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.

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

ALL PROJECTS Spatial Movements Curated by Diana Campbell Universes exist within us and universes exist beyond us. We inhabit our bodies; our bodies inhabit dwellings; and our imaginations inhabit limitless realms free from our mortal limitations. The artists in this movement explore the spaces that we move through (physical, social, political, discursive) and the ways we are able to transmit stories and knowledge across (life)times, building bridges from past to present to future. These stories and the belief and value systems embedded in them often speak to how humanity related to physically inaccessible worlds below the earth’s crust and beyond the sky. Certain works of art have the transformative power to make us feel and understand what is at stake, inspiring us to take action and bring new worlds into being. Your movement through the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy was carefully considered in our design of the Summit, contributing to the activation of artworks and ideas found across the venue. By sharing your experience with others both in physical and digital space, we can make history together. Clarissa Tossin b. 1973, Porto Alegre; lives and works in Los Angeles A Queda do Céu (The Falling Sky), 2019* Laminated archival inkjet prints and wood *after Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa’s autoethnography, and cosmoecological manifesto. Commissioned and produced by Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2020. Courtesy of the artist, Commonwealth and Council, and Samdani Art Foundation A Queda do Céu (The Falling Sky), 2019, Laminated archival inkjet prints and wood, Commissioned and produced by Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2020, Courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council. When we talk about environmental concerns relating to the Amazon, we must consider its native peoples as part of the ecology. For instance, the terra preta, or black soil–the most fertile in the Amazon Basin–is a product of long-term indigenous land management practices, going back to ancient times. Discoveries such as this expand our perception of the forest beyond wild land myths and re-signify the ‘jungle’ as a result of human interactions with nature over time. The Amazon rainforest has been the recurring subject of Clarissa Tossin’s work, providing a rich study in the impacts of global commodity chains and by extension, the perpetuation of colonial forces enacted on the region’s environment, cultures, and people. A Queda do Céu (The Falling Sky) further engages with themes of ecological precarity and social justice. The weavings combine satellite images of the recent fires in Amazônia with Nasa images of the Mars plane named after the forest (Amazonis Planitia), the Amazon River and the Milky Way. The patterns were made to resemble the geometric partition of land created by agribusiness mostly visible from satellite images or bird’s-eye view. The triptych suggests a constellation of planets that project ambiguous visions of futurity, post-human landscapes and the ruins of a world yet to come. Clarissa Tossin uses installation, video, performance, sculpture, and photography to negotiate hybridisation of cultures and the persistence of difference. By embracing semantic displacements in given material cultural ecosystems, Tossin’s work reflects on circulation from the level of the body to the global industry. Korakrit Arunanondchai and Alex Gvojic b. 1986, Bangkok; lives and works in New York and Bangkok b. 1986, Chicago; lives and works in New York Together (Dhaka Edition), 2019–2020 Clay, Electrical Wires, Leaves and Branches activated by performance with video and sound Performance is active at 7pm on 7–8 February Commissioned and Produced for by Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2020. Courtesy of the artists, BANGKOK CITYCITY GALLERY, C L E A R I N G, Carlos/Ishikawa. Realised with additional support from MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum. Presented with in-kind support from BANGKOK CITYCITY GALLERY Rising up three-storeys of the DAS venue, Korakrit Arunanondchai’s monumental sculpture of a ‘naga’ (a reincarnating deity found across the mythology of South and Southeast Asia that shifts between snake and human form) transforms into a stage for the artist’s newest performance work in collaboration with Alex Gvojic that connects the river-based histories of Bangladesh and Thailand. Arunanondchai will create a soundscape within an environment based on Ghost Cinema, a post-Vietnam War ritual in Thailand where outdoor screenings function as communions between the audience and the spirits. Introduced by American soldiers stationed in Thailand who screened films in the forests, creating enigmatic projections which locals attributed to ghosts, the appropriation of the ritual by locals reflects the rich history of military coups and their effect on local folklore and rituals. Arunanondchai works with performance, video, and installation, addressing the crossing over of themes like family, superstition, spirituality, history, and politics. With an interest in collaboration, he transforms gallery spaces into arenas of connections, personal and cross-cultural. These allow him to explore relationships in recorded history while sidestepping its preoccupation with linear narratives. Alex Gvojic specialises in the interdisciplinary crossing of art, fashion, and music. Within his breath of multimedia projects, which span from entertainment production to environmental design, each embodies a signature sharpness in both imagery and concept. Minam Apang b. 1980, Naharlagun; lives and works in Goa Sisyphean Sea, 2019 Charcoal on Canvas Commissioned for DAS 2020 Courtesy of the artist and Chatterjee and Lal Minam Apang produces expansive intricate imaginary landscapes that reveal her spiritual connection to who she is and where she comes from. The artist moved from Arunachal Pradesh to Goa, mirroring the migration of large numbers of youth from Northeast India who are forced to leave due to a rampant military presence and the consequent lack of employment opportunities. Apang’s savage yet delicate drawing registers this trauma, reimagining it at a mythical scale suspended above the heads of viewers. The sea seems to lay siege to the mountains, tilting the axis of the world – alluding to the conflicted landscape of Arunachal Pradesh, but also to the many chapters of change that our planet has experienced: the same Himalayas that are melting today were once completely underwater. Apang’s practice predominantly employs drawing with charcoal. In early works, she painted scenes inspired by the folktales and myths passed down orally by her tribe in Arunachal Pradesh. More recently, her landscapes and figures are drawn from imagination and informed by hybrid experiences of the landscapes she has inhabited. Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury b. 1981, Noakhali; lives and works in Dhaka LOVE LETTER TO THE LAST SUN, 2019–2020 Mixed media Commissioned and produced by Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Samdani Art Foundation This newly commissioned interactive installation is composed of a combination of everyday objects and natural elements (fire, water, earth, air) and aims to recalibrate the ecological co-existence of human and non-human living organisms in our universe. The work resides between fiction and reality, between the conceptual and the concrete, between an imagined reality and the construction of it. It fights against normative expectations. The progress of modernity is leading us towards the great destruction of this planet. Through Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury’s use of cameras and projectors, the viewer is able to locate her/himself within the web and connectivity of a total magnetic force, while perceiving the energetic pulses of the universe. Immersing the viewer in his utopian world, s(he) is re-connected with planets and other beings, both human and not. Chowdhury’s interdisciplinary practice plays with different media, ranging from installation, assemblage, video, collage, sculpture, found footage, experimental film and more to conjure a multifaceted artistic universe. By creating unfamiliar space and situations for everyday mundane objects, Chowdhury creates unique interpretations while engaging new experimental territories with vast potentials. Subash Thebe b. 1981, Nepal; lives and works in London NINGWASUM- Moving Across Time and Space, 2019 Acrylic on canvas Commissioned for DAS 2020 Courtesy of the artist Memories of possible and not so possible events woven into stories have been a fundamental way of accessing and disseminating knowledge to future generations in almost all indigenous communities, including Subash Thebe’s Limbu community. In a sense, memory is more significant for the future than for the past. The glacial lakes in Subash Thebe’s new painting are rendered in actual and imaginary time frames; sometimes they freeze back into glaciers and other times they grow bigger. At times, the Himalayas are rich with snow and glaciers and at other times they are nothing but grey tectonic rocks. There’s a spaceship in the frame, its shape inspired by the object called ‘Silamsakma’ commonly used in Limbu rituals. This memory of its existence in the future explores implications previously unimaginable. Thebe works with sound, film, music, performance, painting, and podcasts, exploring the relation between art and social change. He records the sound and images of his public engagements to later incorporate them in his works. His work is inspired by science fiction, future scenarios of struggle, resistance, climate change, and indigeneity. William Forsythe b. 1949, New York Fact of Matter, 2009 Polycarbonate rings, polyester belts, ground support rigging Courtesy of the artist. Presented with additional support from ifa | Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen and the EMK Center. The development and international exhibition of Choreographic Objects by William Forsythe is made possible with the generous support of Susanne Klatten Fact of the Matter, one of William Forsythe’s ‘Choreographic Objects’, poetically speaks to the interplay of collective and individual experience in navigating the world and its challenges and forms of thinking that can be activated through movement. The object is not so much there to be seen as to be used, and engaging with the object and the artist’s instructions gives the user a new perspective of the self as they become aware of their body’s mass, strength, and coordination as a unified system. These three qualities are not as unified as we would like them to be, and we invent strategies to pull through what might seem like an unnavigable space while learning from the strategies devised by other people using the object. Forsythe is known for his radical innovations in choreography and dance. His deep interest in the fundamental principles of organisation has led him to produce a wide range of projects. Parallel to his career as a choreographer, he creates installations, film works, and interactive sculptures, known as ‘Choreographic Objects’.

ALL PROJECTS 'Painting Performs' - A Presentation by Sandeep Mukherjee Lecture Theatre, Faculty of Fine Arts, University Of Dhaka. 23 March 2015 On March 23, painter Sandeep Mukherjee gave a public lecture to 200 students at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Dhaka, speaking about the role of the body in his paintings, many of which have been collected by museums such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Mukherjee also visited the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy to make a new solo project for Dhaka Art Summit 2016.

ALL PROJECTS The Collective Body Curated by Diana Campbell and Kathryn Weir. Assistant curator: Kehkasha Sabah. Supported by Adam Ondak, Lucia Zubalova, Ruxmini Reckvana Q Choudhury, Teresa Albor Expressions of community and connections that precede the neoliberal individual and the nation-state are at the heart of The Collective Body, an exhibition that brings together more than thirty collaborative art initiatives. Half of these are from Bangladesh, where the thriving contemporary art ecology is largely carried by artist-led interdisciplinary initiatives that have developed festivals, art spaces, schools and collaborative networks to support their practice in the absence of centrally funded institutions or sources of economic support. Alongside these, artists and collectives have been invited from parallel contexts in order to crystallise discussions pertinent to collaborative practice in Bangladesh, drawing parallels and creating unprecedented forms of exchange of tools and strategies across Asia, Africa, Central and South America, and Oceania. The curating process opened articulated conversations from which emerged common interests and preoccupations; these include the transmission of long-standing aesthetic forms, relationships between rural to urban contexts, labour movements across agricultural and industrial domains, climate change and environmental toxicity. An emergent network of initiatives comes together at DAS to address – through puppet shows, concerts, debate, installation, documentation and performance – issues ranging from land rights and resource extraction, to strategies of visibility and contestation, to analyses of the intersection of gender, caste and ethnicity. Centred on ideas and contemporary social contexts, the artistic practices represented in The Collective Body are fundamentally engaged in the creation of social tissue and in sharing knowledge. They are both rooted in particular contexts and looking elsewhere in formulations of what decolonial theorist Walter Mignolo calls ‘cosmopolitan localism’. Artistic experiments around processes of community selfdetermination are gaining strength in the context of the ecological crisis and the widening cracks in the system of extractivist neoliberalism, defined by French sociological theorist Pierre Bourdieu over 20 years ago as ‘A program to destroy the collective structures capable of opposing pure market logic’ (Le Monde diplomatique, March 1998). The Collective Body structures a reflection rooted in the dynamics and questions of contemporary art initiatives in Bangladesh but reaching out to multidisciplinary groups of creative practitioners across diverse geographies to highlight the collective processes that may be ignited in the space of freedom that art offers. These processes of social transformation may contribute to forms of profound structural change yet remain relatively invisible before attaining a critical mass. An extraordinary example from Bangladesh is Mangal Shobhajatra, a community procession to celebrate Pohela Boishakh (Bengali New Year) created in 1987 by Jessore-based artists’ collective Charupith. Today it attracts massive crowds who carry painted paper masks, crowns, traditional dolls, and large sculptures that integrate folk forms and motifs, and perform music and comedy from Bengali culture in public space across the country; it is part of UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage list since 2016. This is not a generations old tradition, it is an initiative started as part of Charupith’s wider practice of drawing inspiration from the plurality of rural culture in Bangladesh and creating a festive atmosphere for people across generations (especially children) to experience the potential of art to create spaces of freedom. Charupith is a longstanding research and education-based initiative located in southwestern Bangladesh; close to ten thousand young students have graduated from their independent school of fine arts. Rising fundamentalism has threatened the use of masks due to criticism of the figurative nature of the art with resulting security threats to the festival. The presentation in The Collective Body includes a series of masks created by senior artists with a long-term engagement in the festival, speaking to the role that artists in Bangladesh play in embodying secular values. Artist and philosopher Denise Fereira Da Silva speaks of ‘the task of unthinking the world, of releasing it from the grips of the abstract forms of modern representation’ that have supported violent forms of appropriation and extraction in modern juridic and economic systems. She suggests that artistic practice should today be considered ‘a generative locus for engaging in radical reflection on modalities of racial (symbolic) and colonial (juridic) subjugation operating in full force in the global present.’* Artist-led initiatives such as Trovoa in Brazil, The Hill Group, Kaali, and Shako in Bangladesh, Mata Aho Collective in New Zealand, Thuma in Myanmar, and eleven and ProppaNOW in Australia, among others, have been tearing away the cloak of invisibility thrown by structural racism within the art world. The manifesto of Brazil’s National Trovoa, a group of black and nonwhite women artists and curators which can be seen both as a collective and as a movement, states ‘We understand the need to speak of and to exhibit the plurality of our languages, discourses, research and media produced by us as racialised women’. A rallying call that lives in physical and digital space, Trovoa counts over 150 members and empowers the most disenfranchised members of the art world to become visible together. Reflections on blackness and racial subjugation must respond to different histories and contexts. The largest African diaspora in the world is found in Brazil, the context that has given birth to both Trovoa and Ferreira da Silva’s approaches to blackness. In South Asia also, the colour of a woman’s skin can subject her to structural prejudice. Skin-lightening creams are used widely across the country, derogatory phrases are directed at women with dark skin or indigenous features, and advertisements for arranged marriages explicitly favour ‘fair skin’. The Collective Body brings together two generations of female-led collectives from South Asia (Shako) and South America (Trovoa) for a five-hour tea party within the exhibition’s dedicated discussion space to compare experiences, and in their words, to ‘darken our thoughts.’ The results of these discussions will be published in Bangla, English, and Portuguese on social media. The imperative to ‘unthink the world’ is also linked to what Ferreira Da Silva calls the deep implication of the human and non-human (and of life and non-life) to the collective, fluid, intuitive body and the elements that combine and recombine within it. In terms of the practices of art, where the image ‘reduces the basis of existence to lethal abstraction’ (as Ferreira Da Silva states in the film of 2019, 4Waters: Deep Implication), elemental matter is always more complex than its representation and can provide pathways for artists’ collective radical reflection. Jatiwangi Art Factory in Indonesia, located in the rural district of Jatiwangi that includes 16 villages, have been developing new community-based practices that take as their point of departure the local material of clay, particularly drawing on histories of roof tile production. Activities have ranged from tasting, chemically testing and cooking local clay to developing a Ceramic Music Festival using clay-based instruments to reanimate ceramic production. The elemental matter of clay makes our relationship to the earth more complex and calls up widespread mythological stories of humans being shaped from this. For DAS, Jatiwangi has explored parallels between the clay-based culturesof Indonesia and Bangladesh. The Vietnamese collective Art Labor brings together agronomy as well as colonial and cultural history to study the circulation of plant species in international markets and the effects of industrial agriculture, notably focussing on Robusta coffee beans (introduced to Vietnam in the French colonial period). Policies of increasing scale and modernising techniques related to the introduction of coffee farming have led to mass deforestation and rapid changes in the lifestyle of local indigenous Jarai community in the Northern Highlands of Vietnam. Art Labor collaborates with these communities, from which one of the collective’s members comes, to diversify sources of economic support outside of coffee cultivation and support Jarai culture and farming practices. Also working on community regeneration and seeking food sovereignty through revisiting indigenous agriculture traditions, Calpulli Tecalco works on the outskirts of Mexico City to revive indigenous language and farming techniques, constructing an ecology of knowledge to rethink and defend the use of the land. Adopta Una Milpa is one example of the organisation’s agricultural regeneration projects that reinforces systems of collectivity embedded within Nahuatl language and culture. As opposed to the monoculture of industrial farming, a milpa is a cultivated field where around a dozen crops are planted together – maize, avocados, squash, bean, melon, tomatoes, chilis, sweet potato, jícama, amaranth, and others – which are nutritionally and environmentally complementary, helping each species to grow and providing complementary proteins to the farmers. Unthinking the world takes place not only through working with unexpected materials but also with unexpected groups historically excluded from serious art production such as children, climate change refugees or those affected by natural disasters, all examples taken from specific art projects included in DAS. Calpulli Tecalco has facilitated The Book Club Incualli Ohtli for over twenty years, introducing several generations of children to Nahuatl language and storytelling and also engaging them in imaginative activities with pictographic representation of their linguistic roots. Storytelling is one of the many ways that an idea can move across generations and be renewed. In Bangladesh, Gidree Bawlee Foundation of Arts in northwest Bangladesh acts as a catalyst for social inclusivity through community-focused activities, bringing together local communities and artists to experiment with local cultural traditions. In 2018, they created Hamra to develop experimental forms of puppeteering. The presentation in DAS, Golpota Shobar performs local history and myths surrounding a small village in northwest Bangladesh and the many living and non-living beings that inhabit it – as imagined by a theatre company of children. The handmade puppets made with found materials by the children tell stories of small incidents in the village – natural and/or supernatural that connect to long histories of waves of migration through to recent south to north movements of climate change refugees. In 2015, Bangladesh’s neighbouring Nepal was hit by a massive 7.8 Richter scale earthquake, killing more than 9,000 people and leaving 22,000 injured and 3.5 million homeless. The collective ArTree Nepal initiated 12 Bishakh Post Earthquake Community Art Project at Thulo Baysi, Bhaktapur, Nepal which started as an immediate relief initiative and developed into a sixmonth-long collective healing process involving more than 100 artists, community members, researchers, and musicians who created multi-generational interactive programmes, helping to allow the emotional ground of the community to settle in the wake of the trauma. In recent times, an increased awareness of questions of the interdependence of the human community with non-living elements has emerged in the context of climate change and industrial toxicity. Bangladesh is home to one of the largest poisonings of a population in history via arsenic in the groundwater, exacerbated by ill-conceived plans for shallow wells imported by foreign NGOs who sought inexpensive solutions to provide clean drinking water, but whose lack of specific knowledge of the local context instead unleashed enormous harm. When Europe and North America are directly affected by toxicity and freak weather effects that they previously had only read about in places like Bangladesh, their elites no longer quarantined from the sites of contamination and danger, the limits and violence of neoliberalism begin to be broadcast through the system’s own infrastructure. The ‘end of the world as we know it’ is announced as a contemporary crisis without any recognition that this is the culmination of a more than 500-year accelerating history, the effects of which have been long felt by others who the system discounted, by other lifeforms, and by non-life. Artists, as receivers and transmitters of some of the key questions of our time, and particularly those working collectively in contexts historically subjected to violent extractive and colonial forces, have been approaching environmental interdependence in powerful and lateral ways. Made up of architects, remote-sensing geographers and visual culture researchers, INTRPRT investigates underreported environmental crimes known as ecocide (including the case of arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh). Their advocacy work, visual culture research, exhibitions and publications work towards making justice approachable in the fight against climate emergency and all forms of ecological impunity through collaborations with lawyers and policy-making bodies. Whereas INRPRT works through the judicial systems of the world, The Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) engages scientists and engineers with young people growing up in Ladakh, especially those from rural or disadvantaged backgrounds. This platform equips young Ladakhis with the knowledge, skills, perspective, and confidence to choose and build a sustainable future in a high desert lacking water more every year. Temperatures in the Indian Himalayas are rising as a result of climate change, causing snow from glaciers to melt faster, negatively affecting local communities that rely on springtime meltwater for agriculture. Resulting from two years of experiments at SECMOL Alternative Institute, Ice Stupa was born as a local solution to a local problem, which is now being implemented elsewhere in the region and the world. Ice Stupa is an artificial glacier created by piping an un-useful winter mountain stream down below the frost line, and then cascading it out of a vertical spout in the desert plateau. When gushing water encounters freezing ambient temperatures, it transforms into a conical ice formation with minimal surface area exposed to direct sunlight. The artificial glacier lasts late into the spring, allowing communities extended access to water throughout the season, as opposed to ice, which melts much faster. This is a local solution at a human scale. Particularly in resource and infrastructure-poor contexts, artists work to amplify local initiatives, voices, and materials, even experimenting with alternative economic systems, other approaches to technology and different articulations of scale in political and social intervention in order to generate other sustainable models. The multidisciplinary platform Aman Iwan has developed an action-based research process, combining a research laboratory and the concrete experimentation of a workshop. The realities of diaspora and migration have allowed for a group to come together in Paris of which the members retain connections to many different places. Combining cultural translation and local, rooted knowledge, the platform focusses on cultural heritage preservation and renewal through knowledge transmission. In the installation The Weight of Water commissioned for The Collective Body, one landscape disappears while another appears, using elements inspired by longstanding water management and irrigation systems in Afghanistan, where Aman Iwan founding member Feda Wardak works with artisans on reviving and transmitting skills. Wardak says that ‘Water management systems are both indicative of exceptional human know-how enabling settlement and catalysts for the evolution of certain landscapes, sometimes leading to their disappearance.’ Responding to a lack of spaces for the exchange and debate of ideas in Bangladesh, the open membership artist-led initiative Shonimongol Adda (Bangla for ‘Saturday Tuesday Debate Group’) was formed by inviting friends to come to a quiet local café and to pay for their own food and drink (with a little extra to jointly remunerate an invited speaker) and to engage with a different guest speaker twice a week to debate topics such as ‘What is public space?’ (with a police commissioner as a guest speaker). The platform became so successful that members of the group took over management of the restaurant, which is now known as Kamor Cafe. It continues to host bi-weekly debates and exhibitions and has recently begun publishing newsletters. While initiatives such as Shonimongol Adda push the limits of where a space for art could be located, several artists’ collectives in the exhibition examine the political limits of where their passports allow them to go. The Shelter Promotion Council based in Kolkata and Dhaka’s Britto Arts Trust collaborated in 2014 on Project No Man’s Land, a research and process-based project that brought together twenty-four artists on the borderlines of Dhonitila of Monipur Para in Sunamgonj, Bangladesh and Kalibari village in Cherapunji, India, where they developed installation, performance, sound, photography, and video works on either side of the border. Their activities inspired the border authorities on either side, who in a seemingly unthinkable act, allowed the artists to shed their documents and meet and embrace each other in the zone between the borders. In another border area, issues between Bangladesh and Myanmar have been highly publicised in the wake of the Rohingya crisis, dominating conversations related to these two countries’ relationships, and making it nearly impossible for Burmese citizens to obtain Bangladeshi visas, and viceversa. Two collectives of young female photographers from either country came together in Yangon in 2019 to explore notions of identity, respect, hope, conflict, and resolution through storytelling and photography, a collaboration which culminated in the photo book project Bridging the Naf (the river connecting Bangladesh and Myanmar). Based on their interests and experiences, artists from each country were paired up and took a journey to solve problems, make decisions, and explode stereotypes through the process of artistic exchange. The Burmese artists were denied visas to Bangladesh when it was time for the reciprocal exchange to occur, and The Collective Body is facilitating these collectives to meet in Dhaka for the first time. The Lagos-based platform Invisible Borders has placed political and conceptual border crossing at the heart of their activity of collaborative road trips bringing together photographers, filmmakers and writers from across the African continent. Founder Emeka Okereke speaks to the role that the important and long standing Dhaka photographic and activist initiative Drik (and its school Pathshala) played as a model when he was conceiving Invisible Borders even though there had been no direct contact in Bangladesh. The Collective Body invited Invisible Borders to conceive together with the Drik Network a collaborative road trip taking Bangladesh as a starting point and they decided to focus on the area in the northeast of the country around Sylhet. This landmark trip inscribes itself into long histories of exchanges and solidarities between Africa and Asia and brings into the present their radical imaginaries. The very act of assembling this event’s collective of collectives in Dhaka dissolves borders through bringing initiatives together outside of an international art circuit centred in Europe and North America and tending to involve individuals who can speak ‘art world English’ and are also from countries where visas can be more easily procured. Born from relationships distributed across the global majority world between groups of artists who responded to the challenge to unite in Dhaka, The Collective Body opens a space for public conversations around common interests and preoccupations within reimagined geographies. Some important shared themes include the transmission of long-standing aesthetic forms, relationships between rural and urban contexts, labour movements across agricultural and industrial domains, climate change and environmental toxicity. An emergent network of initiatives comes together at DAS to address – through puppet shows, concerts, screenings, debate, installation, documentation and performance – issues ranging from land rights and resource extraction, to strategies of visibility and contestation, to analyses of the intersections of gender, raciality, caste and class in their symbolic and economic dimensions. When art is practised in life, not abstracted to formal dimensions or insular conversations, material approaches come to the fore that recompose and reinforce existing elements. Networks of artists and other producers develop generative spaces and work against the uniformisation of economic and cultural systems and experiment with other futures. * Denise Ferreira Da Silva, In the Raw, e-flux journal #93 , September 2018, at www.e-flux.com/journal/93/215795/in-the-raw DAS 2020 Collectives Platform Participants Akāliko Founded 2012, Dhaka, Bangladesh Jatiwangi Art Factory Founded 2005, Jatiwangi, Indonesia Akāliko means ‘timelessness’ in Pali, the language of the Buddhist scriptures, reflecting the group’s belief that musical forms have always been present in everyday life in society. The promotion of electronic and experimental music is at the heart of Akāliko’s activities and they collaborate with artists and professionals who make digital and sound art. Born out of Dhaka’s electronica scene, the group was originally established in 2012 as an independent music production label set up to address the need for a common platform to promote the work of ‘bedroom’ music producers. They collaborate with like-minded performance artists, writers, choreographers/dancers, communication specialists, psychologists, and, most recently, sound artists, while at the same time maintaining their label. Their compositions are streamed online and can be experienced in this listening station. Jatiwangi Art Factory in Indonesia, located in the rural district of Jatiwangi that includes 16 villages, has been developing new community-based practices that take as their point of departure the local material of clay, particularly drawing on histories of roof tile production. Activities have ranged from tasting, chemically testing and cooking local clay to developing a Ceramic Music Festival using clay-based instruments to reanimate ceramic production. The elemental matter of clay makes our relationship to the earth more complex and calls up widespread mythological stories of humans being shaped from this. A listening station within the exhibition connects visitors with the sounds this collective creates that emerge from the ground of Indonesia. Through a mini-residency catalyzed by DAS, Akaliko and Jatiwangi explored parallels between the clay-based visual cultures and sonic qualities of Indonesia and Bangladesh. Looking out the window into the garden, visitors could see collaborative instruments created in Bangladesh, which were activated during several jam sessions on the closing three days of DAS from 4–8pm. Jatiwangi’s travel to DAS 2020 was generously supported by the Indonesian Embassy of Bangladesh. Aman Iwan Founded 2015, Paris, France Particularly in resource and infrastructure-poor contexts, artists work to amplify local initiatives, voices, and materials, even experimenting with alternative economic systems, other approaches to technology and different articulations of scale in political and social intervention in order to generate other sustainable models. The multidisciplinary platform Aman Iwan has developed an action-based research process, combining a research laboratory and the concrete experimentation of a workshop. The realities of diaspora and migration have allowed for a group to come together in Paris, with the group’s members still retaining connections to many different places. Combining cultural translation and local, rooted knowledge, the platform focusses on cultural heritage preservation and renewal through knowledge transmission. In the installation ‘The Weight of Water’ commissioned for ‘The Collective Body’, one landscape disappears while another appears, using elements inspired by long standing water management and irrigation systems in Afghanistan, where Aman Iwan founding member Feda Wardak works with artisans on reviving and transmitting skills. Wardak says: ‘Water management systems are both indicative of exceptional human know-how enabling settlement and catalysts for the evolution of certain landscapes, sometimes leading to their disappearance.’ Aman Iwan’s travel to DAS was generously supported by the Institut Francais and Alliance Française de Dhaka. Art Labor Founded 2012, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Art Labor brings together agronomy as well as colonial and cultural history to study the circulation of plant species in international markets and the effects of industrial agriculture. Each project is considered an experiment to test boundaries of art, in terms of exhibition forms, exhibition venues, the artist’s role, curation limits, and the value and appreciation of art in society. Policies of increasing scale and modernising techniques related to the introduction of coffee farming by French missionaries in the 19th century have led to mass deforestation and rapid changes in the lifestyle of the indigenous Jarai community in the Northern Highlands of Vietnam. Art Labor collaborates with this community, from which one of the collective’s members comes, to diversify sources of economic support outside of coffee cultivation and support Jarai culture and farming practices. Visitors can engage with Art Labor inside the ‘Jrai Dew Hammock Café’ at DAS offering Vietnamese-style filter coffee to the public in a style reminiscent of roadside cafes in Vietnam. The title of this pop-up coffee shop draws its inspiration from the Jarai belief that humans are part of a metamorphosis of nature and will eventually become dew that evaporates into the environment, entering a state of non-being, and transforming into particles that fuel new existence. Artpro Founded 2016, Dhaka, Bangladesh Artpro’s projects mobilise artists to work with less visible segments of society, often working to bridge expressions of urban and rural culture. Nakshi Katha: Interwoven Dialogues (2019–2020) exemplifies their collaborative process. This research-based project involved 4 Dhaka based artists and 24 Jamalpur based Nakshi Kantha embroiderers through storytelling workshops. In the Nakshi Kantha tradition, communities (primarily of women) share stories and pass time together embroidering closely linked linear stitches on found fabrics. Bangladesh once had 6 seasons which are depicted in its songs and folk culture, but climate change has reduced this number to 4 or 5 (depending on who you ask). Artpro engaged with the community in Jamalpur to share memories about these seasons, collaborating with the artisans to then stitch these on a saree that was divided into 6 individual panels. The depictions of Boishahk (Summer), the Rainy Season, Autumn, Winter, and Spring are joined by the ‘missing season’ of ‘Late Autumn’ created by the artisans during the first 2 days of DAS. Visitors share memories tied to this lost period of the year and these are memorialized in textile form through the expressions of the artisans. ArTree Nepal Founded 2013, Kathmandu, Nepal In 2015, Bangladesh’s neighbouring Nepal was hit by a massive 7.8 Richter scale earthquake, killing more than 9,000 people and leaving 22,000 injured and 3.5 million homeless. The collective ArTree Nepal initiated ‘12 Bishakh Post Earthquake Community Art Project’ at Thulo Baysi, Bhaktapur, Nepal which started as an immediate relief initiative and developed into a 6-month-long collective healing process involving more than 100 artists, community members, researchers, and musicians who created multi-generational interactive programmes, helping to allow the emotional ground of the community to be remade in the wake of the trauma. Two examples of this healing are represented here through interventions by ArTree members Subas Tamang and Mekh Limbu. ‘Basibiyal’ is the result of storytelling in the aftermath of the disaster. In an abandoned, damaged house, stories of survivors were recorded through an intimate and cathartic mourning process. Conductive ink was used to make ‘screen portraits’ with a video appearing on a screen when a human hand completes the electric circuit. ‘Still Shots from Chal-Ne-Chitrais’ is an animation based on the art of Subina and Suprem, two children who were part of a group encouraged to express their emotions and experiences following the earthquake through drawings. Meticulously traced, re-drawn, and re-traced, their drawings, made over a period of 3 months, are transformed into an animation in which Subina and Suprem themselves narrate their stories and reveal their own coming to terms with what they experienced. ArTree Nepal’s travel to DAS 2020 was generously supported by Contemporary Art of Nepal. Back ART Foundation Founded 2013, Dhaka, Bangladesh Game Time –‘Khela-Ramer Khel’ Project Coordinators: Adil Hasnat, Afsana Hasan Shejuti, Mahmuda Siddika, Sanjid Mahmud. BACK Art refers to the founders’ ‘backpack’ approach to the portability of art and ideas in public spaces. They are particularly interested in rural life and issues related to urbanisation, water systems and climate change. Various projects, including ‘Dhaka Live Art Biennale’ (‘D’LAB’), use performance to explore folklore and long-standing aesthetic forms, seeking ways to locate these within contemporary art practice. Game Time – ‘Khelaram Khel’ is a performative game labyrinth addressing the question ‘Are ghosts real?’and considering shared time and play. It was developed from BACK Art’s Native Myth rural residency project in which they collaborated with local children to create ghost characters used in games later on. Games are widely played in rural areas of Bangladesh by people of different ages. Danguli, Ekka-Dokka/Kut-kut, Saat Chara, Saap Ludo, Ha-Du-Du, Bou Chi and Dariya Banda are very old games in this region that are no-longer common in urban areas. The collective is interested in rewiring and reviving older ways of being together, using contemporary art practice as a vehicle for this. The audience enters a playing area with a design pattern created from children’s drawings to experience and engage with a series of customized games. Britto Arts Trust Founded 2002, Dhaka, Bangladesh Shelter Promotion Council Founded 1986, Kolkata, India Britto Arts Trust (Bangladesh) is one of the oldest artist-led initiatives that is still active in Dhaka, and it aims to encourage critical discourse, research, interaction, diversity, and innovation in art. They provide support and visibility opportunities for artists in a variety of ways, including participation in exchange programmes facilitated by the Triangle Network and other international partners in home and abroad as well as organising exhibitions, residencies, and festivals in Bangladesh. Shelter Promotion Council (India) was established with the objective of promoting the cause of housing and inclusive development of rural and semi-urban areas with special emphasis on the economically weaker section of society. Its members are social activists, architects, engineers, scientists, environmentalists, artists and planners who work together to produce public art festivals addressing socio-political and environmental issues pertinent to north east India. In 2014 as part of ‘Project No Man’s Land’, these two artist led initiatives pushed the political limits of where their passports allowed them to go. This research and process-based project brought together 24 artists on the borderlines of Dhonitila of Monipur Para in Sunamgonj, Bangladesh and Kalibari village in Cherapunji, India, where they developed installation, performance, sound, photography, and video works on either side of the border. Their activities inspired the border authorities on either side, who in a seemingly unthinkable act, allowed the artists to shed their documents and meet and embrace each other in the zone between the borders. Calpulli Tecalco Founded 1990s, San Pedro Atocpan, Mexico Working on community regeneration and food sovereignty, Calpulli Tecalco works on the outskirts of Mexico City to revive indigenous language and farming techniques, constructing an ecology of knowledge to rethink and defend the use of the land. They have facilitated The Book Club Incualli Ohtli for over 20 years, introducing several generations of children to Nahuatl language and storytelling and also engaging them in imaginative activities with pictographic representation of their linguistic roots. Storytelling is one of the many ways that an idea can move across generations and be renewed; several of these stories can be found within these 5 pictographic flags created by the initiative’s founder Fernando Palma. In Mexican native cosmogony, the coordinates axis North-South and East-West is called Nahui Xochitl or Flower of four petals, and when the center or cross road is named, that is the fifth numeral, it is called Macuil Xochitl or Flower five. Interestingly, the numeral Maquil Xochitl is the name of ‘creation’ and it was attributed also to be the artist. This was common practice among the Aztecs, who spoke Nahuatl, and among the Mayan peoples. Incidentally, the Nahuatl language is the second most important after Spanish in Mexico. These flags orient us in another way of seeing and experiencing the world. Charupith Founded 1985, Jessore, Bangladesh Many processes of social transformation may contribute to forms of profound structural change in society yet remain relatively invisible before attaining a critical mass. An extraordinary example from Bangladesh is Mangal Shobhajatra, a community procession to celebrate Pohela Boishakh (Bengali New Year) created in 1987 by Jessore-based collective Charupith. Today it attracts massive crowds who carry painted paper masks, crowns, traditional dolls, and large sculptures that integrate folk forms and motifs, and perform music and comedy from Bengali culture in public space across the country. This is not a generations old tradition. It is an initiative started as part of Charupith’s wider practice of drawing inspiration from the plurality of rural culture in Bangladesh and creating a festive atmosphere for people across generations to experience the potential of art to create spaces of freedom. Close to 10,000 young students have graduated from Charupith’s independent school of fine arts. This series of masks was created by senior artists with a long-term engagement in the festival, speaking to the role that artists in Bangladesh play in embodying secular values. Charupith led mask-making workshops for Dhaka school children on the children’s days of DAS. Drik, Pathshala, and Chobi Mela Drik: Founded 1989, Dhaka, Bangladesh Pathshala: Founded 1998, Dhaka, Bangladesh Chobi Mela: Founded 2000, Dhaka, Bangladesh Invisible Borders Founded 2009, Lagos, Nigeria Invisible Borders investigates the spectrum of knowledge and artistic practices that may be generated by the process of a road trip. Through collective journeys of photographers, videographers, and writers, Invisible Borders conducts research into possible artistic responses to the unexpected. Founder Emeka Okereke comments: “In a world obsessed with artefacts — the physical, final object — as the preferred artistic outcomes, Invisible Borders shifts the gaze to the never-ending, evolutive nature of process. The work produced by the participating artists are precipitates of aesthetic experiences that are ephemeral but contain the seeds of further conversations. The artist’s presence on the road is as important as the work that commences from that presence’’. The resulting works combine photographs, texts, and video to present the critical inquiries of the travellers, their daily journals, and the voices of those met along the way. In a discussion with the curators of the Collective Body, Okereke spoke to the inspiration that the important and long-standing Dhaka photographic and activist initiative Drik (and its school Pathshala) played as a model when he was conceiving Invisible Borders even though there had been no direct contact in Bangladesh. Drik is an independent media organisation committed to challenging social inequality. It specialises in providing state of the art media and communication products for a local and global audience. Establishing its own identity through images and words, it defies the stereotypes created by western media and is a vibrant source of creative energy that refuses to be stifled. Part of the Drik network, Pathshala South Asian Media Institute is a path-breaking school of photography in South Asia. The vision of the institute is to enable an independent, responsible, and creative media industry that contributes to a just and equitable society. Its photography biennial, Chobi Mela International Festival of Photography has become a global platform that brings the world to Bangladesh (as opposed to taking Bangladeshi students to global festivals). This landmark trip inscribes itself into long histories of exchanges and solidarities between Africa and Asia and brings into the present their radical imaginaries. Commissioned and produced by Samdani Art Foundation. Gidree Bawlee Foundation for the Arts Founded 2001, Balia, Bangladesh Gidree Bawlee Foundation of Arts in northwest Bangladesh acts as a catalyst for social inclusivity through community-focused activities, bringing together diverse members of their neighbourhood as well as artists to experiment with local cultural traditions. In 2018, they created ‘Hamra’ to develop experimental forms of puppeteering. The presentation in DAS, ‘Golpota Shobar’ performs local history and myths surrounding a small village and the many living and non-living beings that inhabit it – as imagined by a theatre company of children. The handmade puppets made with found materials by the children tell stories of small incidents in the village – natural and/or supernatural that connect to long histories of waves of migration through to recent south to north movements of climate change refugees. ‘Golpota Shobar’ was realized in collaboration with Jolputul Puppet Studio and was performed inside Taloi Havini’s ‘Reclamation’ installation at 4pm on 7, 8, 9, 14, and 15 February. There were periodic interventions within the puppet theatre in this amoeba. The children also ran theatre workshops with Dhaka-based children during the DAS school days, performing the results of their workshop from 12:45–1:15pm on 11 and 13 February. Hill Artists’ Group Founded 1992, Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh The Hill Artists’ Group is based in 3 districts along Bangladesh’s south eastern border with India and Myanmar known as the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Home to 11 distinct indigenous groups with different languages and cultures, the region is under the control of the Bangladeshi army. In this highly militarised environment, many indigenous people are reluctant to be visible in public space. The Hill Artists’ Group organises exhibitions and also art camps for artists and young people, underlining the need for solidarity across the 11 ethnic communities to preserve their diversity of cultures and languages within a Bengali majority country. Their project for DAS was developed through a workshop with Alejandra Ballón Gutiérrez on the methodologies of SÖI (a public mural project in Lima, Peru with the Amazonian community Shipibo-Conibo). The Hill Artists’ Group identified a key shared practice of ‘jhum’ cultivation, also known as ‘slash and burn agriculture’, where crops are planted on land first cleared of trees and vegetation that are burnt on the spot. The soil contains potassium from the burnt plant materials which increases the nutrient content of the soil. The place of cultivation shifts annually, and every year indigenous farmers raise temporary houses in the mountain forests for months known as ‘Jhum Houses.’ This mural of a Jhum House weaves together textile patterns from the 11 communities, identified by different members of the Hill Artists’ Group as a statement of togetherness. INTRPRT Founded 2016, London, UK Made up of architects, remote-sensing geographers and visual culture researchers, INTRPRT investigates underreported environmental crimes known as ecocide (including the case of arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh’s groundwater). Their advocacy work, visual culture research, exhibitions and publications work towards making justice approachable in the fight against climate emergency and all forms of ecological impunity through collaborations with lawyers and policy-making bodies. INTRPRT presents a temporary, mobile, research office organized into 3 informal sections. 1) A graphic system focused on original, archival, media and legal research into the genealogies of ecocide and more widely speaking, the presentation of the environment as a subject of international criminal law. 2) Methods and casework with a focus on its extraction and climate justice work, its innovative use of software, interactive mapping and remote sensing techniques such as data-intensive satellite imagery analysis. 3) Advocacy work, both in its legal and environmental justice contexts. This presentation is part of an ongoing collaboration between DAS and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. INTRPRT’s travel to DAS was generously supported by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA). Jog Art Space Founded 2012, Chittagong, Bangladesh ruangrupa Founded 2000, Jakarta, Indonesia 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 was a mobile rickshaw screening station created through a collaboration between Jog and ruangrupa. It produced screening sessions at various 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, and IT technicians, and created by the community according to local aesthetics to screen their own videos or selected Bangladeshi films. Jothashilpa Founded 2016, Bangladesh 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 which 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 realise 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. Kaali Founded 2018, Dhaka, Bangladesh Thuma Founded 2017, Yangon, Myanmar Issues between Bangladesh and Myanmar have been highly publicised in the wake of the Rohingya crisis, dominating conversations related to these two countries’ relationships, and making it nearly impossible for Myanmar citizens to obtain Bangladeshi visas, and vice- versa. Two collectives of young female photographers from either country came together in Yangon in 2019 to explore notions of identity, respect, hope, conflict, and resolution through storytelling and photography, a collaboration which culminated in the photo book project ‘Bridging the Naf ‘(the river connecting Bangladesh and Myanmar). Based on their interests and experiences, artists from each country were paired up and took a journey to solve problems, make decisions, and explode stereotypes through the process of artistic exchange. The Myanmar artists were denied visas to Bangladesh when it was time for the reciprocal exchange to occur, and DAS is facilitating these collectives to meet, for the first time, in Bangladesh. Both collectives realise the difficulties facing female photographers in both Bangladesh and Myanmar; coming together provides them the agency to claim space in their respective art scenes. They share postcards with images and text inspired by their cross-border experience for visitors to bring home. Mata Aho Collective Founded 2012, Aotearoa Ko te moteatea te mataaho ki te pa o te hinengaro Māori. The moteatea is the window to the foresight of Māori. Moteatea are songs rich with metaphor that play important roles within Māori communities. Often sung to support or contest a speech, an action or gesture, moteatea are a documentation of history; a way to uplift or lament ancestors, events and places, transferred through many generations. Mata Aho Collective’s time at DAS 2020 will focus on learning a specific form of moteatea called pātere. Composed by women, these fast, vigorous chants recount kinship connections and plot a journey of significant landmarks. Mata Aho will spend time in wānanga each day learning a pātere composed for them that recounts the whakapapa (layers of genealogy) of their artworks they have created together since 2012. Mata Aho’s presentation at DAS was made possible through the generous support of Creative New Zealand. Pangrok Sulap Collective Founded 2010, Ranau Sabah, Malaysia Pangrok Sulap are a collective based in Sabah in Malaysian Borneo, consisting of indigenous Dusun and Murut artists, musicians and social activists who are dedicated to empowering rural communities through art. Membership is fluid and participation open, and their name expresses their make-up, locality and orientation: Pangrok means punk rock, and Sulap is a hut used as a resting place by Sabahan farmers. Pangrok Sulap has no permanent members as it is ‘willing to welcome anyone who wants to contribute’. Their ethos is conveyed by the slogan ‘Jangan Beli, Bikin Sendiri’: ‘Don’t buy, do it yourself’. The group came together to conduct charity work in rural schools, orphanages and homes for the disabled. Working primarily with wood-cut printmaking, they create works that are impressive in scale and seductive in detail, depicting narratives relating to pertinent issues in Sabah. The group has consistently fought against censorship, worked to spread awareness of Sabah’s endangered rainforests, and promoted the power of the arts to empower. Shako Founded 2003, Dhaka, Bangladesh National Trovoa Founded 2019, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Several artist-led initiatives have been tearing away the cloak of invisibility thrown by structural racism within the art world. The manifesto of Brazil’s National Trovoa, a group of black and non-white women artists and curators which can be seen both as a collective and as a movement, states ‘We understand the need to speak of and to exhibit the plurality of our languages, discourses, research and media produced by us as racialised women’. A rallying call that lives in physical and digital space, Trovoa counts over 150 members and empowers the most disenfranchised members of the art world to become visible together. Shako – Women Artists Association of Bangladesh – for women and by women – believes art can play a role in healing society. It raises funds for individuals, male and female, who are unwell or in need of medical treatment; uses art to encourage physically or mentally challenged people; and promotes female artists and helps them develop skills. A ‘shako’ is a temporary bamboo bridge, built to make it possible to cross rivers and streams, an apt metaphor for Shako’s work connecting talented female artists to vulnerable communities. Reflections on blackness and racial subjugation must respond to different histories and contexts. The largest African diaspora in the world is found in Brazil. In South Asia also, the colour of a woman’s skin can subject her to structural prejudice. Skin-lightening creams are used widely across the country, derogatory phrases are directed at women with dark skin or indigenous features, and advertisements for arranged marriages explicitly favour ‘fair skin’. The Collective Body brings together these two generations of female-led collectives from South Asia and South America for a 5-hour tea party to compare experiences, and in their words, to ‘darken our thoughts.’ The results of these discussions were published in Bangla, English, and Portuguese on social media, following #darkeningthoughts . Shako also ran a workshop on black empowerment on 13 February from 4–6pm in the 4th floor workshop area. Shoni Mongol Adda Founded 2016, Bangladesh Responding to a lack of spaces for the exchange and debate of ideas in Bangladesh, the open-membership artist-led initiative Shoni Mongol Adda (Bangla for ‘Saturday Tuesday Debate Group’) was formed by inviting friends to come to a quiet local café and to pay for their own food and drink (with a little extra to jointly remunerate an invited speaker) and to engage with a different guest speaker twice a week to debate topics such as ‘What is public space?’ (with a police commissioner as a guest speaker). The platform became so successful that members of the group took over management of the restaurant, which is now known as Kamor Café, and which is walking distance from the DAS venue. Here, the collective presents a new question every day at DAS in a sign-based format for the audience to consider and debate in addas organised in the discussion area of this amoeba form. It also invited visitors to join them for addas at Kamor Cafe on 8 February and 11 February and hosted artistic delegations from Nepal and Australia. Uronto Founded in 2012, Dhaka, Bangladesh Uronto is an artists’ community that reconnects with lost memories of forgotten places through interdisciplinary contemporary artistic interventions. They create opportunities to connect to cultural histories through coexisting and co-creating, gaining access to memories that inspire creative workers and empower current generations with knowledge. The Uronto Residential Art Exchange Programme is one of the major yearly initiatives of Uronto, which involves interactive pop-up residencies and workshops at sites that are mostly abandoned and soon-to-be demolished heritage buildings in rural areas. Uronto believes that if we lose a heritage building we lose a part of our sense of belonging. Each iteration takes place in a new location, explores a new community, and brings together a new group of local and international artists from different backgrounds, including visual artists, writers, musicians, storytellers, architects, poets, engineers, and so on. Operating as a ‘site-responsive’ art exchange programme, ten to fifteen creative practitioners are convened through an international open-call. The participants live in the surroundings of these structures, fully immersed in day-to-day life, for a week to ten days, exploring oral history through the community. The process culminates in an ‘Open Studio Day.’ Since 2012, through nine iterations, Uronto has brought together over a hundred artists of various creative orientations from more than nine countries making work at nearly a dozen soon-to-be-lost architectural structures/palaces in Bangladesh. Uronto mediates between local and international artists, rural and urban inhabitants, as well as conventional and experimental creative disciplines. Through shared experiences and storytelling, they have created an archive (available on their website) of lost narratives. Their work is a collaboration that both cherishes old narratives and creates new ones, resulting in a greater appreciation of the chosen sites.

ALL PROJECTS Sean Anderson: A Talk about Moma’s Young Architects Program around the world EMK Center, Dhaka, 27 April 2017 Dhaka Art Summit 2018 Fellow Sean Anderson spoke about MOMA's Young Architects Program that takes place around the world at the EMK Centre. SEAN ANDERSON Sean Anderson is Associate Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. A Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, he received two degrees in architectural design and architectural history from Cornell University, an M. Arch from Princeton University and a Ph.D in art history from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has practiced as an architect and taught in Afghanistan, Australia, India, Italy, Morocco, Sri Lanka and the U.A.E. His book, Modern Architecture and its Representation in Colonial Eritrea was published in 2015 and was a finalist for the AIFC Bridge Book Award for Non-Fiction.

ALL PROJECTS The Asian Art Biennale in Context Curated by Diana Campbell Directly after DAS 2016, I spent two months as researcher in residence at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, looking to trace Fukuoka’s exhibitions of modern Bangladeshi art in the 1980s. Flipping through the extensive photo albums kept by museum staff from the time, I encountered installation images of Asian Artists Exhibition II—Festival: Contemporary Asian Art Show 1980 (known from here on out as the First Fukuoka Asian Art Show, Part II) from November 1980 which included works of art that were familiar to me from the storage of National Art Gallery Collection at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy. The haunting blue geometry of Safiuddin Ahmed’s 1979 painting Fishing Net exhibited not only at the 1 st Fukuoka Asian Art Show, Part II, but also at the First Asian Art Biennale in 1981, and DAS 2016 in Rewind . It became apparent that the exhibition histories between the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (FAAM), the Asian Art Biennale and the Dhaka Art Summit (both hosted in the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy) were intimately intertwined in ways not perceptible on the surface. A whole generation of Bangladeshi intellectuals was brutally massacred by the Pakistani military just two days before the country’s independence in 1971, and understandably investing in the regeneration of Bangladeshi culture was high on the national agenda. The Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy was founded by an act of Parliament in 1974, and the visionary and charismatic artist Syed Jahangir joined as its inaugural Director of Visual Arts in 1977, determined for Bangladeshi art to make a mark across the country and also internationally. In 1978, Jahangir quickly organized in Dresden what would be a traveling exhibition of Bangladeshi contemporary art, which inspired him to set up the visual arts department of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy as a collecting institution via the National Art Gallery collection. He traveled to India that same year to participate (as an exhibiting artist) in the fourth Triennale-India, where he was impressed by the Lalit Kala Akademi. Nevertheless, he decided to take his own institution in a different direction, looking instead to the East for inspiration, as many artists in previous generations in Bengal had done—from Nandalal Bose (1882–1996) to Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951) to Mohammad Kibria (1929–2011), to name but a few of those who employed new strategies in their quests to create autonomous spaces for art. Jahangir visited Fukuoka twice in 1980 to prepare for the 1 st Fukuoka Asian Art Show, Part II, where he consulted on the participation of 28 Bangladeshi artists, including himself. It was during his first visit to Fukuoka during the Summer of 1980 were he first had the idea to start the Asian Art Biennale, which is the oldest Biennale of contemporary art to continue to exist in Asia, recently completing its 17 th edition. With strong support from the Bangladesh government and the foreign ministry, assisted by Farooq Sobhan (who is now chair of the board of the Samdani Art Foundation), it seemed the biennale was set to succeed in its January 1981 opening date. However, when Jahangir returned to Fukuoka in November 1980, with only two months to go until the Dhaka opening of the Asian Art Biennale, only three countries had agreed to participate in the platform. Jahangir networked with his fellow artists in Fukuoka, who through a form of radical generosity, agreed to initiate their countries’ participation outside of diplomatic channels. These networks forged in Fukuoka were pivotal to the success of the Asian Art biennale under Jahangir’s leadership; seminal figures from Southeast Asia such as Raymundo Albano (Philippines), Redza Piyadasa (Malaysia), Mochtar Apin (Indonesia), and Lain Singh Bangdel (Nepal) lent their talent as organizers to bring the best of their country’s artists into the fold of the Asian Art Biennale in Bangladesh. This speaks to the energy, drive, and gumption present among artist communities at the time to set up their own alignments outside of traditional and often colonial channels. We are pleased to show photographs reprinted from the archive of the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum chronicling the beginnings of these friendships that forged inter-Asia solidarity extending into Bangladesh. The Asian Art Biennale in Context at DAS 2018 presents all of the 27 works of Bangladeshi art that the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy collected out of the first four Asian Art Biennales before Jahangir left his post soon after the 5 th edition in 1991. The acquisition committee was made up of a group of senior artists from the Academy, and therefore most of these 27 works were made by artists who were part of this system. With this in mind, the selection of works is not indicative of the spirit of the Bangladeshi participation as a whole at these Asian Art Biennales, with the exception of SM Sultan, Ratan Majumdar, Nurun Nahar Papa, Rasha, and Pramesh Kumar Mondol most of whom led more bohemian existences. Rattan Majumdar’s work stood out among the 28 artists exhibiting at the First Fukuoka Asian Art Show Part II. He was only 26 years old at the time, and also exhibited his melancholic prints at the Whitechapel Gallery that same year, and in Dresden two years earlier in the exhibition previously mentioned in this text. Notably absent from the contemporary art scene of Dhaka today, Majumdar has an incredible archive chronicling his early days as an emerging Bangladeshi artist supported by the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy which we are pleased to show in this exhibition. In addition to the two bodies of work entitled Divided Society collected by the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy in 1981 and 1989, we also exhibit his National Award-winning work Pleasure in Nudity from the National Art Exhibition in 1979, a testament to the kind of work the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy was supporting at the time-- which some might consider radical for the context of today. Piecing together the narratives from the catalog essays of the first four Asian Art Biennales, it became apparent that works by international artists at the early shows were donated to the National Art Gallery collection, including the entire Philippine pavilion of 1983 curated by Raymundo Albano. After over a year of searching for these work in the collection storage, we are pleased to present 5 prints on wood collage by the award-winning Filipino printmaker Romulo Olazo, who also exhibited in the First Fukuoka Asian Art Show Part II in 1980. We also present one panel of a 1980 triptych An Afternoon for Bangladesh painted by Filipino artist Phyllis Zaballero, who met Jahangir in Fukuoka one month before painting this work specifically for the exhibition at the invitation of Raymundo Albano, knowing that it would be a donation. I interviewed Zaballero in her Manila studio and archive, and we present a view into the history behind this work and hope that the other two panels will soon be found. Interestingly, while the work was created in preparation for the first Asian Art Biennale in 1981, the Philippines did not exhibit a pavilion until 1983, and Zaballero’s work did not exhibit until 1986 in the third edition of the biennale organized after Albano’s death via the Cultural Center of the Philippines. The point of this exhibition is to highlight the collection within the Shilpakala Academy building that hosts the Dhaka Art Summit, pointing to a Golden Age of the institution under Jahangir’s leadership in the early stages of Bangladesh’s nation building process. The exhibition presents fragments of continuing strands of inquiry into Bangladesh’s role within a rich network of artists across Asia who were trying to build a space for artistic exchange outside of colonial paradigms and build strong and relevant institutions in their local contexts (such as Jahangir with the Shilpakala Academy, and Albano with the Cultural Centre of the Philippines). Dhaka Art Summit benefits from the incredible legacy of the Asian Art Biennale, and we look forward to continuing this research into its institutional history with other colleagues across Asia at a key moment in time when several of the protagonists of this story are still active. The young artists of Bangladesh today benefit from the international exposure that Jahangir and his collaborators created for them via this special biennale. Traces of the Asian Art Biennale can be found elsewhere in the Summit, and this biennale is certainly among the “gifts of the inferno” alluded to in Bearing Point 2. The inaugural panel in DAS’s auditorium talks program, Another Asia , features Syed Jahangir who will speak about his experience setting up the biennale. Jack Garrity of the Pacita Abad estate will discuss this pioneering Filipino Artist who exhibited in the 3 rd Asian Art Biennale, and Juneer Kibria will discuss his father Mohammad Kibria (also present in Planetary Planning) in a panel about transnational artistic and architectural practices that included Bangladesh. Bearing Point 4, includes the provocative Hostage series of Shahid Sajjad which exhibited in the 6 th Asian Art Biennale in 1993. A workshop on “forensic art history” will give local Bangladeshi art historians tools to further their inquiries into this fascinating period of Bangladeshi art history, and the Asian Art Biennale will also be addressed in the Scholar’s Weekend via the symposium Displays of Internationalism. This presentation would not have been possible without the following individuals and institutions who supported us with time, access, and encouragement: Fukuoka Asian Art Museum Raiji Kuroda Rina Igarashi Syed Jahangir Yasunaga Koichi Patrick Flores Rattanamol Singh Johal Rattan Mojumder Marga Villanueva Storage staffs from Shilpakala Phyllis Zaballero Liaquat Ali Lucky Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Asian Art Biennale Will Smith, Art in America Md. Muniruzzaman Artists Abdus Sattar (B. 1979, Barisal, Bangladesh, lives and works in Dhaka, Bangladesh) Abdus Sattar is a well-known oriental art practitioner and honorary professor at the Department of Oriental Art, University of Dhaka. In his early artistic life he has been trained by Somnath Hore as a print maker but chose to focus on the unexplored areas of oriental art in this country. Alok Roy The Man – I, (1983) Burnt clay Courtesy of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka Alok Roy’s The Man – I presents a study of the human condition in the fragile and difficult medium of burnt clay. Roy’s forms fold and collapse into themselves, seemingly on the verge of disappearance. The central form encompasses a human head, caught mid-scream, alluding to a sense of collective suffering and trauma. Aminul Islam (b. 1931, Tetia, Bengal Presidency, British India, d. 2011, Dhaka, Bangladesh) Reflections and Reality, 1976 Painting and collage (mirror) Courtesy of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka Aminul Islam was an active member of leftist political and cultural organizations, which heavily influenced his practice. Reflection and Real uses the language of geometric abstraction to produce social critique, meditating on the perceived versus the reality of a society. The collage presents a shattered surface, that reflects and multiplies itself over and over again, speaking to fractures in society that reproduce themselves in every generation. The artist presented a similar work at the first Fukuoka Asian Art Show, Part II in 1980. Bonizul Huq Love of Tree, 1983 Oil on Canvas Courtesy of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka Banizul Huq’s Shadow – I presents an image that is fills one with both a sense of foreboding, and calm. Huq abstracts from the form of a banyan tree around which cattle are huddled; the banyan tree occupies an important position in the vernacular spiritual beliefs of South Asia, where it is seen as both a repository of wisdom, and also the dwelling-place of ghosts. The cows, which are also important symbols in Hindu beliefs, that huddle at its base seem to be ghostly presences, occupying a metaphysical realm, rather than one of reality. Hamiduzzaman Khan (b.1946, Kishoreganj, Bangladesh, lives and works in Dhaka, Bangladesh) Remembrance-III ’71 (1980) Brass Courtesy of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka Hamiduzzaman Khan’s Remembrance-III ’71 memorializes all those who lost their lives during the Bangladesh War of Liberation. The sculpture depicts a frail yet resolute figure, clad in only a dhoti, standing a shattered door, riddled with bullet-holes, celebrating the resolve of the freedom fighters in the face of horrific violence. Hashi Chakraborty (b. 1948, Chittagong, Bangladesh- d.2014, Chittagong) Memory – 15, 1983 Courtesy of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka Hashi Chakraborty’s work reflects a deep romanticism, drawing on influences from both cubist and folk modes of painting. Chakraborty creates a creates a dream-like space where floating shapes interact with each other to suggest emergent forms. He explores the idea of memory and inspiration found in romantic poetry, as the space where past experiences spontaneously emerge and play themselves out. Kazi Abdul Baset (b. 1935, Dhaka, Bengal Presidency, British India, d. 2002, Dhaka) Painting-I (1980) Courtesy of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka Kazi Abdul Baset’s work occurs on the border between abstraction and figuration, drawing equally from his exposure to Abstract Expressionism, which he had encountered while studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1963-64, and Bengali folk forms. In Painting-I we find traces of the handling of colour by artists such as Mark Rothko, where abstract fields of pigment are layered to create a sense of depth. Baset’s painting creates an energetic encounter between different coloured fields, interrupted by a smoke-like column which imbues the work with a sense of urgency. Baset’s painting reflects a strong desire to modes of abstraction beyond those already established in the West. Mansur Ul Karim (b. 1950, Rajbari, Bangladesh; lives and works in Chittagong) Open Window and Chair, 1983 Oil painting Courtesy of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka Mansur Ul Karim uses both abstract and figurative modes within his paintings, which draw their inspiration from the landscape of Bangladesh. Open Window and Chair presents a vantage point from which to view a rapidly changing world; energetic brushwork and composition creates the impression of a rapidly transforming space. Karim views these changes favourably, even romantically, pointing to the openness with which artists of his generation embraced cross-cultural exchanges. Mohammad Kibria (b. 1929 in Birbhum, British India; d. 2011 in Dhaka) Painting-V (1980) Oil on canvas Courtesy of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka Mohammad Kibria was a master of abstraction, whose paintings delve into the realm of pure colour. Painting-V explores the tension between hard and soft forms produced by placing various shades of earth brown side-by-side, and plays with varying levels of luminousity that appear through these juxtapositions. This work, as in most of the paintings he created, references entropy in nature found when moss or other natural materials grow on man-made structures, inspired zen philosophy that he encountered during his time studying in Japan. This painting exhibited both in the first Fukuoka Asian Art Show, Part II in 1980 and two months later at the first Asian Art Biennale in Dhaka in 1981 before entering the collection of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy. Nitun Kundu (B. 1935, Dinajpur district, Bengal Presidency, British India- D. 2006, Dhaka) Homage to the Martyrs Bronze Courtesy of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka Through this sculpture, Nitin Kundu pays homage to the martyrs of the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. He creates an ascendant column, which spirals towards the sky, memorializing the heavy price of freedom paid by those who were killed, and their lofty aspirations. This sculpture exhibited both in the first Fukuoka Asian Art Show, Part II in 1980 and two months later at the first Asian Art Biennale in Dhaka in 1981 before entering the collection of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy. Qayyum Chowdhury (B. 1932, Feni, Bengal Presidency, British India- D. 2014, Dhaka) My Village (1977) Oil on canvas Courtesy of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka Nature plays a key role in Qayyum Chowdhury’s stylized abstract paintings. His lyrical painting My Village, depicts a romantic vision of village life in harmony with the rhythms of the sun and the tides, referencing strongly the landscape of Bengal whose lush green expanses are riddled with small, snaking bodies of water. Rafiqun Nabi (B. 1943, Chapai Nawabganj, Bengal Presidency, British India, lives and works in Dhaka, Bangladesh) The Poet (1980) Wood-block print Courtesy of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka Known as a painter, print-maker and illustrator, Nabi’s work references the vernacular forms of Bengal to create compositions with a strong narrative component. In The Poet, Nabi celebrates the Romantic ideal of the poet finding inspiration in nature, paying tribute to figures such as Rabindranath Tagore and Jibanananda Das whose work served as inspiration during the Language Movement (Bhasha Andolon) which ultimately led to the establishment of the nation of Bangladesh. Rasha Life II, 1983 wood Courtesy of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka Akhtar Ahmed Rasha, known as Rasha, uses found pieces of wood to realize his sculptural forms, which often follow the shapes of the wood itself. In this work, Rasha depicts the hardships of a new nation, and the struggles before it: a figure crouches, with an alms bowl before him, and an old man leans heavily on his staff; towering above them, however, we see the face of a man, looking ahead, illustrating the artist’s hope for the future. The work won the Grand Prize of the 3rd Asian Art Biennale in Dhaka, after which it entered the collection of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy. S.M. Sultan (b. 1923, Narail District - d. 1994, Jessore) First Plantation (1975) Natural Pigment on canvas Courtesy of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka S.M. Sultan is known for his energetic style, weaving together multiple sources of inspiration, and his paintings of Bangladeshi agricultural workers, whose figures he renders with exaggerated musculature. Sultan’s First Plantation, which depicts farmers in the act of sowing seeds, bursts with a sense of anticipation and optimism, reflecting his hopes for the new nation of Bangladesh, which became independent only a few years before this painting was finished. This work marked a shift in his practice as he was previously known as a landscape painter, and this monumental and iconic figure appears in the many works he made post 1975. Safiuddin Ahmed (b. 1922, Calcutta, British India; d. 2012, Dhaka) Fishing Net (1979) Oil on canvas Courtesy of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka Safiuddin Ahmed’s work references the strong linearity and bold use of colour found in the indigenous visual practices of the Santhal communities of Santiniketan, among whom he spent many of his early years. Fishing Net speaks to the intimate relationship between man and nature in village life in Bengal, depicting the gleam of the fresh catch as is lies in the fisherman’s net. Water is a recurring theme across the artist’s work as the impact of the 1974 flood was emblazoned into his imagination. This painting exhibited both in the first Fukuoka Asian Art Show, Part II in 1980 and two months later at the first Asian Art Biennale in Dhaka in 1981 before entering the collection of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy. Shahabuddin Ahmed (b. 1950, Dhaka, lives and works between Dhaka, Bangladesh and Paris, France) First Step (1986) Oil on canvas Courtesy of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Shahabuddin Ahmed’s work is heavily influenced by the violence he saw first-hand when he served in the Mukti Bahini during the Bangladesh Liberation War. Ahmed’s energetic, almost violent, brushwork in First Step visualizes his exuberant hopes for the future of the new nation of Bangladesh, created during the 15th anniversary of its independence. Sultanul Islam Life Circle (1985) Concrete Courtesy of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Sultanul Islam’s sculpture Life Circle explores the cyclic nature of life and death, and of the pain of existence, drawing from Buddhist beliefs which have become part of vernacular mythology in South Asia. Islam’s crouching figure, which seems simultaneously on the verge of life and death, becomes a representation of the notion of samsara, which binds us to our mortal desires. A similar sculpture is found in the collection of the Bangladesh National Museum. Syed Jahangir (b. 1935, Satkhira, Bengal Presidency, British India, lives and works in Dhaka, Bangladesh) Soul Seeker – II Oil on canvas Courtesy of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Syed Jahangir draws inspiration from the landscape of Bangladesh, and his trips to the Rangamati in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, to produce meditative and metaphysical paintings. Soul Seeker continues this spiritual search for the heart of the country, creating forms that resist easy resolution, but rather seem to keep unfolding before our eyes, pointing to the never-ending nature of the search. Intuition and knowledge that exists outside of reason are another concern of Jahangir’s early works, which is also alluded in the title of this series of works, “Soul Seeker.” Syed Jahangir was instrumental in setting up the first Asian Art Biennale and creating networks across Asia, many of which began during his time spent in Fukuoka preparing for the first Fukuoka Asian Art Show, Part II, 1980.

ALL PROJECTS Live Feed Station - Asia Art Archive In its ongoing effort to map and present the many histories of 20th century art writing in different languages of South Asia, Asia Art Archive presented its first Live Feed Station at Dhaka Art Summit 2016. The Live Feed Station was an on-site junction where visitors could view an array of some of the most interesting publications, art magazines, books and catalogues that have been published in the past century, and was also an opportunity for visitors to explore the database and bring their own references to contribute to this expanding platform of shared knowledge. The Live Feed Station was a part of Asia Art Archive’s ongoing Bibliography of Modern and Contemporary Art Writing project and was hosted by the Samdani Art Foundation at the Dhaka Art Summit.

ALL PROJECTS Fragility and Resilience Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai, 6 September - 7 December 2024 Ayesha Sultana's solo exhibition, Fragility and Resilience , curated by Sabih Ahmed, is on view at the Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai. The exhibition explores the delicate balance between the vulnerability and strength of our planet in the 21st century. Featuring a diverse array of artworks that includes the first-ever unveiling of Sultana’s hand-blown glass sculptures, the exhibition is designed to guide viewers through a journey of discovery and reflection. The Samdani Art Foundation has loaned several works from our collection for the exhibition, alongside contributions from prominent collectors including Prateek & Priyanka Raja, Akshay Chudasama, the Ishara Art Foundation, and the Prabhakar Collection.

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

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

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