Publications

PARTNERS TEAM DAS 2023 considers the ways in which we inherit and form vocabularies to understand the world around us, and the mistranslation that can ensue when we try to apply these vocabularies to unfamiliar contexts; the same word can migrate from positive to negative connotations and back depending on how and where it travels. Weather and water as shapers of history and culture as well as being metaphors for life in general are viewed in an embodied way through the lens of those who live in Bangladesh, next to the sea and rivers, underneath the storm systems, feeling the wind and rain. This is further explored through a consideration of how Bengali children encounter these phenomena, palpably but also via the stories passed down through generations. The aim is to see past the limits of translation which can be incapable of conveying the different ways we negotiate the world, and open up new channels for transcultural empathy. How do you tell the story of a crisis, while facilitating hope? The Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) is an international, non-commercial research and exhibition platform for art and architecture related to South Asia. With a core focus on Bangladesh, DAS re-examines how we think about these forms of art in both a regional and an international context. Exhibitions & Programmes Samdani Art Award Exhibition DAS 2023 Curated by Anne Barlow Talks Programme DAS 2023 ​ Very Small Feelings DAS 2023 Co-curated by Diana Campbell (Artistic Director, Samdani Art Foundation) and Akansha Rastogi (Senior Curator, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art) with Ruxmini Choudhury (Curator, Samdani Art Foundation) বন্যা (Bonna) DAS 2023 Curated by Diana Campbell দ্বৈধ (A Duality) DAS 2023 Curated by Bishwajit Goswami (Assistant Professor, Department of Drawing and Painting, University of Dhaka) with research support from Muhammad Nafisur Rahman (Assistant Professor of Communication Design at the School of Design, College of DAAP, University of Cincinnati), in collaboration with Brihatta Art Foundation Purposeful Goods DAS 2023 Curated by Teresa Albor To Enter The Sky DAS 2023 Curated by Sean Anderson (Associate Professor and Undergraduate Program Director at Cornell University’s Department of Architecture) LOAD MORE Bonna is the fifth chapter under the Artistic Direction of Chief Curator Diana Campbell and is complemented by a series of intersecting exhibitions including the Samdani Art Award curated by Anne Barlow (Director, Tate St. Ives), To Enter the Sky curated by Sean Anderson (Associate Professor and Undergraduate Program Director at Cornell University’s Department of Architecture), দ্বৈধ(a duality) curated by Bishwajit Goswami (Assistant Professor, Department of Drawing and Painting, University of Dhaka) with research support from Muhammad Nafisur Rahman (Assistant Professor of Communication Design at the School of Design, College of DAAP, University of Cincinnati) in collaboration with Brihatta Art Foundation, and Very Small Feelings, co-curated by Campbell and Akansha Rastogi (Senior Curator, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art) with Ruxmini Choudhury (Assistant Curator Samdani Art Foundation), and a transnational folklore research team with contributions from Kanak Chanpa Chakma and other indigenous thought leaders connecting traditions across Bangladesh and Northeast India. DAS is a continually unfolding story imagined by hundreds of contributors, and this edition will include over 120 artists, architects, and writers, over 60% Bangladeshi, and over 50% producing new work for the show. Rather, the DAS concept of Bonna challenges binaries - between necessity and excess, between regeneration and disaster, between adult and child, between male and female. DAS 2023 invokes and interprets Bonna as a complex symbol-system, which is indigenous, personal and at once universal, an embodied non-human reversal of how storms, cyclones, tsunamis, stars, and all environment crises and discoveries are named, allowing Bonna, the young girl, to speak from Bangladesh to the world; she asks why the words for weather are gendered, what the relationship between gender, the built environment, and climate change might be. ​ During Bengali New Year, Bangladeshi people sing a song written by Rabindranath Tagore, Esho he Boishakh , which calls upon the first month of summer to bring storms to wash away any residue of ugliness from the previous year: “'Bring forth and sound your conch of storm, Let the foggy mesh of ugly illusion be gone.” Ebb and flow, drought and abundance are phenomena that have shaped the culture and history of Bangladesh (and South Asia) just as a river cuts an ever-changing path as it seeks lower ground. When considering this, and the traditional ways of coping and celebrating polar forces, we must acknowledge that climate change is accelerating and causing even more dramatic events, often beyond the capacity of even the most resilient people’s ability to survive. During the planning stages of DAS 2023 the north-western part of the country was overwhelmed with severe flooding and we are releasing the thematics of Dhaka Art Summit at a time where devastating floods and the many lives lost and made precarious in South Asia demand our urgent attention. This is a sobering instruction to consider the implications during DAS 2023 for a country that has always managed to co-exist with extremes. The word for flood, ‘Bonna,’ is also given as a common name for girls in Bangladesh. A flood in Bangladesh does not simply translate into the dominant idea of the word flood carrying a singular connotation of “disaster.” Storms have eyes and eyes have storms. We can be flooded with emotions, yet reduced to singular drops of tears. We give storms human names; we describe human emotions using terms that are also applied to weather. A tropical cyclone in the Bay of Bengal was captured in the iconic “Blue Marble'' image of the Earth in 1972, the first full image of the Earth taken from space and one of the most circulated images of all time. The Bangladeshi artist and climate justice activist Nabil Ahmed points out that the cyclone in this image derives “from the same tropical storm system that produced Bhola, which devastated the coast of East Pakistan in November 1970. In its aftermath followed a genocide and war of national liberation for present-day Bangladesh. After Bhola, looking at a cyclone will never be the same; the potential for political violence and an ever-circling wind are united as one.” Extreme weather and the absence of state management was the tipping point for Bangladeshis to declare independence in 1971 and fight for the right to express themselves in their own language. As the Ghanaian-Scottish designer, thinker and educator Lesley Lokko insightfully points out, “When you are in the eye of the storm, this is often the right point to push for maximum change.” ​ DAS 2023 wanted to listen to the lands and waters of Bangladesh and its people to tell stories and imagine futures where people regard what the planet and non-human intelligences have to say, as opposed to the clock or the calendar. DAS 2023 was about the power of water and the double paradox of how floods and their impact may be (mis)understood. Bonna also concerned the power of translation– how do Bangladeshi understandings of life challenge those who might have only understood the flood and its manifestations as a mistranslation and for those now experiencing similar climatic challenges. By extension, the Bangladeshi artist and researcher Shawon Akand expands upon mud as a metaphor for the adaptive power of Bengalis; mud can be hard as stone when baked under the summer sun, a fertile bed for crops during the harvest season, and liquid during the monsoon, all without losing its essence. ​ ​

PARTNERS TEAM The fourth edition of the Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) took place from 2 to 10 February 2018, featuring both an Opening Celebration Weekend (February 2–4) and a closing Scholars’ Weekend (February 8–10), and several tiers of new programming. Produced and primarily funded by the Samdani Art Foundation, DAS 2018 was held in a public-private partnership with the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, the country’s National Academy of Fine and Performing Arts, with support from the Ministry of Cultural Affairs and Ministry of Information of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, the National Tourism Board, the Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA), and in association with the Bangladesh National Museum. ​ DAS 2018 puts Bangladesh at the centre of its own cartography rather than at the periphery of someone else’s, recalibrating how we think about art in South Asia by focusing on the increased inclusion of minority positions and conflicted terrains. This allowed visitors to reconsider the diversity found in the region beyond national narratives, and to begin to navigate South Asia as a long-standing zone of global contact. The Solo Projects section of the Dhaka Art Summit was replaced with Bearing Points. This new initiative comprised large-scale thematic presentations from artists and architects, orienting the viewer towards lesser explored transcultural histories of the region, curated by DAS Chief Curator Diana Campbell, and weaving together strands of thought from the nine other guest curated exhibitions in the Summit. ​ The Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) is an international, non-commercial research and exhibition platform for art and architecture related to South Asia. With a core focus on Bangladesh, DAS re-examines how we think about these forms of art in both a regional and an international context. DAS is unique in its ability to be a true hub for art and architecture related to South Asia. Expanding on the success of past editions, DAS 2018 extended its duration of exhibitions and programming to nine-days, and for the first time, widened its focus to create new connections between South, Southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean belt, highlighting the dynamic evolution of art in contemporary South Asia and reviving historical inter-Asian modes of exchange. Over three hundred artists were exhibited across ten curated exhibitions, and over one hundred and twenty speakers from all over the world participated in sixteen panel discussions and two symposiums that grounded future developments of art in South Asia within the region’s rich, yet lesser-known, past. ​ This was the third Summit led by Samdani Art Foundation Artistic Director, Diana Campbell, who returned as the Chief Curator of DAS 2018. Exhibitions & Programmes The 4th edition of the Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) produced by the Samdani Art Foundation (SAF) closed on 10th February, having brought together over 300 artists, 120 speakers, and welcomed record attendance with 317,000 visitors over 9 days Talks Programme DAS 2018 ​ Education Pavilion DAS 2018 Curated by Diana Campbell Critical Writing Ensembles- Sovereign Words DAS 2018 Curated by Katya García-Antón 2-10 February 2018 | Dhaka Art Summit Bearing Point 5 - Residence Time DAS 2018 Curated by Diana Campbell Bearing Point 4 - There Once Was A Village Here DAS 2018 Curated by Diana Campbell Bearing Point 3 - An Amphibious Sun DAS 2018 Curated by Diana Campbell Bearing Point 2 - Dozakh-I-Puri N'imat (An Inferno Bearing Gifts) DAS 2018 Curated by Diana Campbell Bearing Point 1 - Politics: The Most Architectural Thing To Do DAS 2018 Curated by Diana Campbell The Sunwise Turn DAS 2018 Curated by Shabbir Hussain Mustafa Illustrated Lectures | Imagery, Ideas, Personae, And Sites Across South Asia DAS 2018 Curated by Beth Citron And Diana Campbell Betancourt Displays Of Internationalism | Asia Interfacing with The World Through Exhibitions, 1947-1989 DAS 2018 Curated by Amara Antilla and Diana Campbell Below the Levels Where Differences Appear DAS 2018 Curated by Vali Mahlouji LOAD MORE

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

Ishara Art Foundation in Dubai 6 September to 7 December 2024 Fragility and Resilience, Ayesha Sultana Brussels Where Do The Ants Go? at the Horst Arts and Music Festival 20 Feb- 24 May 2024 Kather Nripati at Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2023 Thailand Biennale, Chiang Rai Weaving Chakma 8 December 2023 — 1 September 2024, Kunstinstituut Melly, Netherlands My Oma Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art in Nusantara, Jakarta Voice Against Reason Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art Stepping Softly on the Earth Museo Moderno in Buenos Aires 55th CIMAM Annual Conference 6 September- 10 December 2023, Sao Paulo, Brazil Choreographies of the Impossible, 35ª Bienal de São Paulo 31st August - 29 October 2023 EVA International - Ireland's Biennial of Contemporary Art Co-curated by Diana Campbell (Artistic Director, Samdani Art Foundation) and Akansha Rastogi (Senior Curator, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art) with Ruxmini Choudhury (Curator, Samdani Art Foundation) Very Small Feelings 19 May- 16 July 2023, Timișoara, Romania My Rhino is not a Myth, Art Encounters Biennial Select Year All Projects The Samdani Art Foundation participates in a variety of projects, outside of the Foundation's regular programming, as part of a commitment to increasing world-wide engagement with the work of Bangladeshi and South Asian contemporary artists and architects. The Foundation assists in funding travel grants that enable artists to attend residencies or undertake research abroad and supports international institutions and festivals to include South Asian artists within their exhibitions and programmes. The Foundation also regularly loans works from its collection of modern and contemporary South Asian artists to international institutions and festivals.

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

Artist-led Initiatives The Samdani Artist-Led Initiatives Forum is committed to supporting the work of Bangladesh’s independently established and self-funded art collectives and initiatives. Eleven groups vital to the growth of Bangladesh's creative communities participated in this Forum, led by Diana Campbell Betancourt, Artistic Director of the Samdani Art Foundation, and assisted by Ruxmini Reckvana Q Choudhury, Assistant Curator at the Foundation. The Forum launched on April 13, 2017 at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy. Each of the participating initiatives remained members of the Forum and receive support from SAF until the 2020 Dhaka Art Summit. The work each of these initiatives undertakes to provide Bangladesh’s next generation of artists with opportunities is undisputed, yet many have limited resources, which reduces their marketing capacity and prevents them from connecting with a global audience. SAF is committed to supporting the work of Bangladesh’s contemporary artists, in part by increasing their international exposure. The Forum supported these initiatives’ ongoing efforts by helping each to continue to work locally, while building their profile internationally through SAF’s network and collaborators. AKĀLIKO An initiative born out of Dhaka’s Electronic Scene (DES), Akāliko was founded in 2012 by artists Khan Mohammad Faisal and Vru Patel, and later joined by Shoummo Saha and Jami Farooq. The group first aspired to connect Dhaka’s diverse community of bedroom electronic music producers, who at that time were working in solitude across the city. Since then, Akāliko has grown into its current identity as an independent record label with a DIY approach to sourcing new artists and helping other small record labels to grow their own identities. While electronic music is Akāliko's primary focus, the initiative also collaborates with non-musicians, including writers, choreographers/dancers, communication specialists, and psychologists, to produce workshops, music videos, and sound art projects. To watch Akaliko's presentation at the inaugural Samdani Artist Led Initiatives Forum Meeting: Click here ARTPRO Based primarily in Dhaka, Artpro promotes the work of Bangladesh’s contemporary artists, while expanding the reach of their work to new audiences, both nationally and internationally. Founded by artists, Arpita Singha Lopa, Md. Zahid Hossain ‘Sagor’, Farah Naz Moon, Lutfun Nahar, Mahbubur Rahman, and Ashim Halder ‘Sagor’, each of who actively maintain their own practice, the group’s multi-disciplinary approach utilises each of the founding members individual expertise while rigorously following the group’s collaborative mission to create unique opportunities for visual artists, and most importantly, for the public to engage with their work. To watch Artpro’s presentation at the inaugural Samdani Artist Led Initiatives Forum Meeting: Click here BACK ART Finding it challenging to initiate contemporary art projects in Dhaka alone, BACK Art was formed as an endeavour to combine forces and develop activity which would open up the city’s art scene to provide emerging contemporary artists with opportunities to expand their practice and exhibit their work. Believing in the transformative power of art, the group promotes new languages for art within Bangladesh producing a variety of programmes from exhibitions, workshops, and most recently the international performance art festival, the Dhaka Live Art Biennale (D’Lab). To watch Back ART's presentation at the inaugural Samdani Artist Led Initiatives Forum Meeting: Click here CHARUPITH Charupith was founded in 1985 by Hironmoy Chanda and Mahbubur Jamal Shamim with the ambition of increasing the social impact of art within their local community. Based in Jessore, a district in the south-western region of Bangladesh, Charupith is heavily involved in local social awareness campaigns. Addressing the loss of local industries specific to the region—such as sola or spongewood craft makers and date-palm jaggery production—the group actively runs the Charupith Library, Research Centre, and Institute of Fine Arts—courses include art, dress-making, Architecture, craft, and Art History—from where 15,000 students have graduated for free to date. To watch Charupith's presentation at the inaugural Samdani Artist Led Initiatives Forum Meeting: Click here GIDREE BAWLEE FOUNDATION OF ARTS The Gidree Bawlee Foundation of Arts was established in 2001. It is a non-profit multidisciplinary organisation with the aim of bridging cultural gaps and promoting the indigenous presence in Bangladesh’s cultural landscape. Predominantly working in Bangladesh’s northern Thakurgaon district, the group creates space for cultural and artistic exchange between artists and skilled crafts people through site-specific environmentally focused art projects produced in rural communities. Each culminates in a collaborative artwork created through lively interactions and the exchange of ideas. To watch Gidree Bawlee Foundation of Arts' presentation at the inaugural Samdani Artist Led Initiatives Forum Meeting: Click here HILL ARTIST GROUP The Chittagong Hill Tracts, comprised of Rangamati, Khagrachari and Bandarban, are situated in Bangladesh’s Chittagong Division along the country’s south-eastern borders with India and Myanmar. An area with a rich culture and traditions, the Hill Artists’ Group was established here in 1992 to promote the region and its people by organising exhibitions, both nationally and internationally, of indigenous artists work while assisting the region’s novice artists to develop their careers. To watch Hill Artist Group's presentation at the inaugural Samdani Artist Led Initiatives Forum Meeting: Click here JOG ART SPACE Based in the city of Chittagong, a major coastal seaport city in south-eastern Bangladesh, Jog Art Space was formed by Zahed Ali Chowdhury, Shaela Sharmin, Zihan Karim, and Syed Md. Shohrab Jahan as a platform for artists to create innovative and experimental work not encouraged at the nearby Institute of Fine Arts, Chittagong University. Through mentoring and exhibition opportunities, Jog has created a space for the Chittagong’s artists to continue their education. To watch JOG Art Space's presentation at the inaugural Samdani Artist Led Initiatives Forum Meeting: Click here JOTHASHILPA A newly formed organisation, Jhothashilpa is a centre in the Adabor district of Dhaka city for traditional and contemporary art practices where all art forms are equal and not measured in terms like traditional, urban, folk, or craft. Pairing traditional and contemporary art, Jhothashilpa encourages artists to work collaboratively to expand their practice and helps traditional practitioners like rickshaw painters to find new income streams to make a sustainable living through their practice, despite the decline in its traditional use. To watch Jothashilpa's presentation at the inaugural Samdani Artist Led Initiatives Forum Meeting: Click here SHAKO Shako was established by a group of women artists over 13 years ago as a social initiative to raise funds through the sale of art to help fellow artists, male or female, who were in need of medical treatment. Taking their social responsibilities seriously, the group works closely with organisations across Bangladesh that support drug addicts and acid victims by facilitating workshops to teach new skills to these recovering women and help them find alternative ways to generate a sustainable living with the skills they already have. The group does not exclude male artists from their exhibitions; they have, until recently, chosen not to take part. To watch Shako: Women's Artist Association of Bangladesh's presentation at the inaugural Samdani Artist Led Initiatives Forum Meeting: Click here SHONI-MONGOL ADDA Shoni Mongol Adda is an informal discussion group that began meeting every Saturday (Shonibar) and Tuesday (Mongolbar) in a small artist-run cafe in the heart of Dhaka City during summer 2016. With each session organised by a core team, who prefer to remain nameless, the group covers a diverse range of topics, each session begins with a presentation from a nominated peer who discusses his or her ongoing work and ideas. A supportive space for people from varied professions, the group’s members range from artists and writers to cosmologists and police inspectors. To watch Shoni Mongol Adda's presentation at the inaugural Samdani Artist Led Initiatives Forum Meeting: Click here URONTO ART INITIATIVE Initiated as a pilot project in 2012, Uronto Artist Community was officially formed in 2013 by artist Sadya Mizan as a way of documenting disused or abandoned spaces in rural areas through art. Each of Uronto’s instalments begins as an open call for proposals with selected participants then attending a residential art exchange programme at the pre-selected space. Through Uronto’s a site-specific residential art exchange programme, selected participants are then challenged to work with unfamiliar mediums, re-animating the abandoned site and interacting with the local community for seven to nine days. To watch Uronto Artist Community's presentation at the inaugural Samdani Artist Led Initiatives Forum Meeting: Click here COLLABORATORS Samdani Artist-Led Initiatives Forum 2020 Uronto Artist Community Samdani Artist-Led Initiatives Forum 2020 Shoni Mongol Adda Dhaka Art Summit 2020 Shako and National Trovoa Dhaka Art Summit 2020 Jothashilpa Dhaka Art Summit 2020 JOG and ruangrupa Dhaka Art Summit 2020 Hill Artist Group Dhaka Art Summit 2020 Gidree Bawlee Foundation of Arts Dhaka Art Summit 2020 Charupith Dhaka Art Summit 2020 BACK Art Samdani Artist-Led Initiatives Forum 2020 Art Pro Dhaka Art Summit 2020 Akāliko and Jatiwangi Goethe Institut Auditorium, Dhaka, 5 Aug 2019 Pasar Ilmu, Activation Programme by Gudskul ​ Cinema Banner Painting Workshop Thakurgaon, 1 - 7 Dec 2018 Charcha Sessions Year PROJECTS LOAD MORE

Hosted by Ruxmini Reckvana Q Choudhury Footnotes For The Future ​ Art Around the Table Thakurgaon, 1 - 7 Dec 2018 Charcha Sessions ​ রিক্সা শিল্পীদের পাশে ​ Concert From Bangladesh ​ A Time Comes When We Hear Nothing ​ World Weather Network ​ Jrai Dew Sculpture Garden | 2016 (Ongoing) ​ Untitled | 2017-2018 (Ongoing) Year Collaborations The Samdani Art Foundation participates in a variety of projects, outside of the Foundation's regular programming, as part of a commitment to increasing world-wide engagement with the work of Bangladeshi and South Asian contemporary artists and architects. The Foundation assists in funding travel grants that enable artists to attend residencies or undertake research abroad and supports international institutions and festivals to include South Asian artists within their exhibitions and programmes. The Foundation also regularly loans works from its collection of modern and contemporary South Asian artists to international institutions and festivals. LOAD MORE

Ishara Art Foundation in Dubai 6 September to 7 December 2024 Fragility and Resilience, Ayesha Sultana Brussels Where Do The Ants Go? at the Horst Arts and Music Festival 20 Feb- 24 May 2024 Kather Nripati at Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2023 Thailand Biennale, Chiang Rai Weaving Chakma 8 December 2023 — 1 September 2024, Kunstinstituut Melly, Netherlands My Oma Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art in Nusantara, Jakarta Voice Against Reason Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art Stepping Softly on the Earth Museo Moderno in Buenos Aires 55th CIMAM Annual Conference 6 September- 10 December 2023, Sao Paulo, Brazil Choreographies of the Impossible, 35ª Bienal de São Paulo 31st August - 29 October 2023 EVA International - Ireland's Biennial of Contemporary Art Co-curated by Diana Campbell (Artistic Director, Samdani Art Foundation) and Akansha Rastogi (Senior Curator, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art) with Ruxmini Choudhury (Curator, Samdani Art Foundation) Very Small Feelings 19 May- 16 July 2023, Timișoara, Romania My Rhino is not a Myth, Art Encounters Biennial 22 April- 18 June 2023, Melbourne, Australia MOTHERTONGUE, Australian Center for Contemporary Art ​ World Weather Network Jeddah The River Remembers at Islamic Arts Biennale 2023 6 Nov 2022 Voice to Voice, Screen to Screen Tate, London Let me get you a nice cup of tea 14 September - 31 December 2022, Lyon, France Manifesto of fragility, 16th Biennale de Lyon Documenta Fifteen, Kassel AFIELD Study #3 Let's Share! December 2021- April 2022, Queensland Art Gallery, 10th Asia-Pacific Triennale in Brisbane, Australia The Fibrous Souls Select Year SAF Around The World The Samdani Art Foundation participates in a variety of projects, outside of the Foundation's regular programming, as part of a commitment to increasing world-wide engagement with the work of Bangladeshi and South Asian contemporary artists and architects. The Foundation assists in funding travel grants that enable artists to attend residencies or undertake research abroad and supports international institutions and festivals to include South Asian artists within their exhibitions and programmes. The Foundation also regularly loans works from its collection of modern and contemporary South Asian artists to international institutions and festivals. LOAD MORE

PARTNERS TEAM Inspired by the geological reading of the word ‘summit’ as the top of a mountain, Seismic Movements: Dhaka Art Summit 2020 (DAS 2020) considers the various ruptures that have realigned and continue to shift the face of our spinning planet. Seismic movements do not adhere to statist or nationalist frameworks. They join and split apart tectonics of multiple scales and layers; their epicentres don’t privilege historical imperial centres over the so-called peripheries; they can slowly accumulate or violently erupt in an instant. The Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) is an international, non-commercial research and exhibition platform for art and architecture related to South Asia. With a core focus on Bangladesh, DAS re-examines how we think about these forms of art in both a regional and an international context. DAS 2020 is a cumulative festival building on the ideas we have been pondering since our first edition in 2012. Like in music, this Summit is arranged into both improvised and organised movements that can be experienced separately, but the complete work requires all of the diverse sounds and rhythms resounding within it to be considered together. It is a sum of many parts that reinforce each other and expand with unplanned trajectories and connections resulting from the energy and vision of our many collaborators and partners. DAS 2020 touches upon geological movements, colonial movements, independence movements, social movements and feminist futures, spatial movements, the conditions that move us to act and the power that comes with moving collectively. We do not just consider forms of artistic production, but also forms of institutional production that enable artistic practices and pedagogies, generating new vocabularies of social organisation and building better ways to create and live together. What do the stirrings of a movement feel like and how do we learn from the experience of living through one? In the words of Sara Ahmed, a movement requires us to be moved. What might happen when ideas move from inside the exhibition to the larger reality outside? We designed DAS 2020 with this in mind, maintaining a porous barrier between the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’ of the venue. DAS 2020 is about shaking up our understanding of the present and the past, creating opportunities to come together and make and write (art) history from new perspectives, trying to give a voice to the people who are not in the most dominant positions to be heard. We reach a summit through a journey that pushes our mental and physical limits. We experience ourselves and the world with fresh eyes as obscured vantage points become visible and we feel ourselves grow small as we climb towards the top of a mountain. Could it also be that the mountain, in turn, sees us change in scale as we approach its zenith? Diana Campbell, Chief Curator Dhaka Art Summit Artistic Director, Samdani Art Foundation with Ruxmini Reckvana Q Choudhury and Teresa Albor Exhibitions & Programmes Seismic Movements is the fourth chapter under the Artistic Direction of Chief Curator Diana Campbell and is complemented by a series of exhibitions DAS is a continually unfolding story imagined by hundreds of contributors, and this edition included over 400 artists, architects, art collectives, speakers and writers. Condition Report 4: Stepping Out of Line; Art Collectives and Translocal Parallelism DAS 2020 ​ MAHASSA DAS 2020 Modern Art Histories in and across Africa, South and Southeast Asia Moving Image Rituals for Temporal Deprogramming: Videos, Films and Talks Programme DAS 2020 Curated by the Otolith Group (Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun) Roots DAS 2020 Curated by Bishwajit Goswami. Research assisted by Sumon Wahed This exhibition was made possible through the initiative and dynamic energy of Brihatta Geographies of Imagination DAS 2020 Envisioned by SAVVY Contemporary with Antonia Alampi, Bonaventure S.B. Ndikung, and Olani Ewunnet with Jothashilpa in association with the Goethe Institut, Bangladesh and Samdani Art Foundation On Muzharul Islam: Surfacing Intention DAS 2020 Co-Curated by Diana Campbell with Sean Anderson and Nurur Khan and Assistant Curator Ruxmini Reckvana Q Choudhury Spatial Movements DAS 2020 Curated by Diana Campbell Collective Movements DAS 2020 ​ Nobody Told Me There Would be Days Like These DAS 2020 Curated by Mustafa Zaman Assistant Curator: Ruxmini Reckvana Q Choudhury The Collective Body DAS 2020 Curated by Diana Campbell and Kathryn Weir. Assistant curator: Kehkasha Sabah. Supported by Adam Ondak, Lucia Zubalova, Ruxmini Reckvana Q Choudhury, Teresa Albor Colonial Movements DAS 2020 ​ Geological Movements DAS 2020 ​ LOAD MORE

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.

PARTNERS TEAM Held at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, 5th – 8th February 2016 Curated by Samdani Art Foundation Artistic Director and DAS Chief Curator Diana Campbell, Katya García Antón (Director of the Office for Contemporary Art Norway), Daniel Baumann (Director of the Kunsthalle in Zurich), artist Nikhil Chopra, Beth Citron (Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Rubin Museum of Art), artist Madhavi Gore, curator Shanay Jhaveri (Assistant Curator-Modern and Contem-porary Art, South Asia, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), Aurelien Lemonier (Architecture Curator at the Centre Pompidou), Nada Raza (assistant curator at Tate Modern), Md. Muniruzzaman and artist Jana Prepeluh with Asia Art Archive Senior Researcher Sabih Ahmed and Amara Antilla (assistant curator at the Guggenheim Museum, New York). The Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) is an international, non-commercial research and exhibition platform for art and architecture related to South Asia. With a core focus on Bangladesh, DAS re-examines how we think about these forms of art in both a regional and an international context. DAS provokes reflections on transnationalism, selfhood and time with invited artists, curators and thinkers who build exhibitions through commissioned research and experience within the region—without being prescrip-tive. Neither a biennial, symposium nor festival but somewhere in between, the unique format of the Summit transforms the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy into a generative space to reconsider the past and future of art and exchange within South Asia and beyond. DAS 2016 included loans from the Bangladesh National Col-lection; the Museum Folkwang in Essen; the Pinault Collection and many public and private South Asian col-lections as well as partnerships with institutions such as the Centre Pompidou; Asia Art Archive and Harvard South Asia Institute, DAS considers South Asia from the view of doing and becoming rather than cartography, occupying the triplet planes of imagination, will and circumstance. In addition to new commissions and curated group exhibitions, DAS events included talks, critical writing, performances, films, book launches and the Summit’s first historical exhibition, Rewind. The Samdani Art Award finalists exhibition curated by Daniel Baumann; The Missing One curated by Nada Raza; Architecture in Bangladesh curated by Aurelién Lemonier; The Performance Pavilion, curated by Nikhil Chopra, Madhavi Gore and Jana Prepeluh; Not as far as it seems, a series of conversations and sound pieces curated by Safina Radio Project; a Film Programme curated by Shanay Jhaveri; as well as Critical Writing Ensemble, panel dis-cussions, workshops, and more. Exhibitions & Programmes The Summit is a free and ticketless event and this year welcomed 138,000 visitors in 4 days, of which 800 were international visitors and operated tours for 2,500 students from 30+ schools. Those participating included over 300 emerging and established artists, 100 speakers who attended as part of the Talks Programme, as well as internationally renowned curators and writers, and attracted visitors from over 70 international institutions, who attended the Summit to extend and further their research into the region. Talks Programme DAS 2016 ​ Safina Radio project DAS 2016 ​ Soul Searching DAS 2016 Curated by Md. Muniruzzaman Film Programme DAS 2016 Curated by Shanay Jhaveri Live Feed Station - Asia Art Archive DAS 2016 ​ Critical Writing Ensemble DAS 2016 Curated By Katya García-Antón, Antonio Cataldo, Diana Campbell, Chandrika Grover And Bhavna Kakar The Missing One DAS 2016 Curated by Nada Raza Shifting Sands, Shifting Hands DAS 2016 Curated by Nikhil Chopra, Madhavi Gore And Jana Prepeluh Solo Art Projects DAS 2016 Curated by Diana Campbell Mining Warm Data DAS 2016 Curated by Diana Campbell Architecture In Bangladesh DAS 2016 Curated by Aurélien Lemonier Rewind DAS 2016 Curated by Amara Antilla, Beth Citron, Diana Campbell and Sabih Ahmed LOAD MORE