EMK Center, Dhaka, 27 April 2017 Sean Anderson: A Talk about Moma’s Young Architects Program around the world Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, Dhaka, 21 April 2017 Rehearsing The Witness: The Bhawal Court Case, A Talk By Zuleikha Chaudhari Pathshala South Asian Media Institute & Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, 10 - 11 April 2017 Breathe In Breathe Out: Susan Philipsz Soni Mongol Adda, Segun Bagicha, 4 April 2017 Tarun Nagesh: the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art: Art and Curating in the Asia Pacific Srihatta- Samdani Art centre & Sculpture Park, Sylhet, 20 - 28 February 2017 A Sculptural Congress: Pawel Althamer and the Neighbours National Art Gallery, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, 19 February 2017 Sebastian Cichocki: Art in Post Artistic (and Post Democratic) Times 7 - 8 April 2015 Workshop and Presentation with Tori Wranes Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, 2 - 6 April 2015 Performance Workshop by Nikhil Chopra, Madhavi Gore and Jana Prepeluh Faculty of Fine Arts, University Of Dhaka, 24 March 2015 'Death Class' and Draftmen's Congress' by Pawel Althamer Lecture Theatre, Faculty of Fine Arts, University Of Dhaka. 23 March 2015 'Painting Performs' - A Presentation by Sandeep Mukherjee The Samdani Residence, and Alliance Francaise De Dhaka, 21 - 22 March 2015 'Introduction to Council'- A Presentation by Sandra Terdjman and Grégory Castéra 20 - 21 March 2015 Performance Workshop Tour by Myriam Lefkowitz Year Seminars The annual Samdani Seminars are a lecture and workshop programme that facilitates engagement between international arts professionals and local communities across Bangladesh through participatory artworks, lectures, and workshops. Open to all and free, the Seminar programme complements the existing syllabi of Bangladesh's leading educational institutions covering the mediums and subjects not currently included while expanding the audience engaging with art. LOAD MORE

ALL PROJECTS Ayesha Sultana at The Delfina Foundation The winner of the Samdani Art Award for the year 2014, Ayesha Sultana completed her three-month residency at the Delfina Foundation in London as part of the award and shared her wonderful experience with us: ‘The residency at Delfina Foundation in London was an invaluable learning experience for me. Meeting and engaging with other creative people, encountering parts of the city, taking educational trips were an immersive period of reflection. The three months created some distance to pause, inquire and reassess my practice at this early stage of my career. It also gave me the opportunity to be able to tap into other, new points of interest and spend uninterrupted time doing research at public archives, which were easily accessible to accumulate and absorb material for future projects.’- Ayesha Sultana In her three month long residency, from July to September 2014, Ayesha explored through various mediums. Her work included drawings on paper, cyanotype prints, screen-prints and ongoing sound works. As part of the Dhaka Art Summit, the Samdani Art Award is given bi-annually to one outstanding young Bangladeshi artist selected from the ten finalists. The Samdani Art Foundation partners with the Delfina Foundation to give the winning artist opportunity to attend a residency at the Delfina Foundation in London. Delfina Foundation an independent, non-profit foundation dedicated to facilitating artistic exchange and developing creative practice through residencies, partnerships and public programming. For the 2nd edition of Dhaka Art Summit, There were sixteen nominators, who each elected five artists. These artists were then short listed to ten finalists. The award selection Jury panel Director of Cultural Program at Instituto Inhotin Eungie Joo (Brazil), Guggenheim Adjunct Curator Sandhini Poddar (India), Director of DIA Art Foundation Jessica Morgan (UK) and Khoj Director Pooja Sood (India). The panel was chaired by founding Director of Delfina Foundation Aaron Cezar.

ALL PROJECTS Citizens of Time Curated by Veeranganakumari Solanki The future is yesterday’s tomorrow. The ephemeral elements of time are permanent frames that layer perceptions, and everything that one refers to is in context with a time frame that determines the existence of a moment. Whether it be seconds, minutes, hours, centuries or light years, change is an inherent factor of time; nothing can be preserved forever. There is a desire to hold time, to let time go, to want time to stay or to disappear. ‘Citizens of Time’ are the keepers of these universal borders of time. They explore the variables in time folders while realising the crucial existence of an alternative presence and engagement within their time vaults of space and works. The impermanence of time filters in-and-out of landscapes, glass jars, homes, objects and the mind’s perceptions. The contemporary perception of telling time has been transformed from its history of division through sundials, shadow clocks and light. ‘Citizens of Time’ are divided into four time pockets – the residue of time through natural elements, memory traps from spaces and personal environments, translated time maps of imagination and mindnarratives of distorted time. Each of these edited spans of created moments is layered with elements of the artist’s personal rendition of time. They exist as analogies of experience that differ from created utopias to documentations of timed reality. Stephen Hawking’s book, “A Brief History of Time” renders time from the evolution of the Big Bang Theory into the futuristic possibility of time travel and alternative realities. He further explains Einstein’s theory of time as the fourth dimension of our three-dimensional world. The artists of ‘Citizens of Time’ explore the minute details and texture which make up this fourth dimension. These are elements that build up relationships, societies, cities, countries and eventually the universe. Time goes beyond its metaphysical existence to translate into visual forms of a new aesthetic of time in fantasies, nostalgia and memories. These personal capsules of time plant themselves into a universe of subjective interpretations of history and the future. Time, in the form of natural elements, parallels global warming to an unknown land; and bottled time with notes of precise minutes and thoughts captured, converse with an artist’s rendition of personal notes in timeless frames of landscapes of a mountain and lake. The places and works, similar to the nature of time straddle between timelessness and the precision of moments. Taking time into personal spaces, the second pocket explores the location of the body and frozen time frames. Here one experiences a revision of working processes, frozen time and peeled memories from homes and histories. Time seeps in through wallpapers, refrigerators and windows. A visual distortion of created realties follows to change the tradition of the history of time. The third pocket sees time repeating itself in created environments which are subject to the viewer’s imagination. History layers itself with contemporary happenings and loops into renditions of the artists’ compositions. In the final section, there is a departure from the material into a distortion of the present, through the past in time frames of the mind. Here, the property of time and places are blurred to become the ownership of the mind’s soul and time returns back into the personal universe. These time deposits carry forward into memories as experienced time frames, which pulse into the past, history, experienced present and travelled future. Hemali Bhuta Hemali Bhuta (b. 1978) is an internationally recognised artist whose works are closely related to architectural elements. Her interventions in space research through ephemeral materials, time, into the history of sites, and her minimal approach using imitation, deception, impermanence and concealment are seen in ‘The Residual Diameter’. In this work, Bangladeshi muslin cloth is time-consumingly and painstakingly crafted into a wallpaper roll. Bhuta says, “It is a transformation that involves Recycle as a phenomenon… The manifestation enables one to measure time by mapping the history of itself. [Here, it is the] exclusivity of the weavers’ craft, as [opposed to] the mass production of the roll!” Remen Chopra Remen Chopra (b. 1980) combines drawing, photography, painting, sculpture and installation to create works that are visually as layered as their conceptual depth. Elements of Renaissance art and architecture, central to Chopra’s works, are further layered with references to historic time periods merging into contemporary ones, through composed collectives of her imagination, as seen in Lives Within Time If Time Lives Within It . Through the reference of time as a moral concept, where past, present and future merge, Chopra addresses “the New Renaissance”, while drawing strongly from elements of history. Kiran Subbaiah Kiran Subbaiah (b. 1971) includes object assemblages, site/context-specific texts, short stories, videos, and proposals for utilitarian objects in his work. He has been working with digital art / media since 1999 and has constantly questioned the use of objects and their presence, while placing himself as a protagonist in most of his works. The process of the existence of the required object and fictitious realities in his series or videos and in ‘Doing Without’ deliberately places the artist in situations beyond the practical. His works raise existential questions of the necessary presence of another with relationship / relating to procrastination, convenience and time. Baptist Coelho Baptist Coelho (b. 1977) is a multi-media artist whose projects merge personal research with collaborations across cultures, geographies and histories. ‘Gurgaon to Panamik, 2008-09’ (a part of the multi-disciplinary project, “You can’t afford to have emotions out there…”) focuses on the life of the soldier; not as a machine of war but as a man coping with daily complexities of conflict. A collection of bottles and corresponding handwritten notes from soldiers and locals Coelho encountered on his research trip act as time capsules. The works become a testament to existence and the effect on people’s lives due to the Siachen conflict, while also drawing together a strong connection between air, natural space and thoughts of common / ordinary people. Vibha Galhotra Vibha Galhotra (b. 1978) employs various media, from photography to installation and sculpture to create, conceptually and symbolically, experiential spaces. She has worked with dimensions of art, ecology, economy /economics, activism, surreal time and created utopias. ‘15 Days of May’ was realised within a time-frame of 15 days. With a mundane act of leaving a clean white rope outside her studio, the artist documented the effect of the polluted air of her city as displayed on the rope. The harsh alterations of reality through the subtle passage of time are reflected along with the artist’s primary concerns of global warming and its effect on ecology. Nandan Ghiya Nandan Ghiya, (b. 1980) in his practice builds upon his background in fashion, with antiques and new technology. Ghiya refers to the 21st century as one of emulation, competition and pressure. Here one is striving to address routine challenges and adversities, which the artist refers to as ‘Glitches”. Ghiya’s work reflects these ‘glitches” through visual interventions, distortions and transformations of old photographs, sculptures and objects. The set of two wooden figurines in ‘Peer- Pressure Glitch’ is a distortion of ideal beauty, in a state of limbo, evolution, transformation and transition, from old to new or from physical to digital. Sonia Jose Sonia Jose (b. 1982) relates to the environment and personal/social history in her work, and this stems from a need to preserve and acknowledge lived experience that surrounds routine life practices. The ‘Untitled’ (Rug) with the screenprint of hand-written text – So Much to Say – was inspired at a time when the artist was looking for a solution to calm her mind. Jose chose the words ‘so much to say’ as a meditative repetition and response to eclipse her needs, desire or compulsion to have anything to say at that time. Manjunath Kamath Manjunath Kamath (b. 1972), a collector of images, draws his initial inspiration from Indian Nathdwara paintings and collages, juxtaposing them with a living room, animals and displaced imagery. He gathers images from various sources to create narrative panoramas that weave in-and-out of an amalgamation of history, experience and imagination, layered with constructed myth, fantasy and evidence of overlapped time. In ‘Familiar Music from an Old Theatre’ he plays with time and space to create a magical realism that is both subjective and unique in experience. Riyas Komu Riyas Komu (b. 1971) focuses upon the political and cultural history of Kerala; the artist is a co-founder of the KochiMuziris Biennale. ‘The Last Wall’ is a narrative of a man from the artist’s neighbourhood, who lives within time frames of his mind, disconnected from the maze of a city. Working mainly at night, this man’s mind time is seen through his graffiti which is more text based than visual. By documenting this through video, Komu creates a twelve-minute experience of a visually distorted perception of time narrated through sound. Nandita Kumar Nandita Kumar (b.1981) works with a range of media including new-media, technology, video and painting to create immersive environments. Through her artistic research and interactive works, she explores the elemental process through which human beings construct meaning. ‘Birth of a Brainfly’ is a surreal narrative dealing with the process of a person’s individuation of a mental-scape. Similarly, ‘Tentacles of Dimensions’ is a journey of a brain that has unplugged its cultural programming and is indulging in the senses. Both these flights into self-constructed labyrinths of ego and creative utopias deny all construct of time. Ritesh Meshram Ritesh Meshram (b. 1975) is inspired by everyday objects which he explores through painting, sculpture, video, installed assemblage and kinetic work. The series of sculptures and prints are related to the detail of transitional spaces and time in a home, where the residue of time is seen through passages, window frames and photographs. This abstraction and fragility of time is carefully crafted in this series which the artist describes as a process against his temperament. Prajakta Potnis Prajakta Potnis (b. 1980) enquires into the seepage of time, life-span and aura around mundane objects from daily life, through photography, painting and site-specific installations. While ‘Still Life’ explores the process of degeneration, ‘Capsule’ explores the idea of freezing time and age. Potnis uses the refrigerator as a connotation of controlled temperature, which enables one to create a sterile enclosed space similar to the one in a mall or an airport. She likens these capsuled, sometimes transit spaces to zones that are not affected by the outside. They appear to be cloned, sterile centres within a city. Gigi Scaria Gigi Scaria (b. 1973) works with painting, sculpture, photography and film to explore his interest in issues of urban and economic development, issues surrounding migration and urban architecture. The delusion and anonymity of the geographical locations he uses, makes the spaces he works with universal. Further incorporating objects that cannot be attributed to an identifiable time or space, the artist places his works within the frame of timelessness. In ‘Camel and the Needle’, and ‘Clueless’, barren landscapes of salt and sand, void of habitation are mirages of recognition. They go beyond any inclination of recognition of time and place. The large photographs leave the viewer to collect traces of memories in this ‘Dust’, which is the title of the recent series of the artist’s works, to which these photographs belong. Kartik Sood Kartik Sood (b. 1986) creates photographs, paintings and new-media installations that share autobiographical, invented and dislocated memories of a story-teller. The works are patterns of memories through photographs and personal notes, which work themselves into an idea of a timeless setting of space. Sood’s images are constructed with the idea of time -- outside and inside. The artist describes the locations as “spaces of contemplation, where one often stops by to introspect. While the outer time goes on running at the usual speed, there are inner time transitions at such spaces. Is it really an illusion of time shifting, or does time really bend on our day to day lives?”

ALL PROJECTS The Missing One Curated by Nada Raza Gaganendranth Tagore, Resurrection, c. 1922, courtesy the Samdani Art Foundation Collection. Photo courtesy of the Dhaka Art Summit and Samdani Art Foundation. Photo credit: Jenni Carter “…the deeper we seek, the more is our wonder excited, the more is the dazzlement for our gaze”Dr. Abdus Salam, Nobel Prize banquet speech, Stockholm 1979 Nirrudesher Kahani or The Story of The Missing One – written in 1896 by Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937) is thought to be one of the first tales of science or speculative fiction in Bangla. It was a tale of miracle; a cyclone quelled with physics, by pouring oil on water. Bose was a pioneering inventor of instruments for wireless technology and the study of nature, and a crater on the moon was named after the research scientist. The encounter with modernity and scientific progress at the turn of the twentieth century generated lively intellectual debate in South Asia. Its influence sparked radical ideas and encouraged fresh approaches to religion and culture, particularly in Bengal, even as the idea of freedom and self-governance took hold. Bose was close to the Tagore family who were central to the intellectual world of what is called the Bengal Renaissance, generative for art, music and literature; Gaganendranath Tagore painted a portrait of him that now hangs at the Bose Institute in Calcutta. It would have been against this backdrop that the artist painted Resurrection around the early 1920s. It is an ethereal painting, with a circular vortex of clouds and rays of light circulating around a raised central formation, as if we are staring up at the heavens. And here is the enigma; at the centre of this futuristic work is a religious icon. A celestial cross is clearly visible within an arch, and a saintly glowing figure, refracting the light. Tagore’s vision confronts us from almost a century ago and presents modern progress and religious faith in cerulean blue harmony. We time-travel a hundred or so years to the turn of the millennium in South Asia, from the late 1990’s to the present, to see how the experiences of artists who benefited from the advancements of the modern age might respond to the themes of science and spirituality central to our genre. The exhibition is arranged in three broad movements, united by the visual metaphor of looking up at the sky. The first is enchantment, the second, alienation and the last, dystopia and the possibility of redemption. It follows, in some loose sense, the plot of a generic science fiction novel or film – a happy,innocent world, the hostile appearance of a foreign or extra-terrestrial being and finally, at the climax, apocalyptic threat with the potential for salvation via faith and human will. Participating artists include Ronni Ahmmed, David Alesworth, Shishir Bhattacharjee, Fahd Burki, Neha Choksi, Iftikhar Dadi and Elizabeth Dadi, Rohini Devasher, Marzia Farhana, Aamir Habib, Zihan Karim, Ali Kazim, Sanjeewa Kumara, Firoz Mahmud, Mehreen Murtaza, Saskia Pintelon, Sahej Rahal, Tejal Shah, Zoya Siddiqui and Janet Meaney, Himali Singh Soin, Mariam Suhail, and Hajra Waheed.

ALL PROJECTS AFIELD Study #3 Let's Share! Documenta Fifteen, Kassel AFIELD Study #3 Let's Share! at documenta fifteen by Elisa Cuccinelli https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8VgP1397j4 AFIELD Study is a series of co-learning programs led by members of the network on different topics. Based on closed sessions and public workshops, it seeks to nurture synergies between like-minded practitioners, allowing for mutual exchange of skills and knowledge. AFIELD Study #3 was structured around the meeting between two groups: grassroots initiatives that experiment with alternative support structures, and individuals who critically reflected on their role as collectors, patrons or philanthropists. It is often difficult to think about the big picture and the long term when struggling to ideate in “survival mode”. Our convening hopes to contribute to current debates on resource sharing from a wide array of experiences that allow us to think together about the use of networks such as AFIELD to elaborate sustainable sharing infrastructure. This reunion was the first one where a number of AFIELD members met “in real life” to celebrate and think together after 3 years of meeting online. Samdani Art Foundation supported the travel of Bangladeshi initiatives to participate in this edition of AFIELD Study.

ALL PROJECTS Metropolitan Museum of Art Donation The Met, New York, 2019 An untitled tapestry by Rashid Choudhury (1932–1986), recently gifted to The Met by Nadia and Rajeeb Samdani, is the first work of art made by a visual artist in independent Bangladesh to join the Museum's collection. While The Met does hold pre-modern works that are attributed to the region of Eastern Bengal, Untitled (1981) is a significant and major addition to the Museum's collection of modern and contemporary art because it broadens the department's remit of collecting and preserving important modern works from South Asia. Untitled, now on view in gallery 399, presents an abstract and multifaceted twist of earth tones, with hints of orange and sections of light blue. I find that there is an arresting dynamism to the central component of the tapestry: it appears as a symphony of elongated and fragmented vertical shapes, which intertwine with each other in a way that is remarkably evocative of a body—or perhaps numerous bodies—in motion. This important work is a telling example of Choudhury's visual language, which is distinctly modernist and aesthetically innovative, but is also situated within a particular historical and cultural context. Choudhury dedicated himself to the modern art movement in his country through his work as a teacher and community facilitator. In his own work he sought expression through a medium that was very demanding in practical terms and that was less-highly regarded as fine art when compared to painting and sculpture at the time. Nevertheless, he developed his own visual idiom, which drew from the rich, historic traditions of South Asian iconography as well as his studies in Europe. As is evident in his three tapestries at The Met, Choudhury distilled these varied pre-modern and modern forms to create works with a phenomenological impact—one that feels not only effortless, but also transportive. The whole text written by DAS 2016 curator Shanay Jhaveri can be found here. This is the second donation from the Foundation's collection, distributing the knowledge of Bangladeshi art history through the research conducted during the Dhaka Art Summit. Image: Installation view of three tapestries by Rashid Choudhury. At center is a recent addition to The Met collection, and at left and right are two loans from The Samdani Art Foundation. Image credit: MET

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 2018 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 A Sculptural Congress: Pawel Althamer and the Neighbours Srihatta- Samdani Art centre & Sculpture Park, Sylhet, 20 - 28 February 2017 Polish artist Paweł Althamer, along with members of his community (neighbours) from Bródno, Poland—Maciej Karbowiak, Brian Halloran, Marcin Althamer, and Michal Parnas—travelled to Bangladesh to engage alternative communities in an eight-day-long creative and collaborative Sculptural Congress workshop as part of the Samdani Art Foundation's continued Seminar programme. Paweł and his neighbours engaged with patients of Protisruti (the Promise) drug rehabilitation centre in Sylhet, creating the communal work of art, Rokeya , with the aim of bridging understanding across social and cultural divides through the power of creativity. Arriving in Sylhet with only a basic sketch and a rough concept for the final sculpture, Pawel spent the first three days of Sculptural Congress in a series of workshops with patients from Protisruti and local school children. Together, they created elements of a communal sculpture in clay. These elements were then merged into one sculptural form and fired within Rokeya ’s internal kiln—a creative fire at the heart of the sculpture’s structural belly—around which the community’s, Paweł’s and his neighbours’ collaborative sculptures were exhibited. To create Rokeya ’s main form, a group of patients from Protisruti came to Srihatta to assist Paweł and his neighbours with weaving the bamboo frame, alongside children from local schools. Rokeya ’s colourful fabric costume was stitched from local textiles by nearby village women who also helped to drape the fabric. The title Rokeya was given by the village children after Paweł shared his concept for this communal work of art—its interior space—to become a place for creative activity within the community, which reminded them of Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880 – 1932), a Bengali writer, educator, social activist, and advocate of women's rights who pioneered female education in Bangladesh. The interactive sculpture has already engaged hundreds of local school children and community members and will continue to do so as a collective space for art workshops. Althamer's Rokeya is the first project completed for the Samdani Art Foundation's new home, Srihatta – Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park, to open in late 2018. PAWEL ALTHAMER Pawel Althamer is a contemporary Polish sculptor and performance artist working with video, installation and action art. Some of his work is based on live sculptural and performative traditions, which hardly leave any material trace. His primary focus is on art that is communicative, believing that art can impart changes in society. For 20-years, Pawel has run workshops for the Nowolipie Group—a group of people suffering from multiple sclerosis. Here, he discovered a different kind of academy. Pawel uses his work to activate a broader concept of community in an increasingly isolating world. The “Sculptural Congress” workshops, which he initiated in Sylhet, were heavily informed by his prestigious works, The Neighbours and Draftsmen’s Congress , focusing on the essential role of collaboration and community. In 2007, Althamer incited a community project involving both his neighbourhood in Brodno and other artists. This resulted in the creation of Brodno Sculpture Park, an ongoing project in which everyone is invited to discuss and share ideas for this public space. Pawel studied at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. He was a co-founder of the Kowalnia ("Smithy") group, a leading collective of young Polish artists in the 1990s. In 2004, Althamer received the prestigious Vincent Van Gogh Biennial Award, founded by the Broere Charitable Foundation of the Netherlands. His most recent solo exhibition was held in New Museum, New York in 2014. He also participated in many international group exhibitions including the 2013 Venice Biennale, 8th Gwangju Biennial (2010), Skulptur Projekte Münster (2007), 4th Berlin Biennial (2006), and the 9th Istanbul Biennial (2005).

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ALL PROJECTS Jothashilpa Dhaka Art Summit 2020 Jothashilpa is a centre for traditional and contemporary arts, which considers itself ‘a melting pot where fine art, folk art, native art, and crafts are juxtaposed and create a new art language.’ The group questions the notion of ‘high art’ and believes art is an integral part of society that emerges from everyday life. They work with cinema banner painters, weavers, and ceramicists among others, and their priorities include fair trade, women’s empowerment, and community development. Through their research and making processes, they collaborated with SAVVY Contemporary and Master Artist of Cinema Banner Painting Mohammad Shoaib and his disciples to realize a timeline that contains exhibitions about collectivity within, grounding us in solidarities of the past and imagining solidarities of the future. Artists involved in this project: Mohammad Shoaib, Shawon Akand, Didarul Dipu, S. M. Sumon, Abdur Rob, Mohammad Yusuf, Rafiqul Islam Shafikul, Md. Rahim Badir, Mohammad Iqbal, Mohammad Dulal, Hamayet Himu, Aftab Alam, Mohammad Javed, Md. Selim.

ALL PROJECTS ACTIONS. THE IMAGE OF THE WORLD CAN BE DIFFERENT KETTLE'S YARD, CAMBRIDGE | RANA BEGUM | FEBRUARY - APRIL 2018 The Samdani Art Foundation was pleased to support the production of British-Bangladeshi artist Rana Begum's work No. 764 Baskets (2017-18), included in Kettle's Yard exhibition, Actions. The image of the world can be different .

ALL PROJECTS Speak, Lokal Kunsthalle Zurich, 4 March – 7 May 2017 Rafiqul Shuvo and Samsul Alam Helal were selected to participate in the group show Speak, Lokal curated by Daniel Baumann, Director of the Kunsthalle Zürich and guest curator for the Samdani Art Award 2016. Samdani Art Foundation supported their participation.