Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live.

Rabindranath Tagore Curated by Diana Campbell Betancourt

Concrete, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

Fabric(ated) Fractures is a collaboration between the Samdani Art Foundation and Alserkal at Concrete, Dubai. contents acknowledgements bio(graphies) art(ists) 18 Ruxmini ReckvanaQChoudhury | The ChangingParadigmsofBangladeshiArt Diana CampbellBetancourt12 Culture HoldingTight attheSeams| An Interwoven foreword |NadiaSamdani10 foreword |AbdelmonemBinEisaAlserkal8 , LandofUndefined 78 Territory Jakkai Siributr, TheOutlaw’s 74 Flag Debasish Shom,IntheRiversDark70 Kamruzzaman Shadhin,HavenIsElsewhere 66 Reetu Sattar, HaranoSur(LostTune) 62 Shilpa Gupta,Untitled42 Gauri GillandRajeshVangad, toDeath38 Birth Rashid Choudhury, Untitled(Calligraphy-Allahu)34 Kanak ChanpaChakma,SoulPiercing 30 Pablo Bartholomew, Untitled26 Ashfika Rahman,RapeisPolitical54 Ayesha Jatoi,Residue50 This is My Home, My Land and Hitman Gurung,ThisisMyHome,Landand 46 My Country Atomic Tree 0358 Generation Wish YieldingJoydeb Roaja,GenerationWish Trees and 23 83 96

(Abdelmonem Bin Eisa Alserkal) Founder, Alserkal

At the core of Alserkal’s ethos is the endeavour to cultural practitioners as they explore their and discursively—to amplify artistic dialogues, and bring the richness and diversity of contemporary practices; and creating a platform for artistic write chapters of cultural history through regional art from the region to the global stage. Dubai’s and discursive exchange. and international collaborations and initiatives. historical relevance as a trading outpost mid- way between East and West has placed it at the This collaboration further champions the Together with Alserkal Director, Vilma Jurkute, confluence of cultures and global narratives. The intrinsic values we share with the Samdani Art and the Alserkal team, I’d like to thank the artists, Dubai of today embodies that essence of plurality Foundation, by fostering a growing South to Nadia and Rajeeb Samdani, along with the team foreword and multiculturalism; reflecting the city’s evolution, South dialogue which draws in the practices of at Samdani Art Foundation, and the curator Alserkal has grown to become a platform where cultural practitioners beyond our own borders, Diana Campbell Betancourt for a seminal show, these conversations thrive. Through each of our and broadening the context of contemporary and for their contributions to the growing, and partnerships, we serve as a conduit for building global art conversations. Fabric(ated) Fractures tells longstanding, cultural exchange between the cultural bridges. the story of a multi-faceted country through the Middle East and South Asia. voices of 15 artists who draw on the rich history Our relationship with the Samdani Art Foundation of to reflect on the current moment, began long before Fabric(ated) Fractures. From highlighting the invaluable nature of historical our very first encounter, the Foundation’s values context in cultural dialogue. echoed strongly with our own. As we discovered the various commonalities in our mandates, we What better place to continue a conversation explored ways to further bring our shared vision to that started at the Art Summit 2016 than life: making interdisciplinary dialogue part of the Concrete, a space that highlights the importance fabric of our contemporary societies; supporting of preservation and that allows us—both physically

8 9 (Nadia Samdani)

Co-Founder and President, Samdani Art Foundation, Director, Dhaka Art Summit

South and Southeast Asia. We work to challenge and Singapore Biennale; Kamruzzaman Shadhin’s shallow definitions of Bangladesh and South immersive fabric monument to human resilience Asia that turn to lowest-common-denominator across borders was commissioned for DAS 2018, and

foreword methodologies to group people together–such as travelled to the Garage Museum of Art in Moscow; focusing on religion. Much of the violence our Pablo Bartholomew’s exploration of shared cultural region has seen over the past century has stemmed DNA between indigenous communities in India, from manufactured religious divides created by Bangladesh, and Myanmar was commissioned for colonial powers as a tool to control our people DAS 2018, and has been exhibited in Hong Kong, The Samdani Art Foundation is delighted to and our resources. This exhibition points to the New Delhi, and Yangon; and Reetu Sattar’s haunting partner with Alserkal and Concrete to present our plurality of religious and ethnic identities that make performance and filmLost Tune travelled to the first exhibition in the UAE,Fabric(ated) Fractures, up the rich culture we experience in and around Liverpool Biennial and the Rotterdam International curated by our Artistic Director Diana Campbell Bangladesh today. It also sheds light on the plight Film Festival. My husband Rajeeb and I could not Betancourt. Featuring 15 artists from Bangladesh, that these people endure to try to maintain these be more delighted to add Dubai to the list of places India, Nepal, Thailand, and Pakistan, this identities in the 21st century, as the borders between where these works will come to life when seen and exhibition speaks to the ongoing evolution of our countries and people grow increasingly tighter. discussed by new audiences. foundation and our Dhaka Art Summit initiative, which seeks to connect people across national Many of the works in this exhibition have been divides by emphasising our shared cultural history, commissioned and produced by the Samdani while simultaneously celebrating the importance Art Foundation as part of our ongoing initiatives of our differences and the history of plurality supporting artists to experiment, travel, and embedded in our region. We consistently try to explore new horizons without the pressure found challenge regional definitions; people do not tend in commercial platforms. Shilpa Gupta’s series to define themselves in geopolitically defined terms. exploring border enclaves between India and Bangladesh was first unveiled at DAS as one of The fourth Dhaka Art Summit (DAS), held in 2018, our first foundation commissions in 2014, and it turned its gaze east to draw in Southeast Asian has since travelled to Venice, Delhi, and Berlin, and Pacific Island practices into the fold of our and showed the world the complexities of border traditionally South Asian exhibition and research politics in our young country; Munem Wasif’s platform. This was responding to the bottleneck we haunting photographs of the border between India were experiencing between these two regions in the and Bangladesh near Sylhet was commissioned for midst of the Rohingya crisis; Bangladesh straddles DAS 2016 and travelled to the Gwangju Biennale

10 11 An Interwoven Culture

of the vibrant and diverse threads that comprise a When I was first invited to envision an exhibition in Holding yet-to-be crystalised identity in the wounded border Concrete, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture’s areas related to Bangladesh; areas that cannot (OMA) first building in the UAE, I wondered how I be defined with a single overarching regional could possibly do curatorial justice to the fragility of framing device. the contexts and gestures that these artists and the Tight Dhaka Art Summit create through our work in such While this exhibition was born within the borders a precise and imposing building. The answer came of what is now considered Bangladesh, the lines when stepping outside its confines and into the at the demarcating this young country are constantly 1,370-square-metre courtyard linking Concrete to shifting. The waters that move across its edges are the rest of Alserkal Avenue and its diverse creative shared with India and Myanmar, flowing into wider community.[4] Although on a much grander scale, Seams border issues that extend into Thailand, Pakistan, The Yard reminded me of the heart and soul of and Nepal—the countries that the 15 artists in this the traditional Bengali household—the courtyard exhibition come from. These artists bear witness known as uthan, around which single-storied hut (Diana Campbell Betancourt) to violence unfolding in their locales and on their dwellings are arranged in villages across East and communities, and their work often acts as a register West Bengal. The inner-houses and outer-houses Artistic Director, Samdani Art Foundation, for this trauma, grounding the constricting present reflect patterns of pastoral heritage that evolved Chief Curator, Dhaka Art Summit in a more porous past. Despite carrying the weight across generations and alongside changing belief of enormous pain, the deeply poetic practices of systems, and accommodate family functions such these artists create spaces of empathy through as sleeping, cooking, and dining as well as formal which new modes of solidarity might be imagined. functions that involve engaging and socialising with They break down reductive national and regional the wider community.[5] narratives and reformulate them from a more local and human perspective. Fabric(ated) Fractures considers contexts that anthropologist Jason Cons describes as ‘sensitive spaces’–spaces that challenge ideas of nation, state, and territory where cultures exist that do not fit the image that the state has for itself.[1,2]Sensitive [1] Jason Cons, Sensitive Space: Fragmented Territory at the India Bangladesh Border (Seattle: University of spaces are often razed, with their people forced to Washington Press, 2016), 154. succumb to the state and submit to the domination [2] This concept takes inspiration from Sonal Khullar, “Everyday Partitions”, Third Text 31.2 or 31.3 (April 2017), of majority forces.[3] However, the social fabric of 359–386, doi: 10.1080/09528822.2017.1386946. these spaces often remains intact, a testament to [3] For a more expanded discussion of these ideas, see Diana Campbell Betancourt, “Bearing Point 4” in Dhaka Art human fortitude, even if its people are dislocated Summit: 2-10 February 2018, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy: Exhibition Guide. (Dhaka: Samdani Art Foundation, 2018), 577 et passim. and their dwellings levelled. Regional lenses, [4] Concrete is the first building in the UAE to be completed by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), including overarching headers such as ‘South founded by Rem Koolhaas. Commissioned by Abdelmonem Bin Eisa Alserkal, Concrete is located in Alserkal Avenue, Asia’ or ‘MENASA’ tend to filter out the many a 500,000 square-foot arts and culture community founded in 2007.

traces of difference found on a local level, and this [5] Ashik Vaskor Mannan, and Sudipta Barua. Anecdote Of Bengal Vernacular Spaces (Yogyakarta: Duta Wacana University exhibition aims to weave a more complex picture Press, 2011), 40. www.irbnet.de/daten/iconda/CIB_DC22856.pdf.

12 13 An Interwoven Culture Holding Rising eight metres from the earthen floor of Tight at the Seams Concrete, Kamruzzaman Shadhin’s monument to human resilience envelops the space as a massive When the British first partitioned a united Bengal quilt created from the trauma-ridden garment in 1905 on a religious basis as a tool to control skins shed by Rohingya refugees upon reaching rising Bengali nationalism, intellectuals such as Bangladesh, as well as clothing left behind by Rabindranath Tagore forewarned of the grave victims of human trafficking from Bangladesh into danger of dividing regions united by language, art, Southeast Asia. These garments once sheltered and culture that allowed for plural belief systems bodies ensnared in violence perpetuated by in society.[7] Bangladeshi sculptor and art writer nationalism and greed. Continuing Tagore’s legacy Many of the builders of Concrete come from South Further breathing life into Alserkal Avenue’s Lala Rukh Selim elaborates that, “over the last two of creating pluralistic bonds, these tragic pieces of Asia and once lived in uthan-centric environments. uthan, we commissioned the indigenous millennia Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, Islam, clothing were bonded together using traditional As scholar Paul Oliver writes, “Vernacular Bangladeshi artist Joydeb Roaja to create alpona- and Christianity have been practiced in Bengal, Bengali kantha stitching techniques. This piecing architecture generally embodies community values, inspired drawings linking Concrete to the central and many different peoples have contributed to the together was done by a community of internal and less evidently, may symbolize concepts of Yard of Alserkal Avenue. The word alpona derives area’s complex aesthetic heritage. The synthesis of migrant women who became victims of climate cosmos, or act as an analogue for the abstraction from the Sanskrit word alimpana, which means to these different influences has contributed to the change when their villages did not survive flooding, of belief. Thus even a simple dwelling may reflect plaster or coat with, and like the mud floor inside hybrid . Artists have drawn on forcing them to relocate to higher ground in both the material and spiritual worlds of its builders the exhibition space, alpona is made of a rice- different aspects of traditions at different times in northern Bangladesh. and occupiers.”[6] Wanting to ground the exhibition based paste derived from the soil. While alpona is attempts to reflect and create new identities.”[8] in the spiritual worlds conjured by the vernacular a ‘very Bengali’ motif, Roaja used its technique to This community gesture transformed these architecture of South Asia, we worked with a team create a drawing where indigenous women tower Village folklore and cultural rituals inspire much fragments of global capitalism (one might notice of Bangladeshi diaspora builders in Dubai to lay a over the forces trying to silence and contain them, of Bangladeshi modern art, including the three the internationally recognisable brands on the mud-floor across the OMA-designed space for the speaking to their unmistakable importance to cubist-inspired handwoven jute tapestries by Rashid clothes that were likely made in Bangladesh but duration of the exhibition. South and Southeast Asia’s history and culture, Choudhury (1932-1986) on view in this exhibition. whose brand value does not translate to the people despite their shrinking visibility. Thread is an important motif for braided Bengali who made them) into a comforting symbol. It heals solidarity across religious divides, and is reflected some of the trauma of displacement by bringing in the title of the exhibition. Rabindranath Tagore into being a world of belonging and togetherness. declared 16 October, 1905, the first day of Partition, Ayesha Jatoi and Jakkai Siributr’s immersive fabric- to be a day of national mourning where no food based works also speak to the process of love, loss, would be cooked in Bengali households, and where and moving on when one’s home—be it physical [6] Ashik Vaskor Mannan, and Sudipta Barua. Anecdote of Bengal Vernacular Spaces (Yogyakarta: Duta Wacana University Hindu and Muslim Bengalis would tie rakhis to each like a homeland or emotional like a family—is lost Press, 2011), 39. www.irbnet.de/daten/iconda/CIB_DC22856.pdf. other. In Hindu tradition, a rakhi is a sacred thread to religiously motivated violence. [7] The first Partition of Bengal lasted from 1905-1911, which briefly created East and West Bengal, followed by the tied to a brother’s wrist by his sister as a bond of love, Partition of British India in 1947, which created East and West Pakistan. as a sign of lifelong protection for each other that [8] Lala Rukh Selim. “Art of Bangladesh: The Changing Role of Tradition, Search for Identity and Globalization” South no political force could break, but Tagore adapted it Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, no. 9, (2014) 2, doi:10.4000/samaj.3725, 2. inclusively across gender and religious divides.

14 15 Palpable Porosity has kept it together for nearly half a century. try to keep their lamps burning despite vigilante needs of the state, capitalist greed, and religious The droning harmonium music of Reetu Sattar’s movements to seize their lands as ‘enemy property’. fundamentalism seek to mine resources from below The space that Bangladesh occupies is a difficult performance and filmHarano Sur (Lost Tune) echo Shilpa Gupta explored enclaves of Bangladesh in the ground (and water) these people stand on, one to physically contain, as it stretches across through the space in a Tagorean affirmation that India, and enclaves of India in Bangladesh, known and erase the religious beliefs which they stand for the largest delta in the world. This liquid piece of culture is here to stay. as chitmahal, and her photograph, sculpture, and through violent cultures of fear and oppression. Earth has more rivers running through its borders text work brings viewers into a surreal, yet very than anywhere else on the planet. Tidal waves Divide and Conquer real scenario of waking up one night and being Through the works of Hitman Gurung, Ashfika from the Bay of Bengal eat away at its coastlines, ‘duly informed that I now lived in a fragment of Rahman, Pablo Bartholomew, Kanak Chanpa and melting ice from the neighbouring Himalayas Historically, Bengal was a significant centre of trade a country inside of another country.’[12] Staying Chakma, and Gauri Gill and Rajesh Vangad, which floods its way across the land, making amphibious and production, particularly of textiles, and was once put when the socio-political forces around you are span weaving, photography, drawing, and painting, being a way of life in a country less than half the wealthiest province of the Mughal Empire. “In pressuring you to leave is an act of resistance for the act of portraiture becomes one of resistance the size of Germany (150,000 square km), with the 2,000 years of our history, we have been poor minority communities, not only in Bangladesh, but when the state and/or vigilantes try to deliberately over twice its population size (estimated between for only 250 years and that too, because of [British] also across the world. deny or suppress certain communities or identities, 160-200 million, depending on whom you ask).[9] colonization. If we do suffer from poverty, we suffer opening up new points of view beyond officially Munem Wasif’s haunting series of photographs only from one kind of poverty – economic poverty. Indigenous Struggles recorded narratives by giving a face to the suppressed of a desolate and seemingly alien landscape, But most countries suffer from many other kinds of voice of the often invisible ‘Other’. Most of the reminiscent of a film strip, speaks to the difficulty poverty, even today”, remarked the late modernist The name Bangla Desh means the land where artists in this exhibition regularly collaborate with of physically defining a homeland as man and Bangladeshi architect Muzharul Islam.[11] When the people speak Bangla (Bengali), and Bangladesh communities different from those they were born nature strip away visual markers while furthering British carved out Pakistan from an independent was born in 1971 on the back of the Language into, tapping into a humanism that existed before the political and capitalistic agendas of others. India in 1947, creating East and West wings, they Movement in the 1950s, during which people colonial fractures. It is our utopian hope at Samdani created a country only united by its common fought for the right to speak, live, and work in Art Foundation that it might be possible to revive The constantly shifting physical topography makes majority religion, Islam, ignoring the plurality their own language. Even if we allow that linguistic and encourage this humanism by supporting art and change endemic to Bangladesh, as well as the found in Islam’s cultures of worship, as well as lines offer far more room for cultural inclusiveness culture via exhibitions such as this one. other civilisations that once floated on this watery the vast cultural contributions that Animism, in Bangladesh than religious ones do, we must land, such as pre-partition Bengal. Some posit that Buddhism, and Hinduism lent to the fabric of acknowledge that there are at least 42 other the name Bengal derives from the act of building Bengali identity. languages spoken within this territory. Beyond raised ridges to protect against rising water levels Bangladesh, the plight of minority cultures across called al, found across the area historically known The seeds for Hindu and Muslim separatism were the world share uncanny similarities as development as Bang.[10] Like its alluvial soil, culture in Bengal sewn in the 1905 and 1947 partitions of Bengal was porous, and beyond what can be found when the British tried to quash rising nationalism. through archaeology, traces of the many layers These fabricated ruptures between the majority of past civilisations on this land seeped deep into Hindu and Muslim communities who once the identity of its people and can be palpably felt peacefully coexisted on these lands perpetuate [9] Andreas Ruby, et al. Bengal Stream: The Vibrant Architecture Scene of Bangladesh. (Christoph Merian Verlag, 2017), 18. through artistic expression in the country. Political violence to this day. Debasish Shom’s emotionally [10] Anwar Dil, and Afia Dil. Bengali Language Movement and Creation of Bangladesh. (Adorn Publication, 2011). and greed-motivated ridges have tried to divide stirring photographs speak to the continued the country away from the cultural unity that built struggles of Hindu minority communities in [11] Nurur Rahman Khan. Muzharul Islam: Selected Drawings. (Sthapattya O Nirman, 2010), 11. it in the first place; the resilience of its people Bangladesh, who hold onto the idea of home and [12] Diana Campbell Betancourt. Dhaka Art Summit 2014 Catalogue. (Samdani Art Foundation, 2014), 28-32.

16 17 (Ruxmini Reckvana Q Choudhury) Assistant Curator, Samdani Art Foundation, Dhaka Art Summit

I didn’t know what to make of those art forms; I between art and photography. Longitude Latitude, was confused, but at the same time, excited to see founded in 2003 in Dhaka, is another bi-annual The something new. I would find myself in the midst of event where artists, photographers, architects, artists who were debating the acceptance of new cartoonists, and creatives from diverse backgrounds media in art, and I loved hearing their arguments. would exhibit their works. Changing Fast forward to today, and the debate continues— but I see that the same people who strongly Groups formed by artists were also experimenting opposed changes have now learned to accept them. and taking art outside the white cube, and land Paradigms of In 2010, when I was accepted into the only Art and performance art became more explored History department in the country (at the time) at mediums. The primary reason for this was the lack the Faculty of Fine Arts, , the of formal gallery spaces, and few opportunities Bangladeshi first thing I noticed was that the curriculum was for emerging artists to experiment. Groups such outdated, with no facilities or encouragement to as Santaran Art Organization (founded in 1999 practice non-academic art. Fortunately, many artists in Chittagong) and Gidree Bawlee (founded in were already experimenting outside of the academy. 2003 in Thakurgaon) have long been working with Art indigenous communities in rural contexts, giving A couple of years later in 2012, while working at the opportunities to mainstream artists to collaborate Dhaka Art Center, I had the chance to experience through residencies. Another group, CRACK the sound art of Ayesha Sultana at the Seven Senses Trust (founded in 2007 in Kushtia), focuses on exhibition—I instantly fell in love with her work, local communities. 02. This show, to me, was extremely important. Although several groups were already working in The now-defunct alternative artist initiative As the daughter of two artists, I have long been different media, students had hardly been exposed OGCJM, which was founded in 2012, rebelled in touch with the contemporary art scene of to these exhibitions. But the Dhaka Art Center was against the academy to follow their own passions. Bangladesh. From a young age, I never missed a prominent space where everyone felt welcome, In 2013, the Uronto Artist Community, who Bangladesh’s Asian Art Biennale (AAB), and and through this exhibition, the general public of document abandoned architectural spaces I remember eagerly waiting to see the Dhaka was finally exposed to new media art for the through art, and Back ART Foundation, who exhibition.[1] It was there, in the early 2000s, first time. champion performance art through the Dhaka that I first experienced video art. I also recall Live Art Biennale, were founded, along with other visiting the Britto International Artists’ Workshop Around the same time, the Chobi Mela photography groups who continue to work to develop the in Bogra, in the north of Bangladesh, where I biennial (although it had been taking place for quite Bangladeshi art scene. However, many students would meet teachers, students, and artists from some time already) was starting to get noticed by still couldn’t see the potential of exploring different parts of the country—and where I first the wider artistic community. From 2017, Chobi new forms due to lack of proper guidance, and encountered the performance art of Mahbuhur Mela began collaborating with artists through continued to follow ‘academic’ art forms. Rahman and Yasmin Jahan Nupur. fellowships, in a bid to break down the barrier

[1] Founded in 1981 in Dhaka, the Asian Art Biennale is the oldest continually run biennial of contemporary art in Asia.

18 19 While the art scene in Bangladesh is still Over the last decade, I have witnessed the predominantly led by male artists, I am proud most dynamic development of the art scene in to see that international museums such as the Bangladesh. More precisely, things have taken a Guggenheim and the Tate have collected female revolutionary turn since 2014. From Documenta, artists from Bangladesh, Tayeba Begum Lipi the Venice Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, and and Ayesha Sultana, respectively—in fact, Lipi Asia Pacific Triennial, to Kunsthalles (Basel, and Sultana became the first Bangladeshi artists Zurich), Parasite, Hong Kong, and MoMA Warsaw, to ever be collected by the Guggenheim and Bangladeshi artists are being presented widely on the Tate. Young female artists such as Ashfika an international scale. While writing this essay, The 2014 Dhaka Art Summit created a stir in the It is also amazing to see that through their work, Rahman, Marzia Farhana, and Farzana Ahmed the Bangladeshi modernist Rashid Choudhury country’s art scene. I was a student at the time, and artists are not only highlighting pertinent issues, Urmi, all nominated for the Samdani Art Award, (1932-1985)—whose tapestry is presented as part my generation felt very inspired. The art practices but also making a name for themselves in the art are travelling around the world to different art of Fabric(ated) Fractures, and who is well-known that were thought of as alternative became validated world. Zihan Karim, whose primary practice is exhibitions, biennales, and residencies. for his contribution towards establishing an art in the mainstream. This was perhaps the first time ‘untraditional’ video art, is now an art professor at college in Chittagong (now the Institute of Fine that performance art and photography were formally the Institute of Fine Arts, University of Chittagong, Shako, the Women’s Association of Bangladesh Arts, University of Chittagong) in the hope of included in such a big event. It was also around this inspiring students to explore non-traditional (founded in early 2000s), is made up of some of decentralising the art community from Dhaka—has time that AAB started accepting photography— practices. At the Pathshala South Asian Media the country’s leading female artists, and has been become the first Bangladeshi artist to be in the performance art, however, took much longer. Institute, teachers such as Munem Wasif - who working tirelessly to contribute to the betterment Metropolitan Museum of Art collection, and his Today, I see a remarkable diversity of works by the started out as a documentary photographer of communities through art-focused workshops for work is currently being shown in their Modern and country’s young artists. Breaking away from formal and now works with sound, video, and different acid victims, the disabled, and other less fortunate, Contemporary galleries. practices, they have started to collaborate with photographic devices - impart their experience empowering them through art and crafts. Members non-artists and people from different backgrounds, onto the next generation of artists. of Shako also put on exhibitions and donate The world is taking note of the Bangladeshi and are slowly changing critics’ views towards profit from sales to organisations who work with contemporary art scene. As a young art Bangladeshi art. While the 1950-80s saw artists A curator’s role has also become increasingly underprivileged groups. professional, I predict a future where Bangladesh involving themselves in politics or taking part in significant in staging meaningful exhibitions. will become a leader of the South Asian art scene— the formation of the nation, their involvement Since there is no formal training on curation in On that note, I would like to mention that 95 per and I believe we are well on our way. waned until the early 2000s. The scenario has Bangladesh, artists have taken on the responsibility cent of the team at the Samdani Art Foundation changed once again; many artists are now working to curate. The artist Wakilur Rahman has been is female. Though it may take a few more years to to raise awareness about the environment, refugee playing this dual role for a long time, whereas feel a significant change in female empowerment and migrant issues, religious bigotry, as well as Kehkasha Sabah has moved out of her artistic in the Bangladeshi art scene, the process has political oppression. practice entirely to focus on her curatorial practice. already started.

20 21 art(ists)art(ists) Pablo Bartholomew Kanak Chanpa Chakma Rashid Choudhury Gauri Gill and Rajesh Vangad Shilpa Gupta Hitman Gurung Ayesha Jatoi Ashfika Rahman Joydeb Roaja Reetu Sattar Kamruzzaman Shadhin Debasish Shom Jakkai Siributr Munem Wasif

25 (Pablo Bartholomew) Untitled

(Detail) 2017-2018 (ongoing), photographs and woven textiles, 380.5 x 250 cm (full installation size). Commissioned and produced by Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2018. Courtesy the artist and Samdani Art Foundation.

Pablo Bartholomew traces the links between geographically fractured indigenous Chakma communities (ethnic minorities in Myanmar, India, and Bangladesh), weaving together science, myth, legend, and tradition to explore a cross- border ethnic identity. Indigenous communities often wear their cultural DNA through their clothing, ornamentation, and marking on their bodies—codes that they keep as a form of self- identity. Working across borders, Bartholomew invited Chakma weavers to use their traditional idioms on back-strap looms (carried on the body through periods of migration) to weave graphic DNA patterns whose imagery was rendered through scientific testing.

26 artist (intervention)

Textile woven by master weaver Smriti Rekha Chakma based on DNA marker patterns. (Kanak Chanpa Chakma) Soul Piercing

2014, acrylic and collaged photography on canvas, 152.4 x 213.3 cm (framed). Courtesy the artist.

In 2012 in Southern Bangladesh, someone set up a fake Facebook account under a Buddhist name and posted an image of a burning Holy Quran, inciting mob violence. In what is now known as the Ramu Incident, over 25,000 people mobilised against Buddhist communities, destroying 12 Buddhist temples and over 50 houses in the process. Kanak Chanpa Chakma created a series of paintings in 2014 collaging photographic documentation and newspaper clippings from this incident, juxtaposing them against imagery of the peaceful Buddhist architecture that growing hate and division in society tried to destroy.

30 artist (intervention)

“Sometimes, it hurts to see the negativity of people around me. If we want our religion to be respected, we should respect others’ too. As a country that celebrates four major religions, we should be more tolerant towards each other. May all living beings live in harmony and peace.”

Kanak Chanpa Chakma (Rashid Choudhury) Untitled (Calligraphy - Allahu)

1981, textile, 96 x 141 cm (framed). Courtesy Samdani Art Foundation.

Born into a family of feudal landlords in rural Bengal, Rashid Choudhury grew up among a commingling of Hindu and Muslim cultures, as well as the numerous indigenous and folk-art traditions local to his village, Haroa, in the district of Faridpur (now Rajbari, Bangladesh). His majestic woven tapestries often include rich earth tones alluding to village life in Bengal, and teem with movement, referencing rituals of celebration and worship. Two of the tapestries have figurative motifs of bodies in motion, and one of the tapestries is a rare example of Choudhury’s work with woven calligraphy, in this case, referencing Islamic worship traditions.

34 “Butterflies of my imagination will glide in the air. I did not feel satisfied with the usual oils and watercolours. As piano and organ are excellent musical instruments but not much effective for solo performances, there are typical mediums in the field of art which have their limitations. I was, therefore, looking for a medium through which I can fittingly depict men and nature of my motherland. My search has borne fruit at last, I found my destination in tapestry.”[1]

[1] Quoted in Abul Mansur, Rashid Choudhury: Art of Bangladesh, (Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, 2003), 15.

Rashid Choudhury, Untitled, 1979, gouache on paper. Courtesy the Samdani Art Foundation. (Gauri Gill & Rajesh Vangad) Birth to Death

2016, from the series Fields of Sight (2013 - ongoing), ink on archival pigment print, unique print, 106.7 x 157.5 cm (framed). Courtesy the artists and Samdani Art Foundation.

Fields of Sight is a moving collaborative project between Rajesh Vangad, a traditionally-trained artist from the Warli community of Maharashtra, and Delhi-based photographer Gauri Gill. Gill and Vangad bring to question the politics of landscape as the site through which trauma is registered. Multiple points of focus are produced within Gill’s portraits of Vangad, and through Vangad’s interventions on Gill’s portraits, rejecting any unidirectional act of viewing. The Warli community of West India has been the target of dispossession to make way for industrial and energy projects. The project investigates the idea of the site as formed by variant cultural practices, and how marginalised groups might occupy stolen landscapes.

38 “This commingling work may be seen as an encounter between two artists of about the same age with entirely different languages—one with ancient antecedents, the other more recently originated; and the histories, politics, and world views embedded within the expression of those forms. Rajesh’s language, constructed with stick and brush, unfolds entirely from an encyclopedia of forms in the mind, which emerge to reflect the world, memory and myth: wind, disease, apocalypse —anything is summoned forth at will. In my own language, constructed by camera and negative, the world itself is the encyclopedia, and I recognize and edit existing structures to reflect what is apparent in my mind. The final work contains parallel projections of place; using perspective, negative and positive space, tonal values and relative dimensions, it merges fields of sight, and of perception. If you stand here, you might see it this way, if you move just a little, another world unfolds.”

Gauri Gill

“I am a creation of my stories, which live in my work. There are at least sixty stories I know. They concern gods, kings, man, the earth, Mahadeva, Parvati and the gods of the hills. This particular story was told to my father’s father by his brother. He relayed it to my father, who told it to me. I believe it was prescient, that it foretells the future. It encompasses so much of what we see today: earthquakes, cyclones, tsunamis, and all kinds of destruction on earth. Why do we farm, when, and how, in how many days and in what ways must the farmer till his fields, all of this is in the stories. It manifests constantly in my work.”

Rajesh Vangad

artist (intervention)

Excerpt from the artists’ statement on the series Fields of Sight. (Shilpa Gupta) Untitled

2013, digital print on paper, 24.13 x 32.38 cm. Courtesy the artist and Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi. This work was commissioned and produced by Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2014.

Interested in the formation of territories under the project of nationhood, in 2013 Shilpa Gupta travelled to chitmahal—landlocked islands of India within Bangladesh, and Bangladesh within India. At the time, the Indo-Bangladeshi enclaves had a combined estimated population of 51,000 people who were technically foreigners in another country. Gupta’s work reflects on the long-standing relationship between ‘illegal’ people and their ancestral land, imagining feet firmly planted on the ground they ‘belonged to’ for centuries, and clouds floating freely across artificially fractured territories below. Nearly two years after this work debuted at Dhaka Art Summit 2014, India and Bangladesh exchanged enclaves, resulting in India losing approximately 40 square kilometres to Bangladesh in July 2015.

42 Shilpa Gupta, Untitled, 2013-2014, stone. Courtesy the artist and Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi. This work was commissioned and produced by Samdani Art Foundation for Dhaka Art Summit 2014. (Hitman Gurung) This is My Home, My Land and My Country

From the series This is My Home, My Land and My Country, 2015, drawing on digital print on archival paper, 92 x 122 cm each (framed). Courtesy the artist and Samdani Art Foundation.

The act of portraiture becomes one of resistance when state and other actors deliberately suppress certain communities or identities. This work from Hitman Gurung’s ongoing series This is My Home, My Land, and My Country addresses the conflicted history between the Tharu indigenous community of the Terai region of Nepal and the government. Gurung presents a series of portraits of members of the community holding identity cards in front of their bandaged faces, visualising the paradox of being identified by the state while not being recognised by it.

46 artist (intervention)

Artistic response for Fabric(ated) Fractures publication, 2019. Courtesy the artist. (Ayesha Jatoi) Residue

2016, performance/installation, second iteration Dhaka Art Summit 2018. Courtesy the artist and Sabrina Amrani Gallery, Madrid. Installation images from Dhaka Art Summit 2018. Photography © Pablo Bartholomew.

Piles of white garments lie conspicuously in the exhibition space. The piles begin to slowly disappear as the artist Ayesha Jatoi takes each piece of clothing and folds and stacks it across the room. White is the colour of mourning worn to funerals in many cultures of South Asia, and this performance is a metaphorically burdened act in uncertain times of putting away the remnants of love, of longing, of trying to make sense of the senseless: of what, or who, has been lost.

50 artist (intervention)

Artistic response for Fabric(ated) Fractures publication, 2019. Courtesy the artist. (Ashfika Rahman) Rape is Political

2016 - ongoing, gold coated albumin, print on acid free paper, 29.21 x 38.1 cm (framed). Courtesy the artist.

Used as a tool to instill fear as a means to assert control and repress indigenous resistance movements, rape is a violent reality plaguing ethnic minorities across South and Southeast Asia. This portrait series depicts indigenous rape victims in the Khagrachari hills area located at the militarised border between India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. Virtually all of the state administrative machinery is used to protect the rapists, and doctors are put under pressure from authorities not to report rapes. Handwritten words in indigenous languages add precious layers of meaning to these photographs inspired by 19th century portraiture techniques, registering resistance at a time when translations of these texts are not allowed to be used officially as witness accounts.

54 artist (intervention)

Artistic response for Fabric(ated) Fractures publication, 2019. Courtesy the artist. (Joydeb Roaja) Generation Wish Yielding Trees and Atomic Tree 03

2016, pen and ink on paper, 75 x 100 cm each (framed). Courtesy the artist and Samdani Art Foundation.

The militarisation of the Chittagong Hill Tracts inspires the work of Joydeb Roaja, who comes from the indigenous Tripura community. The thought, education, art, literature, and sports of the new generation of indigenous people from Bangladesh reflect the fact that weapons were introduced to their visual landscape at a very young age. Roaja’s surreal drawings, which are inspired by his performance practice, fuse his indigenous community and its traditions with imported army equipment, registering the traces of this violence in his mental landscape and seeking to invent ways of imagining another form of existence. Several of the motifs in these drawings could also be found in his alpona installation in The Yard in Alserkal Avenue throughout the duration of the exhibition.

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Artistic response for Fabric(ated) Fractures publication, 2019. Courtesy the artist. (Reetu Sattar) Harano Sur (Lost Tune)

2017-2018, performance with 35 musicians and 30 harmoniums, one hour. Co-commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation and the Liverpool Biennial, in association with the New North New South and the Archaeology of the Final Decade. Photography © Pranabesh Das.

Harano Sur (Lost Tune) focuses on the harmonium, a musical instrument that is tightly integrated into the traditional culture of Bangladesh, but is in danger of disappearing. The film documents a performance that brought together musicians, each playing three notes of the seven notes of the harmonium. The artist uses the sustained droning sounds as a way to explore the violence and social upheaval that have recently affected Bangladesh. By playing a sustained note, the performers make the powerful statement that they, and their traditions, are here to stay.

62 artist (intervention)

“Bangla word for ‘fear’ in my mother’s handwriting. The strongest emotion I grew up with. The emotion my mother relates to the most.” Reetu Sattar (Kamruzzaman Shadhin) Haven Is Elsewhere

2017-2018, used clothing, embroidery, video. Installation view at The Fabric of Felicity exhibition at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2018. Commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation for Dhaka Art Summit 2018. Photography © Ivan Erofeev. © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art.

Haven is Elsewhere was created through a large- scale action: a year and a half spent exchanging the clothes of refugees at Bangladesh’s southern border with Southeast Asia for new garments. The refugees’ clothes were joined into a monumental piece of fabric embellished with traditional Bangladeshi kantha embroidery. Through the ritual of stitching together fragmentary and incomprehensible experiences in an uncontrollable world, this installation transforms old clothes into a monument to a humanitarian and political catastrophe. The quest for freedom often perpetuates as new migrants and refugees become targets for illegal trade and human trafficking, furthering a cycle where a safe haven shifts its axis further and further out of reach.

66 artist (intervention)

“In 2017, I conducted a participatory performance called Geet where the women of the community gathered around a pond with their household pots to create sounds while singing their traditional geet or song. This is the village I grew up in, and these community gatherings and songs are an integral part of the culture of the locality. The village inhabitants are from different ethnic and religious backgrounds, and within the layers of their beliefs and rituals, there lies a mutual respect and understanding for each other.”

Kamruzzaman Shadhin (Debasish Shom) In the Rivers Dark

2014, digital photographs printed in cyanotype process, 40.64 x 60.96 cm. Courtesy the artist.

Prior to the two partitions of Bengal, Hindu and Muslim populations lived in relative harmony on lands that once comprised the wealthiest province in the Mughal empire. The legacy of these ill-conceived splits of land based on religion can still be felt in Bangladesh today—the wounds have never healed. To this day, Hindu property is considered by some to be ‘enemy property’, and rising nationalist sentiments post the 2001 elections have threatened minority populations across the country. Debasish Shom’s family comes from a Hindu minority community, and this body of work speaks to the fear of displacement and the desire to hold on to home, no matter how dark and dangerous the circumstances surrounding it are.

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Artistic response for Fabric(ated) Fractures publication, 2019. Courtesy the artist. (Jakkai Siributr) The Outlaw’s Flag

2017, installation with embroidered found objects and video. Installation view at Dhaka Art Summit 2018. Courtesy the artist and H Gallery, Bangkok.

Jakkai Siributr provides a critical perspective on rising communal tensions and Buddhist-Muslim relations in South and Southeast Asia, which have become intensified by the mass movements of populations. The Outlaw’s Flag consists of subverted flags of imaginary nations, created by a process of embroidering detritus from the beaches of Sittwe in Myanmar and Ranong in Thailand—departure and arrival points of fleeing Rohingya refugees. Bangladesh welcomed over half-a-million Rohingya refugees into its borders in late 2017, which resulted in mounting tension between the country’s Buddhist and Muslim communities in Southern Bangladesh where plurality once flourished.

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Artistic response for Fabric(ated) Fractures publication, 2019. Courtesy the artist. (Munem Wasif) Land of Undefined Territory

2015, photographs printed on archival mounting board. Courtesy the artist and Samdani Art Foundation.

Situated on the edge of a blurred boundary of Bangladesh and India, the mundane, almost extra-terrestrial land conceals the intense human interaction with its surface in Munem Wasif’s haunting series of black and white photographs. This land belongs to no one and is ‘free for the taking’. As hills and mountains are cut away to mine the material needed to build Bangladesh’s roads, the communities who have lived on the land for thousands of years become alien to it, as they can no longer identify their homeland by natural markers. The empty banal land remains almost the same, and it carries very insignificant changes when a man or a vehicle intersects with the frames.

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Artistic response for Fabric(ated) Fractures publication, 2019. Courtesy the artist.

‘We want Bangla our state language’ Slogan from language movement, 1952. bio(graphies) Abdelmonem Bin Eisa Alserkal

Abdelmonem Bin Eisa Alserkal is the founder and driving force behind Alserkal, a Dubai-based cultural organisation deeply committed to fostering the arts locally, regionally, and internationally. The organisation began in 2007 with the launch of Alserkal Avenue, a cluster of warehouses dedicated to creative businesses. A decade after it was first launched, Alserkal Avenue is a thriving creative community, the leading cultural hub in the region and home to the region’s most prominent contemporary art galleries. In 2015, Abdelmonem began supporting locally-based and international artists through commissions and public programmes in a bid to help them grow their practice. In 2017, Alserkal Residency was launched and welcomed its first cycle of residents to the UAE.

In 2016, Abdelmonem commissioned Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), founded by Pritzker Prize-winner Rem Koolhaas, to design Concrete; it is the first building to be completed in the UAE by the renowned architecture practice. Abdelmonem serves on numerous committees of arts institutions around the world, including: the British Museum’s Contemporary and Modern Middle Eastern Art Acquisition Group; the Tate’s Middle East and North Africa Acquisition Committee; and, the Guggenheim’s Middle Eastern Circle. Abdelmonem and the Alserkal family have long been supporters of the arts and have been awarded the Patron of the Arts award twice, in 2012 and 2013, by HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.

Nadia Samdani

Nadia Samdani is the Co-Founder and President of the Samdani Art Foundation and Director of the Dhaka Art Summit. A second-generation collector, Nadia began her own collection at the age of 22. She is a member of Tate’s South Asia Acquisitions Committee, Tate’s International Council, Art Dubai’s Advisory Council and Alserkal Avenue’s Programming Committee, and is a founding member of The Harvard University Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute’s Arts Advisory Council. In 2017, with her husband Rajeeb, she was the first South Asian arts patron to receive the Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage Award. She has written about collecting for Art Asia Pacific and Live Mint and has spoken about collecting at many international art fairs, universities, and museums.

84 85 Diana Campbell Betancourt Pablo Bartholomew (curator) (artist)

Diana Campbell Betancourt is a Princeton educated Pablo Bartholomew is an acclaimed artist, American curator who has been working in South photographer, and photojournalist who first learned and Southeast Asia since 2010, primarily in India, photography from his father, the art critic Richard Bangladesh, and the Philippines. Since 2013, she has Bartholomew, but is primarily self-taught as he dropped served as the Founding Artistic Director of Dhaka- out of school to follow his artistic passions. He has based Samdani Art Foundation and Chief Curator of spent over four decades traversing places, capturing the Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) 2014 to 2020 editions. moments, experimenting with ideas, observing Campbell has developed DAS into a leading research cultures, and documenting changes in societies, and and exhibitions platform, bringing together artists, has been making work related to Bangladesh since the architects, curators, and writers through a largely early 1970s. He has had over 30 solo shows of his work commission-based model where new work and in galleries, museums, and festivals around the world, exhibitions are born in Bangladesh. She is also curator most recently at Memories of the Future at the Centre of Frieze Projects in London. Her writing has been Georges Pompidou (2017) and the Dhaka Art Summit published by Mousse, Frieze, Art in America, and the (2018 and 2016). He was awarded India’s Padma Shri Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), among others. Award in 2013 and France’s Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2014.

Ruxmini Choudhury Kanak Chanpa Chakma (assistant curator) (artist)

Based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Ruxmini Choudhury is a Kanak Chanpa Chakma is one of Bangladesh’s curator, art writer, researcher, and bilingual translator leading painters, whose work addresses the poetics who has worked as Assistant Curator of Samdani Art of her indigenous Chakma identity through long- Foundation and Dhaka Art Summit since 2014. She term engagement with the landscape of her native completed her BFA in Art History from the University Rangamati Hill Tracts. A graduate of the Faculty of of Dhaka in 2014 and previously interned at the Fine Arts, University of Dhaka, Chakma’s colourful Dhaka Art Center. Through her work with Dhaka works on canvas reveal the narrative of Bangladesh’s Art Summit, Choudhury has assisted curators such neglected indigenous groups, and are a portal as Diana Campbell Betancourt, Nada Raza, Daniel into the daily life and customs that animate their Baumann, Cosmin Costinas, and Devika Singh on their beautiful lands. Her works often focus on female exhibitions, and she also leads the Samdani Artist Led characters who are power figures in many matriarchal Initiatives Forum. Her research on the crafts of Kushtia, indigenous communities in the country, but face Jhenaidah, and Magura districts of Bangladesh has been discrimination in mainstream society. published in Setouchi Catalogue: Bangladesh Crafts (2014).

86 87 Rashid Choudhury Shilpa Gupta (artist) (artist)

Rashid Choudhury (1932-1985) was a significant Shilpa Gupta uses facets of everyday life to create figure in Bangladeshi Modernism, best known for artworks that question methods of control, and the his idiomatic paintings transformed into handwoven ideas behind boundaries and borders that shape our and hand-dyed tapestries primarily using jute—deftly perception of world order. Gupta studied sculpture at fusing a Western modernist approach with local craft the Sir JJ School of Art in Bombay, and her works are traditions. His works are inspired by village folklore deeply rooted in the Indian context where she lives which combine Bangladesh’s Buddhist, Hindu, and works, but also grapple with universal issues such Muslim, and Animist traditions. Choudhury studied at as freedom and security. Text, language, and poetry the Government Arts and Crafts College of Dhaka and feature prominently in Gupta’s work. She experiments later in Madrid at Central Escuela des Belles Artes with the way language operates through a variety of de San Fernando, and in Paris at Ecole Nationale means, slowly unravelling narratives through the use des Beaux Arts where he was influenced by the work of various technologies, or exploring relationships of Marc Chagall and Jean Lurcat. He was also a between author/speaker, and reader/listener. passionate educator and founded the art education infrastructure of Chittagong.

Gauri Gill & Rajesh Vangad Hitman Gurung (artists) (artist)

Trained as a painter and applied artist, Gauri Gill Hitman Gurung’s deeply politically embedded practice received a BFA from the Delhi College of Art, and encompasses painting, photography, and installation. then turned to photography as her primary medium, He earned an MFA at Tribhuwan University’s Central earning a second BFA from Parsons School of Design Department of Fine Arts and co-founded the artist led in New York and an MFA from Stanford University. She initiative Artree Nepal. Gurung addresses situations often addresses histories of trauma and the unseen/ of conflict and socio-political upheaval in his work, unseeable in her work. Working beyond the constraints particularly in the wake of the devastating 2015 of individualism, Gill has consistently advocated for earthquake that left many communities in Nepal and supported other artists, both those trained in art deeply vulnerable. Portraiture is an important part colleges and those who received informal training of his practice, which draws out the social, political, outside of institutions. Gill embraces collaboration and emotional trials and tribulations of Nepali people in her work, including the one presented here with around the world. He poses haunting figures against Rajesh Vangad, with whom she has collaborated since stark minimal backgrounds, creating environments of 2013. Vangad is a traditionally trained Warli artist, empathy around intense personal narratives such as having learned under the legendary Warli painter Jivya those of the migrant workers from Nepal. Often using Soma Mashe. A third-generation artist, Vangad has collage or other forms of layering, his works piece been instrumental in the expansion of the Warli idiom together the experiences of families left behind to with his sensitive and fluid work. create an affective archive of Nepal’s political present.

88 89 Ayesha Jatoi Joydeb Roaja (artist) (artist)

An artist, activist, and educator, Ayesha Jatoi’s practice Working with performance, drawing, painting, explores the tensions in the relationship between the and installation, Joydeb Roaja’s practice addresses text and the image in traditional Islamic manuscripts. the politics of indigeneity in Bangladesh, drawing Originally trained in miniature painting, her work equally from traditional and modernist theatre remains deeply concerned with critical questions forms. Roaja belongs to the Tripura community, around the politics of image making. While being one of 11 indigenous tribes situated in Southeastern immersed in local ancient aesthetics of iconography, Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts. The area’s she simultaneously questions the relevance of indigenous tribal culture and natural hilly landscape traditional modes of constructing images today, are the main inspiration for his work, which also resulting in a practice which takes on hybrid forms. addresses the political landscape around him. He is She earned her BFA in 2005 and her MFA in 2007 from a member of Porapora, a non-profit alternative art the National College of Art, Lahore, Pakistan. She is a space in Chittagong, which acts as a platform for mass Founding Editor of the Journal of Contemporary Art & communication through artistic activities, primarily Culture (published from Lahore) and a trustee of the through performance. Lahore Biennale Foundation.

Ashfika Rahman Reetu Sattar (artist) (artist)

Ashfika Rahman is a multi-disciplinary artist who Reetu Sattar is a performance artist working with video, works in the interplay between photography, text, text, objects, and photography, making time-based and alternative printing methods. She studied pieces that record presence and absence, memory, loss, photojournalism at the University of Applied Science resilience, and the ephemerality of existence. Sattar and Arts in Germany, and received a professional is interested in the similarities, overlaps, and clashes degree in Documentary and Photojournalism from of forms in theatre and performance art, and the Pathshala South Asian Media Institute. Her interest relationship between the body and ego. She dissects lies in experimenting with 19th century printmaking the traditional tropes of theatre through conversations, techniques paired with her contemporary photography space, and sculptural elements. Her work acts as practice. Using photography as a predominant collective memory, or collage, of life’s vicious circle of medium, Rahman’s practice reflects her view on forgetfulness, examining traditions or rituals that are complex systematic social issues, and she attempts an important part of her culture, forgotten by time and to address subjects less dealt with by the mainstream the progression of society. media, placing her practice between fine art and documentary photography.

90 91 Kamruzzaman Shadhin Jakkai Siributr (artist) (artist)

Kamruzzaman Shadhin’s participatory practice Jakkai Siributr is known primarily for his textile and incorporates sculpture, painting, installation, embroidery works stemming from his education in performance, video, and public art interventions. textiles and fine arts at Indiana University, Bloomington, Shadhin studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Dhaka and Philadelphia University. He is concerned with University, and regularly collaborates with NGOs the unofficial histories that have been written out of on community-based projects across Bangladesh. Thai accounts, including the troubled co-existence His work maintains a satirical edge, dealing directly between Buddhism and Islam in the south of the with the politics of environmental degradation and country. Exploring increased urbanisation, materialism, destruction and its effects on communities across political instability, and growing frictions between rural Bangladesh. In 2001, he founded the Gidree Bawlee and urban populations, his delicate tapestries act as Foundation of Arts (gidree bawlee means ‘lullaby’ in exposés of political corruption, transforming beliefs, Santali, an indigenous South Asian language), which and cultural frictions. He creates a delicate tension has been realising community projects and residencies between his subject matter—ongoing conflict driven by in Thakurgaon through collaborations with the nationalistic discrimination against minorities—and the indigenous Santal community and its agricultural, visual sensuality of his chosen form and materials, which religious, and cultural traditions. often invite audience participation.

Debasish Shom Munem Wasif (artist) (artist)

Debasish Shom was raised in rural Bangladesh within Munem Wasif takes a humanistic approach when the country’s Hindu minority community. The artist delving into the social and political issues of Bangladesh graduated from a three-year professional photography in his work, primarily through photography, but also course at Pathshala South Asian Media Institute in experimenting with video and sound. He studied at 2010, where he is now a Lecturer of Photographic Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, where he also Technique. Shom uses alternative image-making and teaches and works as a curator on their acclaimed Chobi printing techniques, choosing the way he captures Mela festival. His expressionistic works are remarkable light through his lens based on the feelings he for their clarity and depth of light and shadow, while wants to communicate. His work is a personal form his emphasis on long-term engagement with his subject of self-expression motivated by his socio-political matter allows for a deeper understanding of the sites background and the psychological tension in the and cultures of Bangladesh, Bengal, and greater South subjects he tackles—such as the psychosomatic war Asia. Wasif’s recent work has concentrated on subjects between dreams and reality. such as the history of Dhaka, the lives of labourers and ordinary people, the borderland between India and Bangladesh, and the complexities of identity and religion within his own community.

92 93 (Alserkal)

Founded by Abdelmonem Bin Eisa Alserkal in 2007, Alserkal is a cultural organisation deeply engaged with the local, regional, and international art scene through its creative community, Alserkal Avenue, the OMA- designed exhibitions and alternative programming (Samdani Art Foundation) space, Concrete, as well as its non-profit initiatives, which include Alserkal Residency and its annual The Samdani Art Foundation (SAF) is a private arts commissions programme. trust based in Dhaka, Bangladesh founded in 2011

by collector couple Nadia and Rajeeb Samdani to Alserkal Avenue is the region’s foremost contemporary support the work of the country’s contemporary artists arts and culture community located in the Al Quoz and architects. Led by Artistic Director and Curator industrial area in Dubai. The Avenue hosts 16 Diana Campbell Betancourt, SAF seeks to expand contemporary art galleries and non-profit initiatives, the audience engaging with contemporary art across alongside more than 40 creative businesses, cultivating Bangladesh and increase international exposure a vibrant community of visual and performing arts for the country’s artists. Its programmes support organisations, designers, and artisanal spaces that have Bangladeshi artists in broadening their creative become an essential platform for the development of horizons through production grants, residencies, the creative industries in the United Arab Emirates. education programmes, and exhibitions.

In Fall 2017, Alserkal launched the first residency at SAF produces the bi-annual Dhaka Art Summit, a the Avenue, further enhancing the organisation’s non-commercial research and exhibition platform commitment to cultivating artistic talent. Alserkal for art and architecture related to South Asia, which Residency runs three cycles over the course of the re-examines how we think about these art forms in a year and is open to emerging and mid-career cultural regional and wider context. SAF’s collection of modern practitioners with an emphasis on socially engaged and and contemporary art from South Asia, as part of its research-based practices. commitment to increasing international engagement alserkalavenue.ae with Bangladeshi and South Asian artists’ work, is lent to institutions and festivals around the globe. The collection is currently based at Golpo, the Samdani Art (Concrete) Foundation’s residence in Gulshan, Dhaka, and is open to the public by appointment. As a parallel project A multi-disciplinary space conceptualised by Alserkal to Dhaka Art Summit, the Foundation is developing Avenue, Concrete is the first building in the UAE to be its first permanent exhibition and residency space, completed by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture Srihatta: the Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park in (OMA), an award-winning architecture practice Sylhet, Bangladesh, which will open to the Bangladeshi founded by Pritzker award winner, Rem Koolhaas. artistic community in November 2019. Concrete is committed to engaging regional samdani.com.bd and international audiences through an annual programme of visual and performing arts. Every March and November, Concrete’s museum-grade exhibition spaces are used as a platform to explore site-specific interventions and exhibitions that investigate themes at the intersection of art and architecture. concrete.ae

94 95 (Alserkal) (Samdani Art Foundation)

Abdelmonem Bin Eisa Alserkal, Founder The curator would like to acknowledge the generosity Vilma Jurkute, Director and vision of Nadia and Rajeeb Samdani, and all of the Reshma Mehra, Operations Director past and present sponsors and supporters of Dhaka Art Summit including Abdelmonem Bin Eisa Alserkal Alina Hannah, Director of Concrete and his fantastic team at Concrete and Alserkal, led by Aleksei Afanasiev, Exhibitions Production Vilma Jurkute, who made this exhibition possible. In Juhi Raipancholia, Experience Management addition to the Samdani team and all of the artists and Sophie Rassoul, Head of Events their galleries, she would also like to acknowledge the Assia Merazi, Associate Director of Brand Ministry of Culture, People’s Republic of Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, the Organizing Maha Bassadiq, Lead Designer Committee of Dhaka Art Summit and its Chairperson Rebecca Teece, Designer Farooq Sobhan, the team at Nippon Express, former Natalia Rodrigues, Interior Designer assistants of Samdani Art Foundation Shabnam Lilani, Fiza Akram, Cultural Development Director Nivriti Roddam, and Abhijan Gupta, Emily Dolan Roxana Calin, Cultural Development Executive and Emma Summer, Cosmin Costinas and his team at Charlotte York, Assistant Director of Communications Parasite, Hong Kong, Iaroslav Volovod and Valentin Diaconov from the Garage Museum of Art in Moscow, Rania Habib, Communications Manager

Acknowledgements Simon Castets, Shireen Gandhy, Aparajita Jain, Zaheera Mariam AlEbrahim, Communications Coordinator Noor, Iola Lenzi and Bharti Lalwani, Shanay Jhaveri, Raja’a Khalid, Alserkal Residency Manager Joanna Mytkowska, Sebastian Cichocki, and Szymon Punam Luhar, Alserkal Residency Operations Executive Zydek from the Museum of Modern art in Warsaw and Nihal Ismail, Administrative Manager Ivan Pun and Nathalie Johnston from TS1 in Yangon, Vali Mahlouji and his team at the Archaeology of the Hari Krishna, Systems Manager Final Decade, Sally Tallant and Julie Lomax formerly Bestin John, AV/IT Specialist of the Liverpool Biennial, Maria Balshaw and the Nikhil Manoharan, Facilities Manager New North New South network she conceived of, Syed Makhdoom, Facilities Coordinator and the family and friends of everyone involved in Judith Rabe Montes - Office Caretaker the endeavour of love that is Dhaka Art Summit. The curator would also like to acknowledge the ongoing trust and support of her core team Mohammad Sazzad Hosain, Ruxmini Reckvana Q Choudhury, Nawreen Ahmed, Zannatun Nahar, Adam Ondak, Lucia Zablova, and Eve Lemesle.

96 97 Published on the occasion of the exhibition: Fabric(ated) Fractures Concrete Alserkal Avenue, Dubai 9-23 March 2019

Curated by Diana Campbell Betancourt, Artistic Director, Samdani Art Foundation, Chief Curator, Dhaka Art Summit

Published in 2019 by Alserkal Alserkal Avenue Al Quoz 1, Street 8 PO Box 390099 Dubai alserkalavenue.ae

© Alserkal 2019 Texts © the authors 2019 Artworks © the artists (unless otherwise stated)

Fabric(ated) Fractures is a collaboration between the Samdani Art Foundation and Alserkal at Concrete, Dubai.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise, without first seeking the written permission of the copyright holders and of the publisher.

ISBN 978-9948-38-845-6

This catalogue is not intended to be used for authentication or related purposes. Concrete and/or Alserkal accept no liability for any errors or omissions that the catalogue may inadvertently contain.

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