ALL PROJECTS Volcano Extravaganza | Total Anastrophes Curated by Milovan Farronato With Runa Islam as Artistic Leader Within the frame of the Fiorucci Art Trust (whose stated aim is to ‘collect’ or promote art experiences), Total Anastrophes reimagined the 8th edition of the annual Volcano Extravaganza in Dhaka. Instead of engaging with Stromboli’s landscape and the talisman of its active volcano, the programme transformed the inside of the Shilpakala Academy’s Auditorium into the inner echo chamber of an active volcano. Performative interventions evoked themes of isolation and distance; memory and mysticism; cosmic energy and the violence of nature; improvisation and theatre. On the occasion of its 8th edition, the Volcano Extravaganza — the annual festival of contemporary arts conceived and produced by London-based non-profit institution, the Fiorucci Art Trust — erupted away from its volcanic centre in Stromboli. Taking the empirical and ephemeral experiences collected on the island, the Fiorucci Art Trust migrated the knowledge, the collaborations, the artists, the talks, the volcanic activities: the mind as a volcano and the emotional body with Total Anastrophes. The Artistic Leader was Bangladeshi-born, London-based artist Runa Islam, while the festival was curated, as per tradition, by Milovan Farronato. The participants included Cecilia Bengolea, Alex Cecchetti, Patrizio Di Massimo, Haroon Mirza, Tobias Putrih, Osman Yousefzada (OSMAN)- all figures belonging to the astral orbit of the Trust. After DAS 2018, the Volcano Extravaganza will move back to Stromboli, completing its own anastrophe in July 2018. Total Anastrophes is a figure of speech, a form of poetic license to indicate that something has been taken and moved away, in order to emphasise something else. An alteration of the typical order which might look like a mistake, a transmutation gone wrong: yet anastrophes have the gift to metamorphose a regular sentence into a re-energised version of itself, opening space for chaos, and creation. Away from Iddu (him), as the locals call the volcano of Stromboli, the intention of Fiorucci Art Trust was to create a collective experience. To orchestrate an adequate environment to celebrate self-reflection, remembrance, personal and collective latent memories, as the Trust gazed into its history, and to the many collaborations which have helped characterise it. The auditorium was turned into a theatre inside of a volcano, into an echo-chamber pervaded by sounds and moans, magmatic hertz, vibrations: frequencies of a harmonious language inside a unique cradle for performances, where voices were born from inscrutable sources and latent memories evoked. Visitors were greeted by slowed movements, reverberations and distorted sounds. The echo chamber was inhabited by mobile architectural structures conceived by Tobias Putrih in dialogue with visual imagery and motifs by Runa Islam, acting simultaneously as diaphragms and screens, altering the space to dissolve the border between spectatorship and performers. Moreover, the same drapes of fabrics and textiles hanging from the mobiles became subjects for OSMAN to perform tailoring cutouts and create new designs on the spot, together with local seamstresses, as in a workshop. Re-contextualising both earlier and new performances from their bodies of work, live interventions by Alex Cecchetti and Patrizio Di Massimo were the voice of the echo-chamber. Cecilia Bengolea also drew from her own production history, to trigger and improvise movements and action in the space, through old and new choreographies. Haroon Mirza orchestrated a soundscape for the auditorium: an environment where a distorted sonority synchronised with a visual choreography of LEDs danced in conjunction with his own footage of Stromboli. Audiovisual contributions by Alec Curtis, Anna Boughighian, Roberto Cuoghi, Joana Escoval, Chiara Fumai, Liliana Moro, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa and Mathilde Rosier, among others, alternatively intervened in the landscape.

ALL PROJECTS Illustrated Lectures | Imagery, Ideas, Personae, And Sites Across South Asia Curated by Beth Citron And Diana Campbell Betancourt Artists Lucy Raven, The Otolith Group (Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun), Matti Braun, and Amie Siegel presented illustrated lectures concerning the contemporary circulation of traditional and modernist imagery, ideas, personae, and sites across South Asia. Specifically, and respectively, these included sculptural reliefs at Ellora, Rabindranath Tagore’s art school at Santiniketan, the vision of physicist Vikram Sarabhai, and the global circulation of modernist furniture from Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh. Building on their individual presentations, the artists gathered with curators Beth Citron and Diana Campbell Betancourt in the Education Pavilion on February 4th for a critical discussion of the form of the ‘illustrated lecture’ or ‘lecture performance.’ As an artistic discipline that has often seemed to blur boundaries among art, research, and discourse, the workshop examined different approaches to the lecture performance, as well as the limits of this form and the language used to circumscribe it. Taking historical examples of lecture performances by Chris Burden, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Morris, and Joseph Beuys into consideration, one question this workshop hoped to answer was how the ‘lecture performance’ differs from other types of live works and talks delivered by artists today. This form has been defined rather loosely globally, and comparatively been less studied and practiced in South Asia. This programme sought to address both the global, and local implications of this form. THE OTOLITH GROUP NOTES TOWARDS A FILM ON SANTINIKETAN “Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening cosmos.”Rabindranath Tagore, Fireflies, 1928 Since 2012, The Otolith Group have been developing a work that engages with what Gayatri Spivak calls the ‘aesthetic education’ of Visva Bharati University, Shantineketan. This lecture performance presented scenes from the aesthetic sociality engendered in, and by, Kala Bhavana at Visva Bharati. The Otolith Group’s encounters with the pedagogy of ‘tree schooling’ developed by Tagore at Visva Bharati opens onto an engagement with improvisational practices of desegregation and dealienation. The encounters with these practices subtend the ongoing implications of Tagore’s aesthetico-political ecology of nature into a rethinking of the shape of learning in the future of the present. Such a rethinking feeds into an improvisation in and with cinema. What emerges from these experiments with aesthetic education are a series of scenes from a Neo-Tagorean cinema. A cinema conceived as a practice of image making that is shaped by the multiple frames and links of network realism and the geography of the hyperlocal. MATTI BRAUN VIKRAM SARABHAI This illustrated lecture took its point of departure from the biography of Vikram Sarabhai (1919-1971), father of the Indian space programme. It showed how his work intersected major cultural developments in 20th century India and revealed interactions with international modernist figures including Le Corbusier, John Cage, and Henri Cartier-Bresson as they engaged with him and members of his influential family of patrons in their home city of Ahmedabad.This lecture was supported by the Goethe-Institut. AMIE SIEGEL BACKSTORY An associative talk on the speculative, imitative and extractive actions within design, art and auctions in connection to India— on Chandigarh and Le Corbusier, on Pierre Jeanneret, John Pawson and Donald Judd, on modernism, minimalism and marketing—how these iconographies, and the behaviours of design and art markets, both mask and disclose the flow of capital. This talk accompanied the artist’s film presentation in the exhibition Planetary Planning. LUCY RAVEN LOW RELIEF Low Relief connected research into bas-relief sculpture in both India and the United States to the illusion of depth created in stereoscopic 3D lms, and the globally-connected, labour-intensive processes of post-production involved.

ALL PROJECTS Performance Workshop Tour by Myriam Lefkowitz 20 - 21 March 2015 Myriam Lefkowitz continued her Walk, Hands, Eyes (Vilnius), a performance project she has been doing for more than seven years, but in the form of a workshop. The performance project is a perceptive experience, weaving a relation between walking, seeing, and touching, for one person at a time, lasting one hour, in a city. Over the course of two days in March of 2015, sixteen participant artists took this guided tour with Lefkowitz through Old Dhaka and University of Dhaka.

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. Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury b. 1981, Noakhali WINNER Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury’s (b. 1981, Noakhali) interdisciplinary practice plays with everyday objects to create interactions, which sit between installation and assemblage. By creating unfamiliar situations for everyday objects, Chowdhury creates new interpretations of familiar objects while opening new experimental territories with open-ended possibilities. He received a Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking at the University of Dhaka (2011). His work has been shown in group exhibitions throughout Bangladesh. DAS 2018 Commission : The Soul Who Fails to Fly into the Space (2017) Humans are the ultimate expression of freedom. Connected with the cosmos, with nature, and the higher forces through spirituality, the human body is a reflection of all such associations. The soul-body-mind desires to become immortal, to go beyond the vacuum of death, flying into the cosmos time and again, but failing to meet eternity. The shiny golden fountain is like a reservoir - the essence of life where the eternal sound of this cosmos reverberates. Samdani Art Award 2018 INTERVIEW SELECTION COMMITTEE Sheela Gowda (artist, based in Bangalore, India) Runa Islam (artist, based in London) Subodh Gupta (artist, based in New Delhi, India) Mona Hatoum (artist, based in London) Chaired by Aaron Cezar (Director, Delfina Foundation) IN PARTNERSHIP WITH New North and South Network Liverpool Biennial Delfina Foundation For the 2018 edition of the Samdani Art Award, each of the eleven shortlisted artists exhibited newly commissioned work in an exhibition at the Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) from February 2-10, 2018, guest curated by Simon Castets, Director of the Swiss Institute, New York. During the summit, the jury selected Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury as the recipient of the 2018 award. Announced during the DAS 2018 Opening Celebratory Dinner on the 2 February by Tate Director, Dr. Maria Balshaw, Rahman Chowdhury will receive a six-week residency with the Delfina Foundation in London. In association with the Liverpool Biennial, each of the shortlist artists have also received curatorial mentoring support from the New North and South network. SAMDANI ART AWARD 2018 SHORTLIST Shikh Sabbir Alam Discern the shape, form, within space (2016), acrylic on canvas. Image courtesy: the artist. Shikh Sabbir Alam (b. 1982, Kushtia) embraces the practice of freehand drawing to plot out his thoughts, which evolve into a more permanent process, predominantly painting. Alam embraces each part of the process to express his understanding of a subject; each dot, line, shape or colour helps him to map out an idea. His work portrays the process of our sensory system, creating a map to describe the elements and their position within the process. Alam received a Master of Fine Arts from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway (2016). Rakib Ahmed Untitled (2016), new photograph taken on old set acquired from photography studio that closed. Image courtesy: the artist. Rakib Ahmed (b. 1988, Netrakona) is a photographer and director whose work has been published broadly. His project “Faces of the City” documents the lost black and white photography studios – those that used darkrooms – of Bangladesh’s past. Ahmed received a Bachelor of Arts in Photography from Patshala – South Asian Media Academy (2010). Palash Bhattacharjee Marked (2017), microphone set, photographs, hammer etc., on display at "Ephemeral Perennial" at the Daily Star-Bengal Arts Precinct, Dhaka. Image courtesy: the artist. Palash Bhattacharjee (b. 1983, Chittagong) bridges performance, installation, and video within his practice. His works present aesthetic experimentations derived from personal experience, set in relation to human sensitivities and emotion. These are conscious and unconscious expressions of his everyday behaviours, excitements, and obsessions within the context of a society where narratives of a human’s existential reality seems to lose meaning in the face of larger political, social concerns. His work and performances have been included in numerous group exhibitions throughout Bangladesh as well as South Korea, Argentina, and the United States. Bhattacharjee received a Master in Fine Arts from the University of Chittagong (2006). Opper Zaman Insulate (2016), casting plaster, found objects, nails, rope and projected film. Image courtesy: the artist. Opper Zaman (b. 1995, Dhaka) examines the daily scenarios and codes everyday people participate in to survive within society, addressing factors such as social standing as well as race and culture, in an attempt to understand what others experience. Using a wide variety of media, Zaman creates spaces in which his audience can be emerged, and engage with, his concepts on how other people, living very different lives to his own, experience life. Zaman is currently working towards a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Hertfordshire. Marzia Farhana Text Sculpture (2017), mixed-media installation including book shelf, books, wires, paper plates etc. Image courtesy: the artist. Marzia Farhana (b. 1985, Dhaka) constructs precarious multimedia installations informed by Joseph Beuys’ anthropological understanding of art. Her practice is time- and space-based and ongoing, open to interpretation. Art for Farhana is an act of resistance, an act to resist the horror of the present wild condition of the world. She received her Masters of Fine Art from Central Saint Martins (2014) and bachelor of Fine Art in Graphic Design from the University of Dhaka (2009). Her work has been exhibited in multiple group shows in Bangladesh. She has attended residencies at the Khoj International Art Association Residency in Goa, India (2017) and the 16th International Festival in Iran (2010). Debasish Shom Untitled, from the artist’ ongoing project, In the Rivers Dark. Image courtesy: the artist. Debasish Shom (b. 1979, Bagerhat) was raised in rural Bangladesh and is part of the country’s Hindu minority. Shom’s work is a very personal form of self-expression motivated by his socio-political background and the psychological tension in the subjects he tackles. Working in the medium of photography, Shom uses alternative image-making and printing techniques, choosing the way he captures light through his lens based on the feelings he wants to communicate. He is currently a lecturer of Photographic Technique at Pathshala – South Asian Media Institute. His work has been published in CANVAS, The Daily Star, and Lens Culture among others. Asfika Rahman Untitled (2016), hand painted photograph from the artists Suspected project. Image courtesy: the artist. Asfika Rahman (b. 1988, Dhaka) is currently studying photography at the University of Applied Science and Arts in Germany, and received a professional degree in Documentary and Photojournalism from Pathshala – South Asian Media Institute (2016). Her practice sits between art and documentary, drawing inspiration from 19th century prints, which she recontextualises with new media. Photography has become the predominant medium and vehicle for expressing her views on complex systemic social issues. Aprita Singh Lopa Freedom in Femininity (2017), performance. Image courtesy: the artist. Aprita Singh Lopa (b. 1986, Kishoreganj) holds a Master of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from the University of Dhaka. Her work examines the relationship between the natural landscape and the creatures that reside within it. Lopa searches for ways to maintain and develop the worlds green spaces, while communicating the importance nature plays in everyday life through the mediums of ceramics and performance. She has been included in numerous group exhibitions within Bangladesh. Ahmed Rasel Untitled (2016), from the series Memories of Water in Tafalia, Dhaka. Image courtesy: the artist. Ahmed Rasel (b.1988, Barishal) is a faculty member of the Dhaka-based photography institute, Counter Foto. He earned a Masters in Bengali Literature from the University of Dhaka (2013) with the ambition of becoming a poet, before realising that photography could better blend his poetic feelings with his inner vision, memory, and personal history. Rasel is a visual storyteller. He presents the world as a continuation of the great human story, intertwined with his personal experiences, believing that every story forms part of our overall world history and that every human being is a historical element. His work has been published in Trouw, Private Magazine, F-stop magazine, and The Daily Independent, among others, and exhibited in photo festivals in Bangladesh and India. 2023 2020 2018 2016 2014 2012 Award Archive

Visit Sylhet The Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy 14/3 Segunbagicha, Segun Bagicha Rd, Dhaka, Bangladesh The Dhaka Art Summit is free to the public, ticketless, and requires no registration to attend. Applying for a VISA The Bangladeshi Government provides a visa-on-arrival (VOA) service for citizens of the following countries: United States of America, Canada, New Zealand, Russian Federation, China (excluding Hong Kong passports), Japan, Singapore, South Korea, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia (KSA), Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Malaysia, and all European countries If applying for a VOA, you will need to provide a photocopy of your passport, two passport-size photographs, a printed copy of your hotel reservation (including a full address and contact number), a copy of your return flight ticket, and a completed arrival card and visa application: copies can be obtained on arrival at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport. The VOA fee is approximately $52 USD (other currencies are accepted) and must be paid in cash (debit and credit cards are NOT accepted). If you need to apply for a visa before you fly, please contact the nearest Bangladesh High Commission/Embassy. For more info, visit the Bangladesh Ministry of Foreign Affairs . Our VIP team is there to assist you with visa letters or any queries. Please contact our VIP team here: vip@dhakaartsummit.org The Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport is approximately 17km from the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy and is served by numerous international and domestic airlines. Flight options from most international destinations are easily searchable through popular travel sites and travel search engines. Visit our DHAKA page to learn more about the city. Getting to Dhaka 01 The Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy is in Segun Bagicha, Dhaka. Suitable hotels can be found through popular travel sites and hotel search engines. Due to the heavy traffic situation in Dhaka, we recommend international visitors to stay closer to the venue. The InterContinental Dhaka is the official partner hotel of the Dhaka Art Summit. For more hotel options, download the recommended list Accommodation 02 The best way to move around on the streets of Dhaka is in a car. The best way to arrange a rental car is through your hotel concierge. In case, you decide to go and book a rental car by yourself here is what we recommend the followings: App-based ride share: Uber Pathao For pre-booking visit: RentalCarBD Sheba.xyz Bdcabs.com Getting around in Dhaka 03 The official currency in Bangladesh is the Taka: known as Bangladeshi Taka or BDT. The Taka is a restricted currency and you will only be able to obtain cash currency on your arrival in Bangladesh. Taking money out at an ATM is the quickest and easiest means of currency exchange, but don’t forget to tell your bank that you are travelling before you leave. There are also several money exchange available at the airport If you require further assistance, please email info@dhakaartsummit.org For press enquiries, please email press@dhakaartsummit.org or visit our press page Currency Exchange 04

Statement from the Artistic Director Diana Campbell ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Welcome to the new web portal of the Samdani Art Foundation! We thank you for being here, as your visit speaks to a desire to connect with our work in Bangladesh, and a commitment to widen your worldview by including points of view that institutionalized knowledge historically belittled or omitted entirely. We see our role as being interlocutors in this ongoing process of learning unlearning and relearning; where we elevate histories of Bangladesh and other contexts from the global majority world (i.e. the world outside of Europe and North America) above the space relegated for footnotes (a nod to DAS 2018 participant Nancy Adajania). We call ourselves a research platform – which we build through the careful acts of collecting, producing, convening, mentoring, and sharing. We created this platform through a unique collaborative process linking the passion and dedication of collectors with the creativity of artists, architects, designers, curators, writers, historians and educators executed through the hard work of our team, our partners, and our volunteers, encouraged by the enthusiasm of our growing number of participants and visitors. We recognize that what is happening outside of the room is often the site of the most radical reimagining, where artists come together to create the conditions for great art to be made, and also activate tremendous social change in the world. At Samdani Art Foundation we are interested in art on the scale of life , far bigger than any exhibition in a gallery space can contain. Life in Dhaka pulses with a collaborative, hopeful, and can-do energy unlike anywhere else in the world; it is one of the most densely populated cities on the planet, the front line of where we feel the impacts of the world’s climate catastrophe. Dhaka Art Summit 2018 speaker Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak hit upon that when commenting that “Unless this kind of wonderful effort [of Dhaka Art Summit] is supplemented by another kind of effort, we cannot achieve the impossible possibility of a socially just world.” Our work at Samdani Art Foundation seeks to blur those boundaries between what is in the room and what is outside of the room – seeking to make a freer and more porous atmosphere for dialogue, understanding that beauty can change the world. Beauty can be impact, and impact can be beauty. This portal is an entry point to our ongoing and evolving work fostering connections between artists and architects of the past, the present, and the future with the Bangladeshi public, and welcoming in sensitive collaborators and visitors from all over the world to learn how to connect differently with cultures and geographies that they might not yet be familiar yet. Tied to our desire to strengthen and re-establish links that colonialism tried to sever between humanity and nature, we work to cultivate, maintain, and grow relationships, and to build confidence that these relationships can create the conditions to change how the (art) world functions. This is why Dhaka Art Summit can best be described as a family reunion, where more and more members join in, and you can see how this familiar family friend named DAS grows up more and more each time you visit her, but retains her childlike wonder, curiosity, and joy. One of the best compliments we’ve ever received at Samdani Art Foundation is that “Dhaka Art Summit is where the art world goes and they turn into people – accessible human and vulnerable.” Dhaka Art Summit is also a place that launches many careers, partially because international CVs hold no meaning where most of our visitors are unfamiliar with traditional markers of prestige, making it possible to really talk about the work and the intentions of the artist in ways that are difficult to do on the international art circuit. As we grow, acknowledging the limitations of communicating in English, we work to build our work around concepts and words in Bangla, making them accessible to both Bangla and non-Bangla speaking audiences. We are working to step off of the institutionalized timelines of biennales and step closer into life’s rhythms – and long-term collaborative projects related to culture and agriculture that will soon be visible at Srihatta, the Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park – will give a glimpse into our stretched-out timelines of the future, inspired by projects in the previous bi-annual (but not ‘a biennial’) format Dhaka Art Summit such as Otobong Nkanga’s Landversation and Damian Ortega’s work Sisters, where we learned first-hand that nothing you can possibly try to do can make a cornfield grow in less than 90 days. We are drawn to acts of imagination informed by knowledge. Since day one, we have been planning for what does not exist yet -- trying to design a space where anyone from any background can come and have a profound encounter with art and culture, and imagine that they can play a part in building a more beautiful, socially, and environmentally just world. We would be delighted if you were to join us and our growing number of collaborators in this endeavor. Read more about the thinking behind Diana's vision: Forging Artistic Connections_Stories from the Dhaka Art Summit by Diana Campbell from the upcoming publication of Frame Contemporary Art Finland . Considering Dhaka Art Summit from a CHamoru Perspective by Diana Campbell from the book American Art in Asia: Artistic Praxis and Theoretical Divergence . “It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way." https://www.routledge.com/our-products/open-access-books/publishing-oa-books/chapters

ALL PROJECTS Bearing Point 5 - Residence Time Curated by Diana Campbell Bearing Point 5 - Residence Tim e Standing in the air on scaffolding, laying telecommunications cables while submerged under the sea, or manning call centres while suspended on a foreign time zone– the toiling bodies of the over 20 million migrant South Asian workers around the globe are mostly invisible, and yet instrumental in creating many of the world’s most picturesque cityscapes as well as to the simultaneous socioeconomic development of South Asia through the money they send home. Bangladeshis are moving beyond the countries geopolitically comprising South Asia, further west to the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia and further east to Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. These people are often treated as bodies without souls, having no culture of their own beyond their otherness. They are often written out of the narratives of the very nations they help to build, as reflected by the sparse South Asian cultural discourse in Southeast Asia. Works by Subas Tamang, Gan Chin Lee, Liu Xiaodong and Shahidul Alam attempt to humanise this issue through technique of portraiture. South Asian culture is present all over the world via complex relationships of labour, and this Bearing Point serves to reorient our thinking about South Asia away from land-bound definitions - no longer sufficient markers of where a culture lives. Even if you watch a Hollywood 3-D film such as Harry Potter, the film was post-produced via a global assembly line running from Los Angeles through Bombay and beyond, capitalizing on low labour costs and government subsidies to supply the painstaking work going into each frame of a film. These digital networks are beautifully captured in the work of Lucy Raven and Anoka Faruqee, and the diversity and complexity of these interwoven movements can be seen Nabil Rahman, Yasmin Jahan Nupur and Pratchaya Phinthong’s work.Overseas workers often inhabit a suspended condition of statelessness, literally going underground as in Charles Lim’s haunting video or being forced to cross unfamiliar black waters as in Andrew Ananda Voogel’s chronicle of the pain of indentured labour. Bangladesh has its own migrant labour situation now that over half a million Rohingya refugees have entered Bangladesh. Just as there are instances of Bangladeshi workers being trafficked or falsely enticed into exploitative labour contracts in Southeast Asia, there are also cases of Rohingyas being trafficked in Bangladesh as a cheap labour source as chronicled in Kamruzzaman Shahdin’s monumental quilt made from material traces of displacement.We build the world around us through our labour, and it is important to remember that the post-industrial economies in which many of us participate are built on the backs of cheap, often coerced, migrant labour in the Global South. Transnational flows of labour create new cultural economies, which need to respected and celebrated as having as much legitimacy as national narratives. Artists Andrew Ananda Voogel (b. 1983 in Los Angeles, lives and works in Taipei) Kalapani: The Jahaji’s Middle Passage (2014) Video installation Courtesy of the artist Andrew Ananda Voogel chronicles the legacies of longing from exile in his work, much of which explores the history of the Jahaji’s of Guyana. Through a new form of debt-bound slavery termed indenture, about 3.5 million South Asian workers (primarily from Bengal), including Voogel’s great-grandmother, were tricked, forced, or manipulated by the British before being loaded on boats and sent to Britain’s 19 colonies including Fiji, Mauritius, Ceylon, Trinidad, Guyana, Malaysia, Uganda, Kenya and South Africa between 1834 and the end of World War II. As our eyes adjust to the darkness of the room in Kalapani: The Jahaji’s Middle Passage (2014), we enter a state of uncertainty about the ground we stand on, thrust into the trauma of being separated from loved ones on alien lands across the “black waters.” Anoka Faruqee (b. 1972 in Ann Arbor, lives and works in New Haven) 2016P-08 (Wave), 2016 2017P-08 (Wave), 2017 2017P-10, 2017 2017P-27 (Circle), 2018 2017P-05, 2017 2017P-11, 2017 acrylic on linen on panel Courtesy of the artist and Koenig and Clinton. Photographer: Pablo Bartholomew Anoka Faruqee’s hypnotic technicolour paintings create uncanny surfaces reminiscent of digital screens. The glitches and bruises break the illusion, speaking to the imperfect and unpredictable translations from the virtual to the physical, and the role of the human hand in this translation. In the context of Bangladesh, Faruqee’s patterns and motifs also call to mind the histories of the textile industry, where it is said the fear of superior craftsmanship lead British administrators to cut off the thumbs of weavers; today, this once venerated industry feeds a global cycle of cheap fast fashion and accelerated consumption. Faruqee creates delicate topologies in her hand-combed paintings, where the imperfection, or glitch, plays a crucial role in the formation of otherwise smooth-milled surfaces. Charles Lim Yi Yong (b. 1973 in Singapore, lives and works in Singapore) Sea State VI, Phase I, 2015 Single Channel HD digital video, 7 minutes, sound Courtesy of the artist Presented here with additional support from National Arts Council Singapore and technology support of Sharjah Art Foundation Singapore continues to grow, both above and under the sea. The Jurong Rock Caverns are Southeast Asia’s first underground liquid hydrocarbon storage facility. Located at a depth of 130 metres beneath the Banyan Basin on Jurong Island, the Caverns provide infrastructural support to the petrochemical industry that operates on Singapore’s Jurong Island, a cluster of islets reclaimed into one major island and connected to the mainland in the 1980s. Opened in September 2014, Phase 1 of the caverns holds some 1.47 million cubic metres of oil storage tanks. This is about the size of 600 Olympic swimming pools. The volume of undersea rocks excavated from Phase 1 equals 1.8 million cubic metres, enough to fill 1,400 Olympic swimming pools. The SEA STATE, which exists as the frontier of a climatic and ecological complex, takes us to places that were until recently only a thing of oneiric theory. This place is occupied by submerged migrant workers from Bangladesh whose labour here contributes to the residual climactic effects plaguing their country back home. Gan Chin Lee (b. 1977 in Kuala Lumpur, lives and works in Kuala Lumpur) No Place for Diaspora, 2015 Oil on linen Private collection, Kuala Lumpur Post-Colonial Encounter, 2015 Oil on jute Private collection, Kuala Lumpur Photographer: Pablo Bartholomew and Noor Photoface Gan Chin Lee’s paintings grapple with the changing urban landscapes of Malaysia, tracing demographic and cultural shifts that accompany the influx of international labour and capital. He examines the lives of diasporic South Asian communities, tracing their occupation of already-existing urban infrastructures and creating new spaces of cultural hybridity. The patterns evoked in these mesmerizing paintings also call to mind batik fabric techniques which carry histories from South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, and also Africa, speaking to the wealth of existing cultural memory found in these hybrid spaces reactivated by the movement of labour. Labour and conditions of precarity, where the circumstances of citizenship often become murky, become the basis of the invention of new ways of living together. Kamruzzaman Shadhin (b. 1974 in Thakurgaon, lives and works in Dhaka) Haven is Elsewhere, 2017-2018 Used clothing, embroidery, video Commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2018 Produced by the artist and Samdani Art Foundation Courtesy of the artist. Photographer: Noor Photoface Kamruzzaman Shadhin’s work Haven is Elsewhere (2017-2018), the newest iteration of an ongoing community project, embodies the common quest of most migrants and refugees: the search for a “safe haven.” In Kamruzzaman's work, internally migrated people in Thakurgaon in Northwest Bangladesh, create a quilt from the used clothes of displaced people from Southern Bangladesh - the border demarcating South and Southeast Asia. Many of these clothes and narratives of displaced people were collected over a period of a year and a half by the artist from people who were illegally trafficked as forced labourers into Thailand and Malaysia, some of these were abandoned by the newly arrived Rohingya refugees who accepted new clothes given by local people in Bangladesh and NGOs. These are then sewn together by the internal migrant community in Thakurgaon and embellished with the traditional Bengali kantha embroidery techniques through a therapeutic ritual. These monumental quilts form a projection surface for video documentation that attempts to capture the stories of displacement through these once-used clothes. This quest for freedom often continues as the new migrants and refugees become targets for illegal trade and trafficking, continuing a cycle where the safe haven shifts its axis further and further out of reach. Liu Xiaodong (b. 1963 in Jincheng, lives and works in Beijing) Steel 8, 2016 Oil on canvas, diptych Courtesy the artist and Massimo De Carlo, Milan/London/Hong Kong Refugees 7, 2016 Oil on canvas Courtesy the artist and Massimo De Carlo, Milan/London/Hong Kong Refugees 8, 2016 Oil on canvas Courtesy the artist and Massimo De Carlo, Milan/London/Hong Kong Photographer: Pablo Bartholomew Liu Xiaodong’s portraits of refugee and migrant workers from South Asia in Europe intervene in the narrative of what is often termed “the refugee crisis” – of the “non-Western Other” arriving in droves on the shores of “Fortress Europe”. He produces intimate encounters that disrupt the dehumanisation of these men, where often the only self-image allowed to them are stamp-sized photographs on identity documents that no longer hold validity in the countries where they have arrived. Secrecy often surrounds the sites where migrant labourers live and work. Chinese migrant workers are a growing force in Bangladesh with heavy Chinese investment in infrastructure projects. In 2016, Xiaodong created hopeful portraits of Bangladeshi workers at infamous ship-breaking yards in Chittagong, encountering difficulty in the process as his presence as a Chinese artist created a sense of heightened tension in the workplace in an industry fearful of being shut down. Lucy Raven (b. 1977 in Tucson, lives and works in New York City) Curtains, 2014 Anaglyph video installation, 5.1 sound, 50 min looped. Courtesy of the artist Technology supported by Sharjah Art Foundation In Hollywood, the incredibly labor-intensive process of creating visual effects for our 21st-century cinema is called “post-production.” But the industry still relies on 20th-century modes of industrial production: its global assembly lines run from Los Angeles through Bombay, Beijing, London, Vancouver and Toronto, capitalizing on cheap labor and government subsidies to supply the countless hours of painstaking work going into each frame of a film. Viewed with anaglyph 3D glasses, Lucy Raven’s video installation Curtains explores the digital creation of location and space insofar as they relate to contemporary movie-making. The work brings real-world geographies (and real workers) back into the computer-generated virtual spaces today’s moviegoers inhabit. Nabil Rahman (b. 1988 in Sylhet, lives and works in Dhaka) Old Bond Street, 2017 Found cigarette foils from Bangladesh Commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2018 Courtesy of the artist Richmond, 2017 Found cigarette foils from the Philippines Commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2018 Courtesy of the artist and Bellas Artes Projects. Photographer: Noor Photoface During a residency at Bellas Artes Projects in the Philippines in 2017, Nabil Rahman was surprised to learn that several of the artisans with whom he was collaborating spoke a few words of Bengali due to their time as migrant workers in Dubai, during which time they had Bangladeshi friends. The artist has woven together found cigarette foils from both countries into two sculptural forms reminiscent of emergency blankets. Cigarette foils are gleaming golden motifs that indicate the depth of colonial traces in Bangladesh and the Subcontinent, stamped with subtle symbols on their surfaces such as the Benson & Hedges (a British Tobacco company) logo. The patterns proliferate in terms of psychological preference to foreign branded products, even if the tobacco itself is grown locally. Nicotine is consumed during breaks- so whether working for foreign companies abroad or smoking foreign tobacco – there exists a problematic addictive cycle, manipulating human behavior rather than selling an actual product. Pratchaya Phinthong (1974 in Ubon Ratchathani, lives and works in Bangkok) Untitled (Jeans), 2016-2018 Jeans, performers Courtesy of the artist and gb agency Produced by the Bétonsalon, Paris for the exhibition Anywhere But Here (2016) In Untitled (Jeans), Pratchaya Phinthong questions ideas of value, localizing transnational flows of workers and capital by producing a participatory system of exchange. The artist borrowed pairs of jeans from two migrant Cambodian construction workers residing illegally in Thailand. They had purchased these jeans at the Bangkok weekend market, known for selling items stolen or cheaply bought from the stocks of clothing donated by charity organizations in the West to NGOs in Cambodia. Much of the clothing for sale had previously been intercepted by middlemen, who sell them to Western tourists and local workers alike for profit. These jeans purchased in Thailand were sent to Paris to be worn by the staff of the exhibition Anywhere But Here (2016) at the Bétonsalon, Paris, which originally commissioned the work this work was originally commissioned. In return, Phinthong used the production budget of that exhibition to buy bicycles for the workers back in Thailand, as they had requested. These jeans are now worn by DAS staff working as art mediators in Bearing Point 5. Jeans are a powerful symbol of the networks which we are forced to participate in everyday in a global economy, and carry the material history of denim’s association with industrial capitalism, including with Indigo in Bengal. The Levi’s jeans used in this work are themselves knock-offs, alluding to out-sourced assembly-lines, where garment workers in countries such as Thailand, Bangladesh and Mexico, work to produce cheap clothing which feeds the international demand for fast fashion. Bangladesh alone produces one of every seven pairs of Levi’s jeans, so it may be speculated that the jeans were originally produced here. Knock-offs feed a parallel economy of needs, where items such as Levi’s jeans are status symbols, despite being unaffordable to many who want them, particularly those from the very class that produces them. By introducing these knock-off jeans into the space of an exhibition, Phinthong raises the question of the value of copying, particularly in the context of contemporary art, where the idea of originals still holds considerable importance. Through this process-driven artwork, the artist brings to the surface the already-existing entanglement between two unregulated spaces of labour – of the migrant labourer and the cultural worker, both frequently working contract-to-contract jobs, with no fixed working hours – and the precarious conditions within which they operate. The work becomes a system through which both sides are able to imagine possibilities for their own parallel economies of exchange. Shahidul Alam (b. 1955 in Dhaka, lives and works in Dhaka) The night before a migrant is about to depart, his family members pray for his safe return, 1988 A woman bids goodbye to her man, unsure of whether they will meet again, 1996 Workers and relatives wave at each other unaware that they are too small to be visible, 1996 Giclée prints on Hahnemühle Digital Fine Art Paper Courtesy of the artist. Photographer: Noor Photoface Shahidul Alam chronicles the moment before the departure of Bangladeshi migrant workers, in the suspended state of Dhaka’s international airport. Migration is often a collective experience, where entire villages contribute to raising the funds necessary to pay the recruiting agencies, and extended family and friends accompany the to-be migrants to the airport. He unpacks the almost ritualized gestures that accompany this journey, in the moments before dislocation, as men are herded through the theatre of airport security, and these families reconfigure the in-between space of the airport to act as spaces of intimacy, of prayer, of hope. Subas Tamang (b. 1990 in Amardaha, lives and works in Kathmandu) I Want to Die in My Own House, 2017 Carved slate with metal armature Commissioned and produced with support from Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2018 Courtesy of the artist and Samdani Art Foundation. Photographer: Noor Photoface Subas Tamang’s work I Want To Die In My Own House (2017) uses the traditional form of a slate roof – a motif of vernacular architecture formerly prominent in his native Nepal and elsewhere in South Asia – when immortalizing his parent’s labour and dreams by carving their image into stone. This is an autobiographical commentary on the dreams of thousands of family members in Nepal who move from small villages to bigger towns and cities or even abroad in the search of a better life. When people move, they usually rent a room as part of the struggle for survival. The continuous challenges of securing their daily needs and a decent livelihood for their families while nursing a hope to have a permanent roof above their heads, often traps such families in an unending cycle of struggle. The money that overseas Nepali workers send home keeps the country afloat, and the dreams of one day being homeowners help them to endure adversity. Yasmin Jahan Nupur (b. 1979 in Chittagong, lives and works in Dhaka) The Long Way Home, 2011 Fabric with embroidered maps Courtesy of the artist and Exhibit320. Photographer: Pablo Bartholomew and Noor Photoface Yasmin Jahan Nupur is inspired by multicultural connections forged across linguistic barriers in spaces created by the transnational flow of labour. Nupur spent six months immersed in the community of migrant workers in Mauritius, which was once of the destinations for debt-bound labourers during the British colonial period from 1833-1920 when about 3.5 million South Asians were transported to Africa, the Caribbean, and islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. In the miserable housing conditions Nupur encountered, occupied today mostly by Chinese and Bangladeshi migrant workers, the artist found that strong community bonds formed when people from different countries were forced to occupy a single small room , leaving them no choice but to find ways to survive together. In the suspended fabric sculpture The Long Way Home (2011), Nupur sewed and embroidered the routes of connections that forged this vast network of friendships.

ALL PROJECTS Fabric(ated) Fractures Concrete, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai Alserkal Avenue collaborated with the Samdani Art Foundation on Fabric(ated) Fractures, an exhibition at Concrete, Dubai in March 2019. Fabric(ated) Fractures provided a platform to amplify the voices of artists from Bangladesh and South and Southeast Asia, and built on the exhibition There Once was a Village Here held at Dhaka Art Summit 2018. Curated by Samdani Art Foundation Artistic Director Diana Campbell Betancourt, this exhibition also introduced new works from artists with a connection to Bangladesh. Fabric(ated) Fractures considers contexts that anthropologist Jason Cons describes as ‘sensitive spaces’–spaces that challenge ideas of nation, state, and territory where cultures exist that do not fit the image that the state has for itself. Sensitive spaces are often razed, with their people forced to succumb to the state and submit to the domination of majority forces. However, the social fabric of these spaces often remains intact, a testament to human fortitude, even if its people are dislocated and their dwellings levelled. Regional lenses, including overarching headers such as ‘South Asia’ or ‘MENASA’ tend to filter out the many traces of difference found on a local level, and this exhibition aims to weave a more complex picture of the vibrant and diverse threads that comprise a yet-to-be crystalised identity in the wounded border areas related to Bangladesh; areas that cannot be defined with a single overarching regional framing device. Selected artists are: Ashfika Rahman Ayesha Jatoi Debasish Shom Gauri Gill and Rajesh Vangad Hitman Gurung Jakkai Siributr Joydeb Roaja Kamruzzaman Shadhin Kanak Chanpa Chakma Munem Wasif Pablo Bartholomew Rashid Choudhury Reetu Sattar Shilpa Gupta To know more about the exhibition, please download the catalogue from here .

ALL PROJECTS When Winds in Monsoon Play, the White Peacock Will Sweep Away (2025) A collaborative film project developed at Srihatta, exploring Bangladesh’s six seasons through a poetic collaboration between Driant Zeneli and young Bangladeshi artists. Srihatta, the Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park, came to life with the ideation and production of When Winds in Monsoon Play, the White Peacock Will Sweep Away (2025), a new film by Italy-based Albanian artist Driant Zeneli, created in collaboration with Md. Tasnimul Izaz Bhuiyan, Pulak K. Sarkar, Rafi Nur Hamid, Sondip Roy, and Sumaiya Sultana, with a special contribution by Mahmudul Hasan Dipu. The film was co-commissioned by the Samdani Art Foundation and Museo Castromediano, Lecce. As part of this project, Driant conducted an intensive Master Class at Srihatta, exploring storytelling and the aesthetic influences of Baroque theatre while encouraging participating artists to draw on local cultural elements such as the proverbs of Khona, the legendary Bengali astrologer and poet, and the iconic Parliament Building by Louis I. Kahn. This collaborative process brought together a group of emerging artists whose contributions were central to shaping the film’s distinctive and visionary expression. The work draws inspiration from the “July Revolution, 2024,” during which more than a thousand people lost their lives in a series of protests that led to significant political change and the downfall of the autocratic regime in Bangladesh. Developed at Srihatta: The Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park, this cross-cultural project reimagines the four seasons of Baroque music through Bangladesh’s six seasons. The project is supported by the Samdani Art Foundation (Bangladesh), EMΣT – National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (Greece), the Art House of Adrian Paci and Melisa Paci in Shkodër (Albania), the Civic Museum of Castelbuono (Italy), and the Museo Castromediano with the Region of Puglia’s Department of Tourism, Culture, Economy and Territory Valuation (Italy). The film’s first screening took place at CineFIX, hosted by the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, on September 4, 2025. The second screening was held on October 15, 2025, in Lecce, Italy, at the Church of San Francesco della Scarpa, accompanied by an exhibition on the film hosted by Museo Castromediano. The third screening was held in Dhaka, Bangladesh, at the Goethe-Institut on October 29, 2025. Screening at CineFIX, hosted by the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens. Photo: Melitini Nikolaidi. Screening in Dhaka at the Goethe-Institut. Photo credit: Ahadul Karim Khan. Upcoming Screening Kochi, India: The film will be screened at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in a purpose-built temporary pavilion in February 2026.

ALL PROJECTS Beyond Borders May 2017 - June 2018 | Whitworth Art Gallery Yasmin Jahan Nupur Performance | A tailor is sewing the dress of Tipu Sultan 19 - 20 May 2018 Beyond borders, explored south asian textiles bringing together four artists working on issues around post-colonial identity, ruptured spaces, authenticity, displacement and belonging. Beyond Borders highlighted the changing landscape of the subcontinent in the 21st century, post independence and partition, across the Whitworth's main textile gallery. Each artist’s new work is debuted alongside textiles and/or objects from the Whitworth's textile collection. Pattern books and vibrant textiles are selected to responded and resonate with themes captured in the artist’s own creations. As part of this exhibition, there will be a special two-day performance by Bangladeshi artist, Yasmin Jahan Nupur. In this performance, Nupur used specially handwoven muslin-jamdani as a signifier of power and consumption embedded in the contested and violent history of the subcontinent. A highly revered, translucent cotton cloth from Bengal, muslin embellished with jamdani (woven pattern) has been celebrated over the centuries for its mesmerising allure and feather-light texture, often compared to moonlight or the morning dew. This fine cloth made from a labour-intensive process historically adorned the richest of rulers in the subcontinent and attracted a lucrative overseas trade. Growing up in Bangladesh Nupur was aware of how muslin had been celebrated across the world but equally, was deeply affected by the legacies and impact of British colonialism. “There are entire generations of Bengali men and women who have grown up with legendary stories of how the British cut off the thumbs of weavers so they could no longer produce muslin and were forced to buy British goods. This history constantly hurts me”. The exhibition was part of the New North and South, a network of eleven arts organisations from across the North of England and South Asia celebrating shared heritage across continents and develop artistic talent. Performance Still of A Tailor is sewing the dress of Tipu Sultan (2018). Photo courtesy: Ashley Van Dyck and Whitworth, the University of Manchester.

ALL PROJECTS Experimenter Curator's Hub The Samdani Art Foundation supported Bangladeshi artists Munem Wasif, Mohammad Wahiduzzaman and Kabir Ahmed Masum Chisty to travel to Kolkata to attend the Experimenter Curator’s Hub in July 2014. The Hub is a platform for exchange of thoughts, views & possibilities of collaborations between the curators, public and private organizations and various institutional frameworks that coexist in the art world. Several of the presenters at ECH were part of the 2014 Dhaka Art Summit jury and speakers programs. Adam Szymczyk was one of the speakers and his first trip to South Asia was his trip to the 2014 Dhaka Art Summit, which he mentioned in his talk.

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