Hall (Leeds): Leeds City Varieties Music Hall (Leeds) - Yorkshire Sculpture International hosted Concert From Bangladesh in partnership with Hyde Park Picture House’s On the Road programme. 18 September 2021 - Rich Mix (London) - Rich Mix hosted screening and in-conversation part of Bangladesh @ 50 3pm - Screening of Concert From Bangladesh 3:45pm - Journalist and presenter Momtaz Begum-Hossain moderated in-conversation with Concert From Bangladesh electronics producer Provhat and assistant curator Ruxmini Choudhury Official Credit Line Concert From Bangladesh was a project by UBIK Productions and Samdani Art Foundation in collaboration with Shezad Dawood and in partnership with Pioneer Works, Yorkshire Sculpture International, Chisenhale Gallery and Friendship. It was supported by the British Council Digital Collaboration Fund, which supported UK and overseas cultural partnerships to develop digitally innovative ways of collaborating. About Co-Producers UBIK Productions is an immersive film and digital arts production company based in London. It focuses on feature length and short experimental film production as well as cutting-edge digital animation, artworks using algorithm technologies and VR development for theatrical, festival and institutional distribution. We produce interdisciplinary works, building dynamic teams with bespoke methodologies for each project from a range of specialties such as 3D animators, composers, editors, cinematographers, choreographers, researchers, sound technicians, coders, game designers as well as motion capture and world building experts for our award-winning works. https://ubikproductions.com/ 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, 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. www.samdani.com.bd About Shezad Dawood Shezad Dawood is an artist working across the disciplines of painting, film, neon, sculpture, performance, virtual reality and other digital media to ask key questions of narrative, history and embodiment. Using the editing process as a method to explore both meanings and forms, his practice often involves collaboration and knowledge exchange, mapping across multiple audiences and communities. Dawood’s work has been shown internationally at institutions including Tate (London), Southbank Centre (London), The British Museum (London), MoMA (NYC), Guggenheim (NYC), WIELS (Brussels), MOCA (Toronto), Manifesta, Venice Biennale, Gwangju Biennial, Toronto Biennial. Dawood is a Senior Research Fellow in Experimental Media at the University of Westminster and lives and works in London. About Key Collaborators Enayet Kabir is a Brooklyn based, Dhaka raised, electronic musician, curator and artist whose work is focused on intangible spaces, collective memory, synthetic organics and otherness. He has worked on creative direction, stage and lighting design, and music video direction for artists including Yaeji and Photay. His debut EP Chokkor was released earlier this year by New York label SLINK which he runs collectively with rrao, Simisea and K Wata. Ruxmini Reckvana Q Choudhury is a Dhaka based art researcher and curator and has been working as an Assistant Curator at the Samdani Art Foundation. She has been involved in the Dhaka Art Summit since the edition of 2016 and has conducted many research projects for DAS, including Art Mediation Programme and MAHASSA,(2019-20). Her research interest lies in the pre and post colonial South Asian art and culture. Shoummo Saha is a music producer, educator, and event curator based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Through teaching community-focused electronic music workshops, forward-thinking programming and curation at venues such as the iconic Jatra Biroti, and his own musical output, Shoummo has become one of the central driving forces behind the growing experimental music and sonic arts scene in Dhaka. Diana Campbell is a curator committed to fostering a transnational art world. Her plural and long-range vision addresses the concerns of underrepresented regions and artists. Since 2013, she has served as the Founding Artistic Director of Dhaka-based Samdani Art Foundation, Bangladesh and Chief Curator of the Dhaka Art Summit, leading the critically acclaimed 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 editions and is developing the upcoming 2023 edition. Campbell has developed DAS into a leading research and exhibitions platform for art from South Asia, bringing together artists, architects, curators, and writers from across South Asia through a largely commission based model where new work and exhibitions are born in Bangladesh. About the Artists ACT 1 COMPOSED BY ARIF BAUL ARRANGED BY SHOUMMO SAHA AND NAZRUL ISLAM. ELECTRONICS BY SHOUMMO SAHA. CURATED BY ENAYET KABIR AND SHOUMMO SAHA (ASST. CURATOR) . Arif Baul Arif Baul is a renowned baul singer and dotara player. His renditions of Bangladeshi folk music have made him one of the country’s foremost Baul performers. Nazrul Islam Percussion (also in Act 2) Dhol maestro Nazrul Islam is known for his finesse and versatility in both traditional Bengali folk music and multiple forms of musical experiments including jazz and fusion. Saidur Rahman Harmonium Saidur Rahman is a distinguished session musician and a virtuosic harmonium player. Sohel Percussion Sohel is a multi-instrumentalist and percussionist, proficient in his interpretation of various forms of traditional Bengali rhythms. ACT 2 COMPOSED BY ENAYET KABIR (STAGENAME ENAYET) AND NISHIT DEY ELECTRONIC PRODUCTION AND ARRANGEMENT: ENAYET KABIR, PROVHAT RAHMAN AND ADITTYA ARZU (STAGENAME SIAMINIUM). VOCALS: MEERASHRI ARSHEE AND MOUMITA HAQUE SITAR AND TABLA: NISHIT DEY BANSURI: JAWWAD MUSTAKIM AL MUBALLIG RECORDING ENGINEER: ADITTYA ARZU AKA SIAMINIUM CURATED BY ENAYET KABIR AND SHOUMMO SAHA (ASST. CURATOR) Meerasri Arshee ( Vocals ) is a gifted vocalist who began learning Indian classical music from Srimati Avinanda Mukerji at the age of eight. She enrolled as a disciple of Srimati Asha Lohia of Pandit Jasraj School of music in Vancouver, and since 2018 has taken lessons with Pandit Ajoy Chakraborty, the famous Guru of Patiala gharana. She is currently taking lessons from Meher Paralikar, a scholar of ITC SRA, Kolkata. Moumita Haque (Vocals) (nickname: Shenjutee) is a promising classical vocalist from Bangladesh. Her repertoire covers Kheyal, semi classical-Thumri, Bhajan, Nazrul Sangeet and Modern Bengali Songs. Moumita began her musical journey in Kisholoy Kochikacha Mela at an early age. She went on to become a disciple of Ustad Sanjiv Dey and gradually shifted her focus to classical music. She is currently a student of Dr. Rejwan Ali alongside doing her Masters in English from the University of Dhaka. Provhat Rahman Electronic production Having co-founded the Daytimers Collective, producer and DJ Provhat has played an integral role in the re-emergence of Asian Underground sounds. His Indian svara inspired debut single, "Pedal" released on Rhythm Labs Records saw support from LCY, Hodge & Raji Rags. Alongside this, his ever-growing bank of Daytimers dubs have been mainstays across sets played by the new wave of South Asian DJs. With recent spots on NTS & Rinse FM, Provhat is set to continue pushing his productions and platform to new heights in 2021. Adittya Arzu (stagename: Siaminium) Recording engineer / Electronic production Living in the bustling city of Dhaka, Siaminium is one of Bangladesh’s finest audio engineers and producers. He has been involved with numerous projects including a performance feature in TEDxBaileyRoad and track listings on the BBC Asian Network. He indulges in the ambient nature of sounds and crafts his music to create visual soundscapes. Nishit Dey Sitar + Co-Composer Nishit is a 4th generation sitar player, following in a long family tradition of classical music. He first took tabla lessons from his father Sanjib Dey and learned classical music from his paternal uncle Asit Dey, both celebrated Bangladeshi classical music teachers. Nishit is also the founder of the Dhaka-based performance art organization Jog. Jawwad Mustakim Al Muballig Session Bansuri player ACT 3 RANA MRIDHA ( GULLY BOY RANA) - HIP HOP SINGER AND TABIB MAHMUD HIP HOP SINGER, LYRIC WRITER Tabib Mahmud is a singer, rapper, poet and lyric writer, whose work is inspired by Kazi Nazrul Islam, a poet who spoke against the British rule through poems and songs. He collaborates with Gully Boy Rana aka Rana Mridha, a twelve-year-old by from the slum of Kamrangirchar in Dhaka to raise awareness of social injustice and particularly the discrimination suffered by underpriviledged children. About the Funder The British Council is the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. We build connections, understanding and trust between people in the UK and other countries through arts and culture, education and the English language. Last year we reached over 80 million people directly and 791 million people overall including online, broadcasts and publications. Founded in 1934, we are a UK charity governed by Royal Charter and a UK public body. We receive a 15 per cent core funding grant from the UK government. www.britishcouncil.org With additional support for Covid Safety protocols generously provided by the EMK Center. About Presenting Partners Yorkshire Sculpture International A unique collaboration between four of Yorkshire’s leading art institutions – the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds Art Gallery, The Hepworth Wakefield and Yorkshire Sculpture Park. The galleries work together to promote sculpture in the region. Celebrating the rich history of Yorkshire as the birthplace of pioneering sculptors, including Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, and as the home of this unique consortium of galleries and celebrated sculpture collections. https://yorkshire-sculpture.org/ Chisenhale Gallery has an award winning, 38-year history as one of London’s most innovative forums for art. With a reputation for identifying new artistic talent, we believe in making cultural impact through working with artists and learning from our neighbours. We develop ideas with artists over a one- to two-year incubation period, from concept to completion. Located in a dynamic and creative residential neighbourhood in the heart of London’s East End, where many cultures converge, Chisenhale Gallery is an evolving space for experimentation, transformed by each artist’s commission. https://chisenhale.org.uk/ Pioneer Works builds community through the arts and sciences to create an open and inspired world. It encourages radical thinking across disciplines by providing practitioners a space to work, tools to create, and a platform to exchange ideas that are free and open to all. We are driven by the realization that humanity is facing unprecedented social, intellectual, and spiritual challenges; our programs explore new ways of facing those challenges by using the arts and sciences dynamically as both a lens and catalyst. When humanity comes together and combines the ideas and talents of many, we have the ability to engineer what once appeared to be impossible. https://pioneerworks.org/ About Friendship We are an international Social Purpose Organisation guided by a vision of a world where people — especially the hard-to-reach and unaddressed — have equal opportunities to live with dignity and hope. Friendship’s vision is almost unchanged since 20 years and is more relevant than ever in a world facing increasing global challenges such as exclusion from vital services, environmental crisis, extreme poverty, inequality and injustice. From Bangladesh, a country facing the most pressing of humanity’s challenges, we develop scalable solutions to strengthen marginalised communities, and empower people to transform their lives and reach their full potential. https://friendship.ngo/ About Media Partners The Face Launched by Nick Logan in London in 1980, The Face is the original, definitive style magazine. Reborn in 2019, The Face remains forward-thinking, multi-platform title staying true to Logan’s pioneering spirit that continues to champion fresh talent in music, fashion, TV, film and beyond; fly the flag for provocative, rigorous, long-form journalism; and celebrate the best in style and graphic design: a space for immersive, dynamic, multi-faceted stories. https://theface.com/ Dhaka Tribune All the news from Bangladesh regarding politics, business, industry, lifestyle, culture, sports, crime. The sharpest opinions and op-eds from a changing Bangladesh. It is time for a new generation of Bangladeshis to be heard, for their vision for our country to be promoted. Dhaka Tribune is here to be the platform for that new voice, and new vision. https://www.dhakatribune.com/ MERCHANDISE Shezad Dawood collaborated with Fraser Muggeridge Studio and No Sweat , two UK based institutions with long-term relationships with Bangladesh, to design merchandise for Concert From Bangladesh inspired by embroidery traditions in the country. The designs include symbols of tigers and Paharpur, which are anchored in Bangladeshi culture and the concert itself. All proceeds from the sales of merchandise will support the work of Friendship , an NGO supporting and empowering climate change refugees in Bangladesh, as well as the musicians who participated in this project. The organic tee and sweatshirt are produced in collaboration with No Sweat, a UK based anti-sweatshop campaign and clothing brand that partners with the garment factory, Oporajeo (meaning invincible in Bangla), a worker's initiative in Bangladesh that emerged in the wake of the Rana Plaza tragedy to promote ethical factory practices as an alternative to sweatshops. The scarves are handwoven and hand-embroidered by women in the chars of Bangladesh (riverine islands made of silt which are vulnerable to flooding) through Friendship , and each scarf will therefore be unique and carry the traces of its maker. Merchandise will be produced on demand and mailed to buyers in late 2021. CREDITS Shezad Dawood Artist / Director / Visual Concept Diana Campbell Curator / Concept Designer Enayet Kabir Co-curator Miranda Sharp Producer Inês Geraldes Cardoso Assistant Producer Ruxmini Choudhury Assistant Curator, Research and Archive Producer Sazzad Hossain SAF Production Lead Amit Ashraf DOP Himel Tariq Line Producer Shoummo Saha Assistant Curator, Audio Coordinator Adittya Arzu Recording Engineer- Dhaka amoeba Visual interpretations and code Mikayl Dawood Editor Rupert Clervaux Audio Mixing and Mastering Engineer Fraser Muggeridge Graphic Design Ruxmini Choudhury Translations and Subtitles MUSIC & AUDIO Enayet SFX Rupert Clervaux Mastering Engineer GREEN SCREEN SHOOT CREW Arifuzzaman DOP- MD. Nivan Hossain Assistant Director Ferari Sumon Production Manager Mosarof Hossain Gaffer Nazmul Focus Puller 3rd Space Studio Venue

The Samdani Art Award, Bangladesh's premier art award, has created an internationally recognised platform to showcase the work of young Bangladeshi Artists to an audience of international arts professionals. Soma Surovi Jannat b. 1990 in Dhaka, lives and works in Dhaka, Bangladesh WINNER Soma Surovi Jannat works with illustration, drawing and painting. Her work bridges different stimuli from her surroundings, aiming to depict what often are grim circumstances through an optimistic lens. Jannat transforms her two-dimensional works into installations, developing a visual language that allows the viewer to perceive the presence and correlation of different elements across varied circumstances. Numerous facets with individual storylines are joined to present a dominant narrative, which allows for the experience of a complex visual illusion. Interaction, collaboration and social engagement are characteristic of her working process. Samdani Art Award 2020 The 2020 Samdani Art Award was curated by Philippe Pirotte, supported by Goethe Institut. The winner was selected by a jury chaired by Aaron Cezar of Delfina Foundation with Adrián Villar Rojas, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Julie Mehretu, and Sunjung Kim. The 2020 Samdani Art Award was curated by Philippe Pirrote and the winner was Soma Surovi Jannat. This was also the first time a Jury Award was provided to Promiti Hossain. Promiti Hossain b. 1991 in Dhaka, lives and works between Dhaka, Bangladesh and Shantiniketon, India JURY AWARD WINNER Promiti Hossain’s artistic practice is comprised of drawing, painting and collage. Her work addresses her private experience as well as the subjectivity of gender. The constant news stories of gender-based violence against women and children, which she comes across daily, inspire her to draw attention to the struggles women face in the world. Her anatomic-style ink drawings of insects, flowers, and the female body allow marks and mistakes to represent the challenges women face in society. SAMDANI ART AWARD 2020 SHORTLIST Zihan Karim Zihan Karim, Last Five Minutes of Xiluo Theatre, 2016–2020, video Installation b. 1984 in Chattogram, lives and works in Chattogram, Bangladesh Tahia Farhin Haque ahia Farhin Haque, Shadows of A Wooden House, 2019–ongoing, photography. b. 1996 in Dhaka, lives and works in Dhaka, Bangladesh Sumana Akter Sumana Akhter, Look Back – Part 2, 2018–2020, clay b. 1983 in Narayanganj, lives and works in Narayanganj, Bangladesh Sounak Das Networking Realm, 2018–2020. mixed media installation b. 1993 in Dhaka, lives and works in Dhaka, Bangladesh Palash Bhattacharjee Palash Bhattacharjee, Pass, 2019 Two channel video, installation b. 1983 in Chattogram, lives and works in Chattogram, Bangladesh Najmun Nahar Keya Najmun Nahar Keya, The Spell Song, 2019, handwoven Tangail Sari b. 1980 in Dhaka, lives and works in Dhaka, Bangladesh Habiba Nowrose Habiba Nowrose, Life of Venus, 2019–ongoing, photography b. 1989 in Sirajganj, lives and works in Dhaka, Bangladesh Faiham Ebna Sharif Faiham Ebna Sharif, Cha Chakra: Tea Tales Of Bangladesh, 2016–ongoing, photography b. 1985 in Dhaka, lives and works in Dhaka, Bangladesh Ashfika Rahman Ashfika Rahman, Redeem, 2019, mixed media installation b.1988, Dhaka, lives and works in Dhaka, Bangladesh Ariful Kabir Ariful Kabir, 3.5 seconds, 2020, performance and installation, mixed media b. 1990 in Chattogram, lives and works in Besancon, France 2023 2020 2018 2016 2014 2012 Award Archive

The Samdani Art Award, Bangladesh's premier art award, has created an internationally recognised platform to showcase the work of young Bangladeshi Artists to an audience of international arts professionals. Since it was founded in 2012, the Samdani Art Award has steadily developed into an internationally recognised platform, highlighting the most innovative work being produced by young Bangladeshi artists. Created to honour one talented emerging Bangladeshi artist, the award does not issue the winner with a monetary prize, and instead funds them to undertake an all-expenses paid, six-week residency at the Delfina Foundation in London: a career-defining moment for the artist to further their professional development. The award’s latest winner, Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury, travelled to London earlier this year in July to undertake his residency. Providing him with the time and space to revisit old ideas, and explore new, while expanding his networks. I caught up with Chowdhury while he was in residence to discuss his ongoing practice and how winning the award has impacted his career to date. Samdani Art Award 2020 INTERVIEW: MIZANUR RAHMAN CHOWDHURY Emma Sumner: You initially studied printmaking, how did your practice evolve to become what it is today? Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury: It is very interesting for me to talk about this shift. When I studied printmaking at Faculty of Fine Art, University of Dhaka. I tried to embrace the fact that many of the printing processes I learnt were all steeped in tradition, but no matter what I tried, I never felt that the process fitted with what I wanted to achieve and communicate within my practice. While I was studying, I tried to experiment with mixing and matching various print making techniques and introducing found photography into my lithograph prints, although it was prohibited in our academy at that time, so in parallel to my studies, I continued my own experimental art practice. ES: So, printmaking did not allow you to communicate what you wanted to get across to your audience? Did this change at all after you graduated and had more freedom with the way you were able to work? MRC: Even after graduating I was never really convinced that printmaking would give me the tools to communicate what I wanted through my practice. The sensibility of printmaking was a way to develop my ideas, but the outcome always became something else, like a form of assemblage, or an installation. During my study, I became interested in the moving image—especially the genres of psychedelic and experimental film—and wanted to explore them in my practice. Later, after graduation, I also began to experiment with performance, photography, collage, object sculpture and video installation. These multiple approaches helped steer my practice into the direction it has taken today. ES: Do you still make prints now? MRC: I love woodcarving, and I did begin working in this way during my graduation but my lifestyle doesn’t allow me to practice like this anymore. Its partly for this reason, and the limitations of the media itself, which have moved my practice in a very different directioN. ES: Your practice today is interdisciplinary and embraces installation and many other media. How do you decide what media you want to work with? Do you keep objects of interest to you in stock that you feel you might use later, or you source everything after you have devised an idea for a project? MRC: My work has always been sensitive to the time and space in which I create it so my processes are never fixed and I allow my intuition to guide me when developing new works. I usually find an object which forms the basis of an idea which I then begin to ‘open-up’ through my working processes to explore its core subject in greater depth I only ever select objects that appeal to me, a process which is very subjective as the same object might not appeal to others in the same way it does to me, making the process very much about my connection to the objects I work with. ES: Where do you go to source your materials? Is there anywhere particular where you feel more inspired? MRC: I find my materials in all sorts of places but generally I never go looking for things as I tend to just come across things as I go about my daily tasks, making most of the objects I source ephemeral. For one of my more recent projects I collected a lot of boxes over the period of Ramadan. The boxes contained oranges which had been imported from Egypt, but I was drawn in by the striking logo on the front of the box. Ramadan was the only time that the boxes had been in stock in my local market. As I was already familiar with the store owners, I took the time to talk to them and gained a lot of information about how the boxes had come from Egypt to Bangladesh, making me question the ideas of globalisation and international trade and how these matters might affect the everyday person. This formed the foundation for a new work which I am still developing the work in my studio now. ES: So the conversations that you have with other people as you develop your ideas are also a key part of your working process? MRC: In my project The Soul Who Fails to Fly into the Space (2017), which I exhibited during the Dhaka Art Summit, the chairs on which the television was placed were rented from a local company in Dhaka. The man who owned the company was very open and welcoming towards me, and he was very excited to be playing a small part in my project. But when he showed the chairs to me, every chair had a very shiny sticker of his company logo placed prominently in the centre of the back rest, which wasn’t part of how I’d originally envisaged the work. I thought about it all night but slowly realised that I couldn’t remove the logos, as the interactions between us had helped us to build a relationship of respect, a love that had an impact on my decision making and led to me keeping the logos as they were and allowing in the unexpected. In the end, the logo fitted magically on that installation. All the interactions and discussions that I have with the people I meet during my working process are very important to me and often influence my work in positive ways. The curator, Simon Castets also played an important role while installing the works as we discussed at length about how my work could respond to the space to create a more meditative and playful exhibit. ES: Since arriving in London for your residency at the Delfina Foundation have you started work on any new projects? or is there anything that you are working on now? MRC: I lived in London previously back in 2014 when my wife was undertaking her MA. During that time, I was struck by how many road signs there were and I began taking photos of the streets. I had began working on a project called Land, and now I am back in London for this residency, I have had a chance to restart and develop the ideas I was working on further. While I have been here, I visited the National History Museum and I saw that they had analysed Bangladesh by looking at the structure of our land, particularly our rivers, and the types of our soil. What interested me most about this display, was seeing how Bangladesh is divided by a tectonic plate that goes through the centre of the country which means that my native land could, at some point in the future, be shifted by nature dispelling the concept of land that we conventionally perceive through mapping. Overall, I am more interested in the land inside us, our spirituality and how this connects us to the cosmos and defines who we are and which land we ultimately belong to. SAF: After you have finished your residency at Delfina Foundation and return to Dhaka, what’s next for you? Do you have any upcoming exhibitions or are you planning to work on any new projects? MRC: It’s a big question, currently I’m a little overwhelmed by the spotlight of winning the Samdani Art Award and having many curators and fellow artists wanting to meet me, but it has been a great opportunity to develop my network which I know will be helpful in moving forward with my career. I am very thankful to Samdani Art Foundation and Delfina Foundation for establishing such a valuable platform for young artist in Bangladeshi artists. While I have been here, I’ve had the time and space to open up new critical perspectives on my practice and developed my approach to research and new projects. After developing them further in Dhaka, I am hopeful to show them in exhibitions soon.

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 A BEAST, A GOD, AND A LINE | TS1 YANGON CURATED BY COSMIN COSTINAS 6-24 JUNE 2018 | TS1, YANGON Dhaka Art Summit 2018 exhibition, A beast, a god, and a line travelled to TS1 in Yangon for its third iteration, featuring many works commissioned by the Samdani Art Foundation as part of the exhibition's initial edition during DAS 2018. This exhibition was organised by the Samdani Art Foundation in collaboration with Para Site, Hong Kong and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Installation image of A beast, a god, and a line at TS1, Yangon. Courtesy of TS1. Photo credit: Pyinsa Rasa.

ALL PROJECTS Critical Writing Ensemble Curated By Katya García-Antón, Antonio Cataldo, Diana Campbell, Chandrika Grover And Bhavna Kakar PREFACE “to reshape some histories, to bring back the forgotten others, to reassess and alter the already hazily known, to redefine some standards of writing and our understanding, thoughts and feelings of an era lost. More importantly, to allow this man to breathe his words […] Memory, collectively lost, can now be somewhat regained.” These thoughts are taken from the last pages of the publication The Art Critic dedicated to the Burmese born, India based critic and artist Richard Bartholomew. The words come from Bartholomew´s son Pablo, and they eloquently comment on the power of his father’s archive, in particular his writing, to critically build different pasts. Bartholomew’s thoughts do more than address the urgent need to fortify the interlinking of art historical narratives - many forgotten or simply unknown - within the South Asia region, but they inspire us to consider their impact beyond it. And they do more, since they demand that we persevere in new ways of nurturing critique that will strengthen regional histories of immense richness to the world. To do so we must nurture structures of empowerment, knowledge sharing and production, within which micro-histories will not just claim their place within macro-histories but also contribute to their revitalisation. It is on the wings of this impulse that Diana Campbell Betancourt, Artistic Director of the Dhaka Art Summit, together with Katya García-Antón, Director and Curator of OCA, Office of Contemporary Art Norway, Chandrika Grover Ralleigh, Head of Liaison Office India of the Swiss Arts Council – Pro Helvetia, and Bhavna Kakar, Director of Take on Art Magazine are launched the CRITICAL WRITING ENSEMBLE as part of the Dhaka Art Summit 2016. The project was curated by Katya García-Antón, Director and Curator of OCA, with the collaboration of Antonio Cataldo, Senior Programmer of OCA. Research into the processes and structures that could help to empower writers today has been a part of the curatorial practice of Katya García-Antón in recent years. She was commissioned by Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council in 2012-13 to devise a programme for the discussion and activation of critical art writing in Switzerland involving cross-generation peers across the linguistic regions and traditions of the country. CWE has drawn from this valuable experience, repositioning previous thoughts and posing new questions within the context of the Dhaka Art Summit, as well as the histories and currencies of the South Asia region. CWE took a cross-regional approach and was developed in collaboration with Bhavna Kakar, who in addition to convening with the peers in Dhaka, also developed CWE-1 in an official partnership with Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, by organising a series of discussions and workshops amongst regional peers during the month of December 2015 in the lead-up to CWE II at the Summit. Finally, in 2017, CWE will be developed as a further iteration within the context of Nordic Europe through a programme held in OCA, Oslo. CWE therefore brings together peers from the South Asia region and across the globe, into different working constellations to share writing histories and knowledge with each other, experiment together, and produce new critical impulses regarding art writing, which will be compiled in a specially dedicated publication with wide international distribution. Such an endeavour is positioned within a local therefore as much as a global framework, in more ways than one, for not only is this a project of some urgency regionally, it reminds us of the fact the crisis is a global one. Art writing has for some time endured challenges which vary in nature across the world. In some parts there are fewer places in which to write critically and experimentally about art and art history, there is less and less financing for this, there is less and less time; in others whilst platforms for writing may actually be on the rise, their value and impact has declined. Writing is by nature a lonely endeavour, but under these conditions, art writing is being pushed to the margins and alienated from the central and critical position it should have in our societies, as will the immediate contact it should have with our audiences. If this decline continues, art histories around the world will homogenise and the immense richness and diversity of our cultures, essential to rewrite and re-imagine present and past histories, will lose their critical edge as the very voices that should build it, which should experiment it and reinvent it, disappear over time. STRUCTURAL SUMMARY CWE seeks to foster a community of art writing peers working together. Breaking the isolation that characterises much writing practice, the platform hopes to create a lively environment for intellectual exchange. CWE seeks to connect art writers experience and knowledge of regional and national writing histories, across the South Asian region and other regions globally. CWE II seeks to develop these relations through a four-day platform of presentations, panel discussions, lecture performances, group debates and readings, within the context of the Dhaka Art Summit, its exhibitions and talks programmes. CWE views art writing as a practice in its own right. Writing in general is strongly shaped by the contexts in which it is practiced and where it appears, and so the platform will consider discussing writing in a variety of historical and formal contexts. CWE counted on access to the Asia Art Archive that was on site in Dhaka. CWE will publish the material presented during, and derived from these sessions and distribute it internationally by Mousse Publishing. The publication will include a variety of contributions from all peers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=ADjtyZHRC10 Session 1 Discussion, part 2 Al Fresco – Writing Within and Against the Art School Date: 3 February 2016, 3.30pm Venue: 3rd Floor Auditorium, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy With Yin Ker, Filipa Ramos, Shukla Sawant, Chus Martínez, Anshuman Das Gupta, moderated by Katya García-Antón and Antonio Cataldo https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=ichWlJfgo7U Session 1 Discussion, part 2 Al Fresco – Writing Within and Against the Art School Date: 3 February 2016, 3.30pm Venue: 3rd Floor Auditorium, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy With Yin Ker, Filipa Ramos, Shukla Sawant, Chus Martínez, Anshuman Das Gupta, moderated by Katya García-Antón and Antonio Cataldo https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=DvcAfgmHU5s Rebranding Mesopotamia: The Inextinguishable Fire by Övül Durmusoglu Date: 7 February 2016, 12.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Turkish curator and writer Övül O. Durmusoglu will focus on the flow of information which builds our disjointed everyday life to address the reality of war and its virtual manifestations. Starting with the reading of contemporary cinematic and installative propositions she asks questions which are immanent upon us – Where did Daesh come from? How did the migrant population increase in Europe? Or, how did the populist right-wing Pegidas movement against non-Muslims and immigrants in Germany, started in Dresden, draw thousands of participants in 2014? – to morph on our future from within and outside the arts. Övül O. Durmusoglu is a curator and writer. She is the director/curator of YAMA screen in Istanbul. She works as a curatorial advisor to Gulsun Karamustafa's monograph in Hamburger Bahnhof in 2016. She also co-leads 'Solar Fantastic’, a research and publication project between Mexico and Turkey. Durmusoglu has recently curated 'Future Queer', the 20th year anniversary exhibition for Kaos GL association in Istanbul. In the past, she acted as the curator of the festival Sofia Contemporary 2013 titled as 'Near, Closer, Together: Exercises for a Common Ground'. She organised different programmes and events as a Goethe Institute fellow at Maybe Education and Public Programs for dOCUMENTA (13). https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=36jmfF3k7VQ Indian Printed Matters after Independence by Devika Singh Date: 8 February 2016, 12.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy This presentation by Paris-based art historian and curator Devika Singh (who is currently writing a book on artistic practices in India between 1947 and 1991) takes the title of this session on ‘printed matter’ as a point of departure to discuss a moment when art reviews were a critical site of transaction in India between the public sphere and contemporary art currents. For writers of the immediate post-independence period, few issues mattered more than the relation between India and the outside. Opinionated and polemical, writings on art contributed to debates on the nature of art and its dialogue with history and ideas of the nation. Commenting on Indian art of the 1950s in the pages of the review MARG in 1967, Jaya Appaswamy described this changing decade as an opening onto the world, from ‘local nationalistic idioms to a world international language’. Using the first years of MARG as a central example, the presentation explores this period of radical reconfiguration to ask what its internationalism amounted to and how we can make sense of it today. Devika Singh is an art historian, critic and curator based in Paris and an affiliated scholar at the Centre of South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge. She holds a PhD in the History of Art from the University of Cambridge. Singh was the Smuts Research Fellow at Cambridge (2012-2015) and has held fellowships at the French Academy at Rome (Villa Medici), the Freie Universität, Berlin, and the John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, Washington DC. She has published extensively in catalogues, art magazines and journals, including frieze, Art Press, Art Asia Pacific, Art History and Modern Asian Studies and is currently writing a book on art in post-independence India for Reaktion Books. She is also curating several exhibitions on photography in India. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=-8kbn1L33eY Letters– ‘The long awaited morn’ by Salima Hashmi Date: 4 February 2016, 12.30pm Venue: 3rd Floor Auditorium, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Artist, cultural writer, activist and founding Dean of School of Visual Arts at the Beaconhouse National University at Lahore Salima Hashmi, will read and comment letters of her father Faiz Ahmed Faiz to address the power of the epistolary form as a critical tool for resistance. Salima Hashmi is an artist, curator and contemporary art historian. Professor Hashmi was the founding Dean of the School of Visual Art and Design at Beaconhouse National University, Lahore; she taught at the National College of Arts (NCA) Lahore for 31 years and was also Principal of the College for four years. Salima Hashmi has written extensively on the arts. Her book Unveiling the Visible- Lives and Works of Women Artists of Pakistan was published in 2002, and Memories, Myths, Mutations – Contemporary Art of India and Pakistan, co-authored with Yashodhara Dalmia for Oxford University Press, India, was published in 2006. She has recently edited The Eye Still Seeks – Contemporary Art of Pakistan for Penguin Books India in 2014. In addition, Salima Hashmi curated ‘Hanging Fire’: an exhibition of Pakistani Contemporary Art for Asia Society Museum, New York in 2009, which was accompanied by an extensive catalogue. The Government of Pakistan awarded her the President's Medal for Pride of Performance for Art Education in 1999. And the Australian Council of Art and Design Schools (ACUADS) nominated her as Inaugural International Fellow, for distinguished service to art and design education in 2011.She is a practicing artist and has participated in many group exhibitions and has had six solo exhibitions at a national and international level. She is Council Member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=LTtZl1RFRnc Dislocating Authority in a Colonial Art School: critical interventions of a “native” insider by Dr Shukla Sawant Date: 3 February 2016, 4.00pm Venue: 2rd Floor Auditorium, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Focusing on the autobiography, periodical columns and official reports written by Madhev Vishwanath Dhurandhar (1867–1944), a ‘native’ art educator and administrator within the colonial bureaucracy of the Bombay Presidency, the presentation will examine the curricular interventions and nuanced resistance offered by him through his arguments published in English and Marathi to address different language publics. In contrast to the colonial era education policy that insisted on a revivalist typology rendered through language of academic rigor and directed towards design education for the ‘natives,’ Dhurandhar, who was to rise to the position of the headmaster of the venerable Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy School of Art, while adhering to academic means, was to make his career primarily as an independent ‘History Painter,’ illustrator and landscapist. While Santiniketan’s credentials as a site of Tagore’s resistance project have been dealt with extensively in art historical writing in India, the everyday opposition of figures entangled in colonial institutional structures have received little attention. With her presentation Jawaharlal Nehru University Professor Shukla Sawant, based in Delhi, by drawing attention to rare archival material, hopes to further the discussion on the fissures in colonial structures of power that were chiseled out from within. Dr Shukla Sawant is a visual artist and Professor of Visual Studies, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi where she has taught since 2001. She is also currently visiting faculty at the Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai. Prior to joining JNU, Shukla Sawant taught for twelve years at the Department of Fine Arts and Art Education Jamia Millia Islamia New Delhi. After graduating in painting from the College of Art, New Delhi she specialised in printmaking at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and later went to the Slade School of Art and Centre for Theoretical Studies, London on a Commonwealth grant. Her research interests include modern and contemporary art, art in colonial India, photography, printmaking and new media. Shukla has ten solo shows to her credit and has published various catalogue essays and contributed chapters in books on Contemporary Indian Art. She is a founding member of the Indian Printmakers’ Guild and was a working group member of Khoj International Artists’ Association between 1998–2005. She has delivered lectures at the NGMA, New Delhi; University of Heidelberg, Germany; New School, New York and Brandeis University; and has participated in the 18th International Congress of Aesthetics, Beijing University, 2010. Her recent publications include: ‘Landscape Painting a Formal Inquiry’ in The Indian Quarterly, ‘A Question of Perspective’, The Indian Quarterly; ‘Instituting Artists’ Collectives: the Bangalore/Bengaluru Experiments with “Solidarity Economies”’, Journal of Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg University; ‘Out Of India: Landscape Painting Beyond the Picturesque Frame’ in Landscape Painting, the Changing Horizon, Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=_RAqGvaSzCU Art writing from below: Transversality in the country of mistranslation by Mustafa Zaman Date: 8 February 2018, 3.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Conceiving it as a site for raising and debating issues, Depart magazine’s editor Mustafa Zaman will offer the raison d’etre behind the art quarterly published from Dhaka, Bangladesh, whose principal aim is providing critical reinforcement to the burgeoning art scene of the country. Zaman will look at the state of art criticism in Bangladesh while simultaneously examining some of the crucial critical interventions as activities from below. Often subject to mistranslation in the artistic circuit, what some writings set in motion is a social/collective reaction, while others pass without notice. Thus, the coincidence of art as a critical praxis and art writing as a critique remains even more misunderstood. Born in 1968 Mustafa Zaman received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1989 from the Institute of Fine Arts (now, Faculty of Fine Arts), University of Dhaka. In the late 1990s Zaman started contributing art reviews to Observer Magazine, a weekly supplement of the daily Observer. He joined The Daily Star in 2002 and worked in the scope of a feature writer for Star Weekend Magazine for three years writing on a gamut of subject matters including art, literature and politics. He has contributed numerous art reviews and articles on major Bangladeshi artists to a number of vernacular dailies including Bhorer Kakoj and Prothom Alo. Zaman is now editor of Depart: a magazine launched in 2010 and focused on contemporary art from South Asia with special emphasis on the emerging art scene of Bangladesh. He has written numerous prefaces to exhibition catalogues of major Bangladeshi young artists. Zaman’s major curatorial efforts include ‘CrossOver’ (2011–2012), which occasioned two back-to-back workshops and exhibitions planned in collaboration with co-curator Sushma K Bahl, sponsored by Art & Bangladesh in Dhaka, and Art Mall in Delhi, with artists from India and Bangladesh as participants; two solo exhibitions in 2013 including ‘DeReal’ by Bahram, a rickshaw painter who crossed over to mainstream art circle, and ‘Gravity Free World’ by expatriate artist A Rahman; and lastly a retrospective exhibition in 2014 entitled ‘In(site)’ by Kazi Salahuddin Ahmed. As an artist Zaman had his first solo in 2002 where sourced image were placed alongside texts to interrogate the order of knowledge; his second solo showcased his large paintings on canvases in an exhibition in 2010, at Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts; and the third was a playful mix of two and three-dimensional works framed as a series of seemingly disparate yet thematically related conceptual pieces at Alliance Francaise in 2010. His most recent multimedia installations and interactive pieces were presented at Bengal Lounge in 2013, at a duo exhibition with fellow artist Rafiqul Shuvo, under the title ‘Automated Subjectivity’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=6LGTHllpTLY Aunohita Mojumdar Date: 8 February 2018, 11.30am Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Mojumdar, editor of Himal Magazine, Kathmandu, will speak about the responsibility of the writer and the theatre of war by bringing to light stories of everyday reality in territories of conflict and violence. Aunohita Mojumdar is the Nepal-based editor of Himal Southasian: the region's only long-form independent print publication. She began her career as a freelance journalist in Delhi in the 1980s, and quickly moved onto explore the relationship between citizens and the state in Punjab and Kashmir. She worked for eight years in Afghanistan, writing on topics that ranged from the role of art in women's lives to the evolving social attitudes towards media, incarceration, and family planning. She has contributed to a wide variety of media that includes but is not limited to Eurasianet, Asia Times, Himal Southasian, The Guardian, The Christian Science Monitor, NRC Handelsblad (Dutch), Sydsvenska (Swedish), Al Jazeera, Times of India and Hindustan Times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=OQ7WMzeVhmw The Artist’s Apostrophe by Mike Sperlinger Date: 8 February 2016, 2.30pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy One of the features of recent discussions of art has been the proliferation of the possessive artist's apostrophe, in phrases like ‘artists’ moving image’ or ‘artists' writing’. Thinking about the phrase ‘artists’ writing,’ Professor of Theory and Writing at The Academy of Fine Art, KHiO (Oslo, Norway), Mike Sperlinger, will briefly examine some of the practices, histories and institutional dilemmas concealed by that seemingly innocuous grammatical mark – for example, what kind of relationship between the fields of art and writing does it imply? And who is really in charge of making this kind of attribution – to whom does the possessive apostrophe itself really belong? To do that Sperlinger will present a few examples – in particular Tracks: a journal of artists’ writings, a little-known publication edited by the American sculptor Herbert George in the mid-1970s. Mike Sperlinger is Professor of Writing and Theory at The Academy of Fine Art Oslo. Before that, he worked for more than a decade at LUX: a London-based agency for artists working with the moving image, which he co-founded with Benjamin Cook in 2002. As a writer he has contributed to a variety of publications including Afterall, Art Monthly, Dot Dot Dot, frieze, Radical Philosophy and Texte zur Kunst, as well as catalogue texts for artists including Ed Atkins, Gerard Byrne and Hong-Kai Wang. He has edited publications including Afterthought: New Writing on Conceptual Art (2005) and Kinomuseum: Towards an Artists’ Cinema (2008). He has also curated a number of exhibitions, including ‘Let's Take Back Our Space’ (Focal Point Gallery, 2009) and a solo exhibition by Marianne Wex (Badischer Kunstverein, 2012); and he was the producer of the film Crippled Symmetries by the artist Beatrice Gibson, which won the Baloise Prize at Art Basel in 2015. He is currently working on a volume of selected writings by the late artist Ian White and an anthology of Tracks: a journal of writing by artists published in New York in the 1970s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=QdSbTbEODug The Art Critic by Rosalyn D’Mello Date: 4 February 2016, 2.30pm Venue: 3rd Floor Auditorium, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Mumbai based artist and writer Rosalyn D’Mello played a central role in the research that enabled the publication in 2012 of The Art Critic – a historic selection of the art writings of art critic, poet, writer, painter and photographer Richard Bartholomew (b. Tavoy, British Burma, 1926, d. Delhi, India, 1985). D’Mello will present a lecture performance addressing significant points in Bartholomew’s poetic and literary legacy, from the period of the 1950s up to the 1980s that offered an insider’s account of the little known story of Modern Indian Art. Rosalyn D’Mello is a widely published freelance art writer based in New Delhi. She was the Editor-in-Chief of BLOUIN ARTINFO India. She is a regular contributor to Vogue, Open, Mint Lounge, Art Review, and Art Review Asia. D’Mello was among five writers nominated for Forbes’s Best Emerging Art Writer Award in 2014 and was also nominated for the inaugural Prudential Eye Art Award for Best Writing on Asian Contemporary Art in 2014. She was the associate editor of The Art Critic, a 600+ page selection of the art writings of Richard Bartholomew from the 1950s to the early 1980s and was a member of the jury of the Prudential Eye Art Award 2015. Her first book, A Handbook For My Lover was published in 2015 by Harper Collins India. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=G8q5FiVYBqk On Curating Webjournal by Dorothee Richter Date: 8 February 2018, 12.30pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Drawing from recent research and from her work as an editor of the independent international journal OnCurating, Dorothee Richter, Head of Postgraduate Programme in Curating at the Zurich University of the Arts, Zurich, Switzerland, will discuss hybrid curatorial models to address experiences of working and writing across online and offline platforms. Dorothee Richter is head of the Postgraduate Programme in Curating and co-founder, with Susanne Clausen, of the Research Platform for Curatorial and Cross-disciplinary Cultural Studies, Practice-Based Doctoral Programme: a cooperation of the Postgraduate Programme in Curating and the Department of Fine Arts, University of Reading. From 1999 to the end of 2003, Richter was artistic director of the Künstlerhaus Bremen where she curated a discursive programme based on feminist issues, urban situations, power relation issues and institutional critique. In 2005 she initiated, in collaboration with Barnaby Drabble, the Postgraduate Studies Programme in Curating. In 2007 she organised the symposium ‘Re-Visions of the Display’ with Jennifer Johns and Sigrid Schade at the Migros Museum in Zurich; in 2010 the ‘Institution as Medium. Curating as Institutional Critique?’ symposium cooperation with Rein Wolfs; and in 2013 the symposium ‘Who is afraid of the public?’ at the ICA London, cooperating with Elke Krasny, Silvia Simoncelli and the University of Reading. She was curator of Fluxus Festival at Cabaret Voltaire in 2012, and worked as curator at the Museum Baerengasse in 2014. In 2008 she initiated the web-journal OnCurating.org and has been Publisher since. Her most recent publication is Fluxus. Kunst gleich Leben? Mythen um Autorschaft, Produktion, Geschlecht und Gemeinschaft (2012) and the new Internet platform www.on-curating.org which presents current approaches to critical curatorial practice. In 2013 she produced a film together with Ronald Kolb: Flux Us Now! Fluxus Explored with a Camera. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=M3m9AV-P8Kw What we left unfinished: Shahrazade in the archives by Mariam Ghani Date: 7 February 2016, 11.30am Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy NY-based artist Mariam Ghani will give a performative, part-text-based presentation of the audiovisual material of What We Left Unfinished – a long-term research, film, and dialogue project centered around five unfinished Afghan feature films shot, but never edited, between 1978 and 1992. Mariam Ghani is an artist, writer, filmmaker and teacher. Her research-based practice spans video, installation, photography, performance, and text. Her exhibitions and screenings include presentations at the Rotterdam, ‘CPH:DOX’ and ‘transmediale’ film festivals, the Sharjah and Liverpool Biennials, dOCUMENTA (13) in Kabul and Kassel, MoMA in New York, the National Gallery in Washington DC, the St. Louis Art Museum, and the CCCB in Barcelona. Recent texts have been published by Creative Time Reports, Foreign Policy, Ibraaz, Triple Canopy, and the Manifesta Journal. Ghani’s recent curatorial projects include the international symposium ‘Radical Archives’, the traveling film programme ‘History of Histories’ and the collaborative exhibition ‘Utopian Pulse’. Ghani has collaborated with artist Chitra Ganesh since 2004 with ‘Index of the Disappeared’: an experimental archive of post-9/11 detentions, deportations, renditions and redactions; with choreographer Erin Kelly since 2006 on the video series ‘Performed Places’; and with media archive collective Pad.ma since 2012 on the ‘Afghan Films’ online archive. Ghani has been awarded the NYFA and Soros Fellowships, grants from Creative Capital, Art Matters, the Graham Foundation, CEC ArtsLink, NYSCA, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation and the Experimental Television Center, and residencies at LMCC, Eyebeam Atelier, Smack Mellon, the Akademie Schloss Solitude, and NYU’s Asian/Pacific/American Institute. She holds a BA in Comparative Literature from NYU and an MFA from SVA. Ghani currently teaches in the Social Practice MFA programme at Queens College and is a Visiting Artist at the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=-QSvP6HoeT0 Forms of Address: personal testimony and public engagement by Geeta Kapur Date: 7 February 2016, 11.00am Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Art historian, curator, critic and an expert on contemporary art and theory, noted for her many accomplishments in curating and art criticism, Kapur will lecture on the importance of texts and documentation in witnessing and testimonials of the paradigmatic of the historical, political and ethical dilemmas of our times. Starting from her manuscript ‘Public Address: Citing Installation and Performance Art’ she will question the readability of texts in enhancing historical and political consciousness, and the fragility of such instances when annotating trauma, loss, and mourning. Geeta Kapur is a Delhi-based art critic and curator. Her essays on alternative modernisms, contemporary art practice and curatorial interventions in India and the global south are widely anthologised. Her books include Contemporary Indian Artists (1978), When Was Modernism: Essays on Contemporary Cultural Practice in India (2000), and Critic’s Compass: Navigating Practice (forthcoming 2016). Kapur's curatorial projects include survey exhibitions at the Lalit Kala Akademi and the National Gallery of Modern Art (Delhi and Mumbai). She co-curated the ‘Festival of India’ exhibition, ‘Contemporary Indian Art’, at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (1982); curated ‘Dispossession’, of Indian artists at the first Johannesburg Biennale (1995); co-curated ‘Bombay/ Mumbai’ for the multi-part exhibition, ‘Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis’, Tate Modern, London (2001); curated ‘subTerrain’, for the ‘ Body.City ’ project, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2003); co-curated ‘DiVerge: Crossing Generations’, Chemould40, 2003; and curated ‘Aesthetic Bind’, five exhibitions in Chemould50, Mumbai (2013–2014). Geeta Kapur has been a member of the International Jury for the biennials in Venice (2005), Dakar (2006), and Sharjah (2007); she was also on the Advisory Committee of Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2012–2013). She was a member of the Asian Art Council, Guggenheim Museum, New York (2007-2009 and 2014); and is currently on the Advisory Board, Asian Art Archive, Hong Kong (since 2009). A founder-editor of Journal of Arts & Ideas, she was on the Advisory Council of Third Text for two decades and is now on the Advisory Board of ArtMargin. She is an editorial advisor and Trustee of Marg. She has lectured in universities and museums worldwide and held Visiting Fellowships at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla; Clare Hall, University of Cambridge; Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Delhi; University of Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. She was awarded the Padmashri in 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=kV6MkX6YEoo Earth Poison: Environmental Writing as Militant Research by Nabil Ahmed Date: 7 February 2016, 2.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Artist, writer, curator, and team member of the Forensic Architecture research project based at Goldsmiths, University of London, Nabil Ahmed will deliver a lecture which combines video, performance and sound art to address the writing of the world as an accumulation of catastrophic events. Nabil Ahmed is an artist, writer and researcher. His transdisciplinary research explores contemporary status of nature in spatial relation to the law, conflict and development. More recently Ahmed has participated in the Taipei Biennale (2012), Cuenca Biennale (2014) and Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin where he has been part of the two-year ‘Anthropocene Project’ (2013-14) including the ‘Anthropocene Curriculum’ (with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin) that presented a range of artistic and theoretical approaches, concepts and experimental pedagogical projects addressing climate change and widespread environmental transformations. His writings have appeared in academic journals, magazines, and various art and architecture publications recently commissioned by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA), Third Text, Volume, Architecture and the Paradox of Dissidence (Routlege, 2014), Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth (Sternberg, 2014) and many others. Ahmed is co-founder of Call and Response, a sound art organisation based in London. He initiated the Earth Sensing Association – a research organisation for the diffusion of knowledge at the intersection of environmental change, conflict and cultural production. He holds a PhD from the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London with a doctoral thesis that charted hidden narratives and evidenced the coupling of human conflict with natural environments in Bangladesh and West Papua. He is a member of the ERC funded Forensic Architecture Project at Goldsmiths, which brings together architects, artists, filmmakers, activists, and theorists to undertake research that gathers and presents spatial analysis in legal and political forums. Ahmed is a lecturer at The Cass School of Architecture at London Metropolitan and has previously taught in the department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has been a guest critic at the Architecture Association, University of Westminster Faculty of Architecture and the Royal College of Art, London. He is a fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=3nhB4vTZQbE One foot in sea, and one on shore, To one thing constant never. by Chus Martínez Date: 3 February 2016, 12.30pm Venue: 2rd Floor Auditorium, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy In recent years Chus Martínez, curator and Head of the Institute of Art at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design, Basel, has reflected upon the relation between art practice, institutions and education in the years to come. For the Ensembles Martínez will give a talk on what she calls the ‘Metabolic Era.’ She will focus on the transformation of life through physical and mental ingestion—from diets to procrastination—and explore how such metabolic processes could potentially inform the future of art. Chus Martínez has a background in philosophy and art history. Currently she is the Head of the Institute of Art of the FHNW Academy of Arts and Design in Basel, Switzerland. Before she was the Chief Curator at El Museo del Barrio, New York, and dOCUMENTA (13) Head of Department and Member of Core Agent Group. Previously she was Chief Curator at MACBA, Barcelona (2008–11), Director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein (2005–08), and Artistic Director of Sala Rekalde, Bilbao (2002–05). For the 51st Biennale di Venezia (2005), Martínez curated the National Pavilion of Cyprus, and in 2008 she served as a Curatorial Advisor for the Carnegie International and in 2010 for the 29th Bienal de São Paulo. During her tenure as Director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein she curated solo exhibitions of Wilhelm Sasnal among others; and a series of group exhibitions including ‘Pensée Sauvage' and ‘The Great Game To Come’. She was also the founder of the Deutsche Börse Residency Program for international artists, art writers, and curators.While at MACBA Martínez curated the Thomas Bayrle retrospective, an Otolith Group monographic show, and an exhibition devoted to television, ‘Are you ready for TV?’. In 2008, Martínez was the curator of the Deimantas Narkevicius retrospective exhibition, ‘The Unanimous Life’, at the Museo de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, which travelled to major European museums. Martínez lectures and writes regularly including numerous catalogue texts and critical essays, and is a regular contributor to Artforum among other international art journals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=qXAC5J91_NY Bagyi Aung Soe (1923/24–1990): Attempts at a Tenable (Hi)Story of a 20th-Century Artist Straddling Nations, Traditions & Disciplines by Yin Ker Date: 3 February 2016, 3.00pm Venue: 3rd Floor Auditorium, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Ker, an educator and researcher on Southeast Asian and Buddhist art based in Singapore, will explore the legacy of Śāntiniketan pedagogy in the work of Burma’s most important exponent of modernist practice, painter Bagyi Aung Soe. Following his return to Yangon in 1952 and over the next three decades, through illustration, which, in place of the virtually inexistent gallery and museum, served as the site of avant-garde artistic experimentations, he examined the linguistic rationale of a plethora of pictorial idioms, ranging from the ukiyo-e to cubism. In innovating new idioms, his non-figurative illustrations published in Shumawa Magazine in January and February 1953 provoked a furore which saw traditionalists branding his art as ‘seik-ta-za-pangyi’, meaning psychotic or mad painting – an epithet that would become synonymous with Aung Soe’s works as well as modern art in general in Burma. Ker’s presentation will share the challenges of developing an adapted narrative of his art which defies the conventions of art and art history. Yin Ker owes her training to the University of Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV), INALCO (Paris) and the International Theravada Buddhist Missionary University (Yangon). Since 2000, she has been researching on Myanmar’s trailblazer of modern art, Bagyi Aung Soe (1923/24–1990). Her research interests also include the constructs of ‘art’ and ‘art history’ beyond the Euro-American canons; the intersections of ancient and modern methods of knowledge- and image-making; as well as innovatory ways of telling (hi)stories of Buddhist art. Yin Ker continues to paint and to investigate new modes of image-making in parallel with theoretical research within and beyond the discipline of art history. She currently teaches (Hi)stories of Arts from Southeast Asia; aesthetic manifestations of Buddhist devotion and practice; and ways of seeing and thinking about pictorial strategies from different parts of the world at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). She previously taught Art History at Nalanda University (Rajgir) and Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian Art at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (Singapore), and curated at the Singapore Art Museum (National Gallery Singapore). As an independent curator, writer and translator, Yin Ker worked on ‘Video, an Art, a History, 1965-2010’, a selection from the Centre Pompidou and Singapore Art Museum collections, ‘plAy: Art from Myanmar Today’ and ‘From Callot to Greuze: French Drawings from Weimar’. Her publications include ‘Kin Maung (Bank) and Bagyi Aung Soe: Two Models of ‘Modern’ Myanma Art and the Question of its Emergence’, in Modern Art Quarterly (Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 2014); ‘A Short Story of Bagyi Aung Soe in Five Images’ in Field Notes: Mapping Asia (Asia Art Archive, 2013); ‘L’ « art fou » ou l’art moderne birman selon les illustrations de Bagyi Aung Soe’ in La question de l’art en Asie orientale (Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2008); and ‘Modern Art According to Bagyi Aung Soe’ in Journal of Burma Studies (North Illinois University, 2006). https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=bisCgS3Q_U8 Borrowing your eyes, her words, my prose—the memoirs of a memory impaired by Filipa Ramos Date: 3 February 2016, 2.30pm Venue: 3rd Floor Auditorium, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Writer and Curator Filipa Ramos (currently editor of Art Agenda, London) will re-imagine traditional paedagogic formats, and standard exhibition review analysis, with a reading relating to an imaginary visit through exhibition we haven’t seen, but which we can experience through the eyes of an absent spectator. Filipa Ramos was born in Lisbon and is a writer and editor based in London. Currently she is Editor in Chief of art-agenda, commissioning and publishing experimental and rigorous writing on art. She is a lecturer in Art and Moving Image at the Experimental Film MA Programme of Kingston University, and at the MRes Art:Moving Image of Central Saint Martins/University of the Arts, both in London.Ramos is co-curator of ‘Vdrome’: an ongoing programme of screenings of films by visual artists and filmmakers, which she co-founded in 2013 with Edoardo Bonaspetti, Jens Hoffmann, and Andrea Lissoni. Previously she was Associate Editor of Manifesta Journal, curator of the Research Section of dOCUMENTA (13), and coordinator of ‘The Most Beautiful Kunsthalle in the World’ research project at the Antonio Ratti Foundation, Como. Interested in the ways in which art – and in particular moving-image based work – provides a site of encounter for humans and nonhumans, she has written, lectured, and curated exhibitions and film programmes on the topic and is currently editing an anthology of art writing on Animals, to be published this coming Autumn. She has been a guest curator at several public and private institutions and her writing has appeared in diverse journals and catalogues. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=hQiCgsIlz_8 Location Location Location by Sharmini Pereira Date: 8 February 2016, 2.00pm Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Pereira will discuss about her organisation Raking Leaves, a complex cosmogony of forms for commissioning and publishing artists' books based in Sri Lanka. During her presentation, Pereira will open up three specific projects, one with an artist from Sri Lanka and the other two with Pakistani artists, and she will address how Raking Leaves has catalysed in relation to the socio-political and art historical context of Sri Lanka. Sharmini Pereira is the director and founder of Raking Leaves: a leading non-profit independent publishing organisation. In 2013 she founded the Sri Lanka Archive of Contemporary Art, Architecture and Design in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. The archive collects materials in English, Sinhala, and Tamil and host talks, seminars and screenings related to its contents. She curated her first exhibition in Sri Lanka, ‘New Approaches in Contemporary Sri Lankan Art’ in 1994. Selected curatorial projects have included working as co-curator (Sri Lanka) for the Asia Pacific Triennale (1999), co-curator Singapore Biennale (2006), international guest curator Abraaj Capital Art Prize (2011), and as guest curator at Aga Khan Museum where she curated ‘The Garden Of Ideas – Contemporary Art from Pakistan’ (2014). Pereira's writing has appeared in Mousse Magazine, Guggenheim’s Online, Art Asia Pacific, Groundviews and Imprint amongst others. She is currently a nominator for the 2016 Anima/AGO Photography Prize and a judge for the 2017 Geoffrey Bawa Award for Architecture. She was born in 1970 and is based in Sri Lanka and New York. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=pHx6XqeUKac Towards 2019: The futurity of a location by Anshuman Das Gupta Date: 3 February 2016, 12.00pm Venue: 3rd Floor Auditorium, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Das Gupta, curator and faculty member of the Art History department in Kalabhavan, Śāntiniketan (Visva Bharati University) will discuss the singular approach of art paedagogy and its relation to text at Śāntiniketan as envisioned through its founder Rabindranath Tagore. Fostered through a pedagogical programme devised by Tagore’s right-hand man Nandalal Bose (1882–1966), Śāntiniketan represented the sum of ancient Indian theories of aesthetics, Tagore’s humanist and universalist ideals transcending demarcations of national borders, and the debates on nationalist and Pan-Asianist ideologies initiated by many a luminary in the orbit of the ashram: Okakura Kakuzō (1862–1913), Sister Nivedita (1867–1911), and Ananda Coomaraswamy (1877–1947). Śāntiniketan as a Location/ site has many acquired dimensions to it; and this presentation will also consider the Location / site through some of its receptions by current scholars and past participants thus producing a discursive horizon leading to many possible directions for its future, in particular when looking at its upcoming centenary year in 2019 and beyond. Anshuman Das Gupta is a curator and currently teaching faculty in the Art History department in Kalabhavan, Santiniketan (Visva Bharati University) and is affiliated with the Curatorial/Knowledge programme in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London as a PhD candidate. Born in 1967 in Kolkata, India, he graduated in Art History from Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, and received post-graduate degrees in Art History from the Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University, Baroda in 1990 and 1992 respectively. Das Gupta’s essays and seminar papers have been published in several journals and publications such as the Marg publications: Art and Visual Cultures in India 1857–2007 (2009), Akbar Padamsee (in Press, 2009) and Contemporary Indian Sculpture, among others. Das Gupta has taken up several curatorial assignments at various times, which include an exhibition organised by the French Embassy in Delhi on the birth centenary of Antonin Artaud in 1996; Khoj International Artists’ Workshop events in Bengal in 2006; the ‘Ramkinker Baij Centenary’ exhibition in Santiniketan in 2007 (for which occasion he also organised an international seminar); ‘Santhal Family: Positions Around an Indian Sculpture’ for the Museum of Contemporary Art, MuHKA, Antwerp (a collaborative curatorial venture) in 2008. He has participated in around thirty national and international seminars, including ‘Patterns of Reflection: Writing Contemporary Indian Art’ (2009, Santiniketan- Lalit kala and kala Bhavan), ‘Periphery’ in Guwahati, Assam (2009), MuHKA, Antwerp (2008), as well as a seminar organised by ZKM and MMB in Delhi (2008). He was a Joint-Convener, collaborator and speaker in Black House: an international collaboration between artists, curators and architects, with participants from CEPT (Ahmedabad), SPA (Delhi), HCU (Hyderabad) and Dhaka (2015). https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=5RgLrdifKF0 Mad heart, be brave by Nida Ghouse Date: 4 February 2016, 2.00pm Venue: 3rd Floor Auditorium, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Writer and curator Nida Ghouse has been researching the Soviet-funded multi-lingual Afro-Asian magazine Lotus: a forum for short stories, poetry, reviews of books and literary essays. Lotus was a quarterly magazine that for its time was a ground-breaking literary/artistic cum political expression. The writers of the journal placed themselves in relationship to the broader social and political mechanism of imperial powers. Youssef el Sebai, was the journal’s first editor, and the journal came out of the Afro-Asian Writer’s Association, a group of African and Asian writers who spoke a multitude of languages and how met in Tashkent in 1958. Ten years later this organisation launched a journal called Afro-Asian Writings, which would go on to become Lotus. Lotus was published in Cairo and Beirut and was produced tri-lingually in Arabic, English and French. Nida Ghouse is a writer and a curator, and is currently Director of Mumbai Art Room. She has worked institutionally as co-curator for the Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation in 2010; as assistant curator for the Sharjah Biennial in 2011; and as associate curator for the Abraaj Group Art Prize in 2014. Ghouse's curatorial projects include the ‘Kharita Symposium on Urban Trajectories with Pericentre Projects’, ‘Untitled Exhibition #1 ’ with Padmini Chettur and the Clark House Initiative, ‘14 Proper Nouns’ with Hassan Khan at the Delfina Foundation, ‘In the Desert of Images’ with Melik Ohanian at the Mumbai Art Room, and ‘La presencia del sonido' at the Botín Foundation in Santander. Her ongoing projects include ‘Acoustic Matters’, supported by the India Foundation for the Arts, and ‘Emotional Architecture’, the first publication of which, launched in 2014, We, started by calling it a summer of two fires and a landslide and whose second publication No Fantasy without Protest was published in Cairo in October 2015. Ghouse’s essays and interviews have appeared in publications such as Arab Studies Journal, ArtAsiaPacific, ArteEast, ArtSlant, Bidoun, Ibraaz, and MadaMasr, and in exhibition catalogues of MuKHA in Antwerp, the New Museum in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Palazzo Grassi in Venice and the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. She was the first recipient of the FICA-Delfina Research Fellowship in partnership with Iniva and Goldsmiths Curatorial/Knowledge PhD programme in London in 2011, and was a resident at Fondazione Spinola Banna per l'Arte in partnership with the Resò3 programme in Turin in 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=iD69LncJLyQ A Letter From the People by Chantal Pontbriand Date: 4 February 2016, 3.00pm Venue: 3rd Floor Auditorium, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Curator, critic and Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto, Chantal Pontbriand will discuss how writing, editing, publishing, curating words as well as works are a continuous process in her work that seeks not to make fiction out of reality but to try to see in-between what words and reality have to offer. This way of working and of seeing is closely related to what she thinks the most relevant art practices have to offer. Pontbriand says: ‘Art or art writing is an on-going investigation into the world today and its issues, socio-political as well as individual. Art has relevance if it succeeds in articulating issues, what is to be worked through in order to go beyond what is known, categorized or classified. Art is the unknown. As such, it is of relevance, in producing knowledge, in advancing knowledge. As such, art writing functions as an open letter. A letter which seeks to understand the world and propose that interpretation to others. It should not be however a letter to the people, but taking the form of an investigation, a mapping of emerging ideas, concepts and forms, it is in that sense a “letter from the people”. Our task is not to dictate a pre-formated way of thinking, but to be enabling, in the sense that we, together with others, as this cannot be done alone, seek to see what lies in-between, as that which lies ahead.’ Chantal Pontbriand is a contemporary art curator and critic whose work is based on the exploration of questions of globalisation and artistic heterogeneity. She has curated numerous international contemporary art events: exhibitions, international festivals and international conferences, mainly in photography, video, performance, dance and multimedia installation. She was a founder of PARACHUTE contemporary art magazine in 1975 and acted as publisher/editor until 2007, publishing 125 issues. After curating several major performance events and festivals, she co-founded the FIND (Festival International de Nouvelle Danse), in Montreal and was president and director from 1982–2003. She was appointed Head of Exhibition Research and Development at Tate Modern in London in 2010 and founded PONTBRIAND W.O.R.K.S. [We_Others and Myself_Research_ Knowledge_Systems] in 2012. In 2015, she was appointed CEO-Director of MOCA, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Toronto, and curator and advisor of Demo-Graphics 1 (Greater Toronto Area, May-July 2017).In 2013, she received the Governor General of Canada Award for an Outstanding Contribution in the Visual and Media Arts, in 2014, an Honorary Doctorate from Concordia University, Montreal, and the distinction of Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres in France (Officer of the Arts and Letters Order of France). Most recent exhibitions include: ‘I See Words, I Hear Voices, Dora Garcia’, The Power Plant, Toronto; ‘Mark Lewis Above and Below’, Le Bal, Paris, 2015; ‘PER/FORM: How To Do Things with[out] Words’, CA2M, Madrid; ‘The Yvonne Rainer Project’, Jeu de Paume, Centre d’art de la Ferme du Buisson, and Palais de Tokyo, Paris; ‘Photography Performs: The Body as the Archive’, Centre de photographie d’Île-de-France (CPIF); co-curated with Agency, ‘Dora Garcia, Of Crimes and Dreams’, Darling Foundry, Montreal, 2014; ‘Higher Powers Command’, Lhoist Collection, 2010; ‘HF|RG [Harun Farocki | Rodney Graham]’, Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2009. Recent publications include: Mutations, Perspectives on Photography, Steidl/Paris Photo, 2011; The Contemporary, The Common: Art in A Globalizing World, Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2013; PER/FORM: How To Do Things with[out] Words, CA2M/Sternberg Press, Madrid/Berlin, 2014; PARACHUTE : The Anthology, JRP/Ringier, Zurich, 2012-2015 (4 Volumes). https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=zBjWJXtoHSU Readings from Anthology: Essays or Poems, a book in process by Quinn Latimer Date: 4 February 2016, 11.30am Venue: 3rd Floor Auditorium, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Latimer is an American poet and writer based in Basel and Athens, and currently editor-in-chief of publications for documenta 14. Her work pays special attention to the literary format of the letter as a space of criticality and community occasioned by the intimacies of its address. In this session she will read from and discuss the work that comprises Anthology – a forthcoming collection of critical prose, poetry, and more hybrid texts that move between genre, and pull from history letters and fiction. She will specifically explore the form and function of the refrain, its serial ecstasies and political possibilities. Quinn Latimer is an American poet, critic, and editor based in Basel and Athens. She is the author of Rumored Animals (2012); Sarah Lucas: Describe This Distance (2013); and Film as a Form of Writing: Quinn Latimer Talks to Akram Zaatari (2014). A regular contributor to Artforum and a contributing editor to frieze, her writing also appears in recent publications for Michel Auder, Ida Ekblad, Daniel Gustav Cramer, Joan Jonas, Julia Wachtel, Kelley Walker, and in Time, for MIT Press. Her writings, readings, and video collaborations have been featured widely, including at Chisenhale Gallery, London; Serpentine Galleries, London; CRAC Alsace, Altkirch, France; the German Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale, Italy; Kunsthalle Zurich, Switzerland; and Qalandia International, Ramallah/Jerusalem. Additionally, Latimer is coeditor of No Core: Pamela Rosenkranz (2012); Paul Sietsema: Interviews on Films and Works (2012); Olinka, or Where Movement Is Created (2013); and Stories, Myths, Ironies, and Other Songs: Conceived, Directed, Edited, and Produced by M. Auder (2014). A Pushcart Prize nominee and a recipient of an Arts Writing Grant from Creative Capitol/Warhol Foundation, Latimer has taught and lectured at Geneva’s Haute école d’art et de design (HEAD); FHNW Academy of Art and Design, Basel; and The Banff Centre, in Alberta, Canada. She is currently Editor-in-Chief of Publications for documenta 14. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=yJrIZftS9cw Metabolistic Writing by Maria Lind Date: 7 February 2016, Venue: 2nd Floor Seminar Room, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Drawing from her curatorial research on abstraction, and from a number of texts by various intellectuals and artists, Maria Lind, Director of Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm, and Artistic Director of the 2016 Gwangju Biennale, has analysed how in the past few decades economic abstraction was primarily dealt with by art as a subject matter or theme which increasingly mirrored the economic, social and political condition of the world. She also analysed how this system affects spatial and temporal concepts, and the writing of a future within it. In Dhaka, Lind is taking as a starting point the writing of Keller Easterling, Paul B Preciado and Matias Faldbakken, to talk about ‘metabolistic writing.’ Such an approach implies digesting and in other ways dealing with specific material at the same time as the process of writing and the use of language make up a performative and generative way of producing text. Maria Lind has been the Director of the Tensta Konsthall since 2011 and was appointed as the Artistic Director for the 11th Gwangju Biennale 2016. She was the director of the graduate programme at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College from 2008-10. Before that, she was the director of lASPIS in Stockholm (2005–07) and the director of the Munich Kunstverein (2002–04). Previous to that she was the curator at Moderna Museet in Stockholm (from 1997–2001) and in 1998 co-curated Manifesta 2, Europe’s nomadic biennial of contemporary art. Responsible for the ‘Moderna Museet Projekt', Lind worked with artists on a series of 29 commissions that took place in a temporary project-space, or within or beyond the Museum in Stockholm. She is currently a professor of research at the Art Academy in Oslo. In terms of publications, she is the co-editor of the following books: Curating with Light Luggage (2005) and Collected Newsletter; Taking the Matter into Common Hands: Collaborative Practices in Contemporary Art (2007); European Cultural Policies 2015; and The Greenroom: Reconsidering the Documentary and Contemporary Art (2008). Lind’s recent co-edited publications include Contemporary Art and Its Commercial Markets: A Report on Current Conditions and Future Scenarios (2012); Performing the Curatorial: With and Beyond Art (2012); and Art and the F Word: Reflections on the Browning of Europe (2015), all with Sternberg Press. She edited Abstraction as part of MIT’s and Whitechapel Gallery’s series ‘Documents on Contemporary Art’. In 2010 a selection of Maria Lind’s essays, Selected Maria Lind Writing, spanning from 1997-2010, was published by Sternberg Press, edited by Brian Kuan Wood. Furthermore, Maria Lind won the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement in 2009 and was a board member of IKT from 2006–2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpE5N73vV6zBViNX_wDTX9Xv4tpX-5to7&v=zYfKA0Ughoo Notes on Process: Writing a Life by Belinder Dhanoa (Read by Sabih Ahmed in Belinder’s absence) Date: 4 February 2018, 11.00am Venue: 3rd Floor Auditorium, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Dhanoa is a writer and an artist, and currently teaches Creative Writing at the School of Culture and Creative Expression at the Ambedkar University, Delhi. With a brief introduction on her singular approach to the writing of a life, Dhanoa will read excerpts from the script she wrote for artist Vivan Sundaram’s exhibition-as-play 409 Ramkinkars that opened in Delhi in the spring of 2015. The performative exhibition paid homage to one of India’s most charismatic artist, Ramkinkar Baij, and his work as innovator of sculptural form in the space, revisiting the creative milieu of sculptor-painter-scenographer-theatre artist Baij. Sabih is an art historian and currently a Senior Researcher at Asia Art Archive (AAA). With AAA, he has overseen numerous research initiatives pertaining to modern art which include putting together personal archives, digitisation projects, and bibliography compilations of vernacular art writing. Ahmed is stationed in New Delhi and has co-organised and participated in workshops and conferences in various institutions that include the Clark Art Institute Massachusetts, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Jaffna University, and Jawaharlal Nehru University among others.His recent writings have been published in volumes such as the Sarai Reader and Marg Publications, and he also delivers lectures on art and technology in Ambedkar University's School of Culture and Creative Expression in New Delhi. Sabih’s research interests include institutional histories of art, and in particular the shaping of the art field through second half of 20th century with changes in infrastructures, technologies, and shifting centres of authority.

ALL PROJECTS A Utopian Stage Curated by Vali Mahlouji The Festival of Arts, Shiraz-Persepolis was an arts and performance festival held in Iran every summer between 1967-77, in and around the city of Shiraz and the ancient ruins of Persepolis. Taking place during a time of radical shifts in global narratives and power dynamics – at the height of the Cold War, and in the wake of rapid decolonisation – the festival facilitated a unique and transformative crucible of artistic possibility: simultaneously apart from, and in response to, its time. The festival introduced artists and expressions from the Global South into international cultural discourse on an unprecedented scale, radically dismantling the dominant hierarchies. After Iran, the most highly represented region was South Asia, re-invigorating strong but dormant cultural ties with countries like India, Bangladesh and Afghanistan which has been severed through colonial rule. In the immediate aftermath of decolonisation, Shiraz-Persepolis would shift the cultural centre of gravity towards the re-emerging ‘other’ – consciously attempting to bypass the hierarchies and conventions of the European cultural terrain. Domestically, the festival also opened up a transgressively liberal space within a politically restrictive Iran, after the CIA-organised coup d’état of 1953. In 1977, the Festival of Arts, Shiraz-Persepolis was declared decadent by religious decree, and since the Iranian revolution of 1979, materials associated with the festival have been removed from public access: the materials in this exhibited during DAS 2018 remaining officially banned in Iran. A Utopian Stage unearthed archival materials, audio recordings and film footage to articulate and appraise the implications of this decade-long episode in the 20th century’s artistic narrative. In doing so, this exhibition shed light on the aspirations and contradictions of a contentious historical moment, and addressed the notion of a collective, hyper-modernist, arena of experimentation that remains a high watermark of modernist ambition. thrust open the heavens and start anew - Festival of Arts, Shiraz-Persepolis Excavated Archives Archaeology of the Final Decade (AOTFD) has unearthed archival materials, audio recordings and film footage, which documents the revolutionary spirit of the Festival, and was displayed for the first time in Asia during the Dhaka Art Summit 2018. AOTFD considers the Festival’s landscape to be one of the most revolutionary multi-disciplinary artistic crucibles of any commissioning platform witnessed around the world - its cultural perspectives being one of the major unresolved artistic enigmas of late modernism. A Utopian Stage revealed a kaleidoscopic range of performances in music, drama and dance presented and commissioned by the Festival, with a focus on Asian and African contributions, alongside the significant presence of the international avant-garde. Through these materials, A Utopian Stage aimed to articulate and appraise the implications of this decade-long episode in the 20th century’s artistic narrative, addressing the notion of a universalist arena of modernist aspiration and experimentation. below the levels where differences appear - Performance Programme During the Dhaka Art Summit 2018, below the levels… drew upon the music, theatre, dance and politics that informed the utopian aspirations and contradictions of the original festival, with contributions by Hassan Khan, Goshka Macuga with Vali Mahlouji, Silas Riener (Merce Cunningham Trust), Reetu Sattar, Yasmin Jahan Nupur with Santal performers and Lalon Baul singers. For full details of below the levels... programme and performers, click here. to be free is to lose sight of the shore - Film Programme Throughout the Dhaka Art Summit 2018, Archaeology of the Final Decade curated an eclectic selection of films, which echoed and reflected the themes at the heart of A Utopian Stage , both aesthetically and politically, from the revolutionary to the existential. The programme conflated artist and feature films, video documentations of live performances and historical documentaries to realise an ambivalent, universal stage where impulses could flourish. Invited artists and filmmakers included Reza Abdoh, Larry Achiampong and David Blandy, Ashish Avikunthak, Shezad Dawood, Rose English, Rose Finn-Kelcey, William Greaves, Isaac Julien, Mikhail Kalatozov, Lindsay Kemp, William Klein, Lala Rukh, Goshka Macuga, Simon Moretti, Sergei Parajanov, Gillo Pontecorvo, Ousmane Sembène, Shuji Terayama, and Stan VanDerBeek, among others. beyond the bounds on the other side - A Timeline In Zone 1 of A Utopian Stage , a fragmented history of the 20th century was conjured through the ambitions and contradictions of countless utopian universalist episodes and ideals: transcendental internationalisms, radical liberations, emancipating solidarities. By the middle of the last century, the demise of the old European empires revealed a new horizon of opportunities and encounters for people and cultures across the world. This timeline served as an evocation of the constantly evolving dreams and possibilities that emerged and dissolved during the period.

The Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) is an international, non-commercial research and exhibition platform for art and architecture related to South Asia. With a core focus on Bangladesh, DAS re-examines how we think about these forms of art in both a regional and an international context. PARTNERS TEAM The 2nd edition of the Dhaka Art Summit unfolded from February 7 to 9, 2014 at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy. Marking a strategic shift, the Summit decided to concentrate its focus on South Asia starting from this edition. DAS 2014 showcased a diverse array of programs, including five curatorial exhibitions by both international and Bangladeshi curators, along with 14 solo art projects curated by Diana Campbell Betancourt, the Artistic Director of the Samdani Foundation. These projects celebrated artists from across South Asia. The summit encompassed a citywide public art initiative, performances, the screening of experimental films, speaker panels, and the active participation of 15 Bangladeshi and 17 South Asia-focused galleries. The Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) is an international, non-commercial research and exhibition platform for art and architecture related to South Asia. With a core focus on Bangladesh, DAS re-examines how we think about these forms of art in both a regional and an international context. During the Dhaka Art Summit, the Samdani Art Award was presented to the talented Bangladeshi artist Ayesha Sultana. The winner was chosen by an international jury panel chaired by Aaron Cezar, the Director of Delfina Foundation, and included Adriano Pedrosa (Independent Curator), Jessica Morgan (Daskalopoulos Curator, International Art, Tate Modern), Sandhini Poddar (Associate Curator, Guggenheim Museum), and Pooja Sood (Director, KHOJ India). The awarded artist received a three-month residency at the Delfina Foundation in the United Kingdom. Exhibitions & Programmes The Summit is a free and ticketless event and this year welcomed 138,000 visitors in 4 days, of which 800 were international visitors and operated tours for 2,500 students from 30+ schools. Those participating included over 300 emerging and established artists, 100 speakers who attended as part of the Talks Programme, as well as internationally renowned curators and writers, and attracted visitors from over 70 international institutions, who attended the Summit to extend and further their research into the region. Visas to Happiness- Children's Workshop DAS 2014 Lifeblood DAS 2014 Curated by Rosa Maria Falvo Citizens of Time DAS 2014 Curated by Veeranganakumari Solanki Then | Why Not? -Solo Art Projects DAS 2014 Curated by Diana Campbell Ex-Ist DAS 2014 Curated by Ambereen Karamant B/DESH DAS 2014 Curated by Deepak Ananth Liberty DAS 2014 Curated by Md. Muniruzzaman assisted by Takir Hossain LOAD MORE

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.

The Samdani Art Award, Bangladesh's premier art award, has created an internationally recognised platform to showcase the work of young Bangladeshi Artists to an audience of international arts professionals. Ayesha Sultana b. 1984, Jessore, Bangladesh WINNER Ayesha Sultana’s practice encompasses drawing, painting, object and sound. The work relies heavily on process as an attempt to translate notions of space, which is inseparably connected with perceptions of time as a way of looking. The artist was born in 1984 in Jessore, Bangladesh. Her drawing series often acts as an enquiry, through the building of spatial structures by tapping in repetition, variation and rhythm. It may appear dissimilar in technique but is essentially one and the same, permeating similar areas of transformation. For the past two years, drawing has often acted as a formal backbone to her practice. She uses it as a verb, of ‘doing’ whether it be cutting, folding, stitching, layering, recording, and tracing. This doing even extends to explorations with photocopy machines, allowing them to alter and distort other works that she experiments with. The illustrated image, Cataract II, 2011, is part of the artist’s ongoing series of drawing with staples, piecing rice paper and creating new patterns and structures that highlight the tension between the strength of the industrial staple and the vulnerability of the translucent organic paper. Sultana studied under Rashid Rana at Beaconhouse National University in Lahore, and later lectured there for two years. Sultana’s work has been exhibited extensively in India, Italy, the Netherlands, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates. She is an active member of the Britto Arts Trust and recently completed a residency at Gasworks, in London. Samdani Art Award 2014 INTERVIEW SELECTION COMMITTEE Aaron Cezar (Director of the Delfina Foundation) Eungie Joo (Curator of the Sharjah Biennale 2015) Jessica Morgan (The Daskalopoulos Curator, Tate) Sandhini Poddar (Curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum) Pooja Sood (Director of KHOJ International Artists’ Association) IN PARTNERSHIP WITH Delfina Foundation The ten shortlisted artists for the 2014 edition of the Samdani Art Award exhibition were selected by the Delfina Foundation's Director, Aaron Cezar. During the Summit, the jury selected Ayesha Sultana as the recipient of the 2014 award. Announced during the DAS 2014 Opening Dinner on the 5 February, Sultana received a three-month residency with the Delfina Foundation in London which she undertook in the Autumn of 2014. SAMDANI ART AWARD 2014 SHORTLIST Shumon Ahmed What I have Forgotten Could Fill an Ocean, What is Not Real Never Lived (2011). Courtesy of the artist. b. 1977, Dhaka Sayed Tareq Rahman Installation image of Transformation 4 (2016), wood, nail, plastic wire etc. Courtesy of the artist. b. 1988, Khulna Sarker Protick The Light Chamber (2017), vertical projection and sound installation (part of artist’s Origin series) installed at the Shilpakala Academy as part of Chobimel. Courtesy of the artist. b. 1986, Dhaka Sanjoy Chakraborty Red Dot on a Red Road (2017), still from live performance as part of D'LAB (Dhaka Live Art Biennale) at Dhaka University Campus. Courtesy of the artist. Photo credit: Imtiaz-al-Tareq. b. 1984 Promotesh Das Pulak Encapsulated (2008). Courtesy of the artist. b. 1980, Sylhet Palash Bhattacharjee Wastage Abstract (2013), site‐specific project, installation with dual channel video, Cheragi Art Show, Chittagong b. 1983, Chittagong Kabir Ahmed Masum Christy Quandary (2011). Courtesy of the artist. b. 1976, Narayanganj Afsana Sharmin Zhumpa …and the feminine…(2016), documentation of live performance at the 17th Asian Art Biennale. Courtesy of the artist. b. 1984 2023 2020 2018 2016 2014 2012 Award Archive

ALL PROJECTS La Biennale di Venezia - 56th International Art Exhibition 9th May - 22nd November 2015 Dhaka Art Summit 2014 Solo Project Bangladeshi artist Naeem Mohaiemen and Indian artist group Raqs Media Collective were selected to show their works in the centre pavilion, supported by the Samdani Art Foundation.

ALL PROJECTS Expression of Time Curated by Md. Muniruzzaman Expression of Time , curated by Mohammad Muniruzzaman, Director of the Department of Fine Arts, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, presents an intergenerational exhibition to show a cross-section of the dynamism of young Bangladesh. To connect the idea of giving space to a younger generation of artists, the exhibition will present early works of now prominent artists who have played important roles in building the infrastructure for contemporary art in Bangladesh through their careers alongside works of a younger generation of artists, whose practices will undoubtedly steer the future of the country’s art history. The exhibition will also explore Bangladeshi visual culture in parallel the diverse practice of urban and folk art of Bangladesh from cinema banner painting to the centuries old tradition of kantha embroider. ARTISTS Abdur Rob Khan Abdus Shakoor Shah Abul Barq Alvi Ahmed Nazir Ahmed Samsuddoha Anisuzzaman Anisuzzaman Sohel A. R. Rumy Azadi Parvin Tuesly Bipasha Hayat Bishwajit Goswami Dhali Al Mamun Dr. Mohammad Iqbal Golam Faruque Bebul Haroon Ar Rashid Tutul Jamal Ahmed Jayanta Sarker John Kalidas Karmakar Maqsudul Iqbal Nipa Md. Tokon Mohammad Eunus Monirul Islam Monsur Ul Karim Mostafizul Haque Naima Haque Nasim Ahmed Nadvi Nasirul Hamid Nikhil Das Nisar Hossain Priti Ali Proddyut Kumar Das Rajiuddin Choudhury Ranjit Das Rashid Amin Rashida Begum Rashedul Huda Rezaun Nabi Rokeya Sultana Ruhul Amin Tareque Sahid Kabir Samarjit Roy Chowdhury Shambhu Acharya Shayamal Sarker Sheikh Afzal Siddharta Talukdar Shishir Bhattacharjee Tarshito Tasaddak Hossain Dulu Tejosh Halder Josh Wakilur Rahman