Samdani Art Foundation For Immediate Release May 11, 2017

THE SAMDANI ART FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES PLANS AND PROGRAMMING FOR ITS FIRST PERMANENT SPACE: SRIHATTA – SAMDANI ART CENTRE AND SCULPTURE PARK IN SYLHET

DHAKA, BANGLADESH—The Samdani Art Foundation (SAF) is pleased to announce the Foundation’s forthcoming permanent art space in Bangladesh: Srihatta—Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park. Located approximately 250km from the capital of in the rural tea district of Sylhet, Srihatta sprawls across over 100 acres of landscape with views of India’s Assam Hills in the distance. The park’s expansive grounds will be devoted to the exhibition of sculpture, and punctuated by a phased rollout of multiple exhibition pavilions and a residency complex. The inaugural phase—set for late 2018—will include several commissions for the 100-acre sculpture park, 10,000 square feet of artist residency spaces, 10,000 square feet of plazas, and a 5,000-square-foot gallery designed by Dhaka-based Bangladeshi architect and 2016 Aga Khan Award winner Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury, URBANA.

The interwoven Animist, Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi mystic, and Islamic histories that inform Sylhet’s plurality and distinct language remain powerfully visible in Bengali folk culture. Srihatta’s name is an homage to the multiple layers of history that have shaped this rich landscape; it is the ancient Indo-Aryan term for Sylhet. Envisioned as a dynamic art centre, Srihatta embraces inclusivity with a welcoming design, an accessible public programme, and outdoor public works. More than just a private art museum, Srihatta aspires to cultivate a new community of art lovers in Bangladesh and the surrounding region. As with all Samdani Art Foundation activities, entry to Srihatta will be free, in an attempt to make art widely accessible to diverse audiences.

“Like the Dhaka Art Summit, Srihatta was born from a long-time dream to innovate a new destination for South Asia in Bangladesh, one that revolves around art. Rajeeb and I are now realizing our dream-- in the district where our families come from--to build a permanent home for the Samdani Art Foundation’s activities and a dynamic art centre international in approach. We hope that with this unique endeavor, the people of South Asia as well as international visitors will find a haven amongst the remarkable works of art and profound landscape,” Nadia Samdani, Co-Founder, Samdani Art Foundation.

Led by Samdani Art Foundation Artistic Director Diana Campbell Betancourt, Srihatta encourages engagement with Bangladesh’s rural context. The organization will invest its roots locally—and broaden them internationally—by inviting artists, curators, and writers from around the world to participate in its exhibitions, residencies, interventions in the landscape, and to engage in creative workshops with the local community. Srihatta expands on the Samdani Art Foundation’s mission to advance the conversation around Bangladeshi and South Asian art by presenting a programme that is truly international in scope, bringing the highest quality of art and exhibitions from around the world to the people of Bangladesh. Its

1 programming complements—but remains autonomous from—the internationally acclaimed South Asia-focused Dhaka Art Summit. Srihatta is inspired by the ethos of Rabindranath Tagore, who created Shantiniketan in a village in West Bengal in 1901—where the whole world could meet in a single nest. The initiative will create a new centre for artistic education within Bengal, connecting the rural and the urban, and the local and the international in unprecedented ways.

“We hope that Srihatta will become a place where interdisciplinary creative initiatives and humanism can thrive on local, national, regional, and international planes. Bangladesh was born from a strong desire to speak its mother language, and through Srihatta, we aim to build a place where art can be a common language between the local village community and our international visitors. Simultaneously, we seek to give shape and voice to what a meaningful and inclusive art institution in 21st Century South Asia can be. This is the Foundation’s first truly international endeavor, tying together the Samdani collection, the educational aspects of the Samdani Seminars and Curatorial Research Fellowships, and the production and commissioning activities of the Foundation to create an dynamic and independent complex for art.”

—Diana Campbell Betancourt, Artistic Director, Samdani Art Foundation

Srihatta will be the first permanent dedicated space for the Foundation’s programming and exhibition activities, featuring an ongoing schedule of exhibitions curated by Betancourt from its renowned collection of over 2,000 works of South Asian-focused modern and contemporary art. Srihatta will also present international works of art acquired by the Foundation specifically for Srihatta. The first completed gallery space—designed by Kashef Mahboob Chouwdhury—will present new media works from the Samdani Art Foundation collection, with a special emphasis on sound.

Srihatta’s Residency

Chowdhury’s open plan design for the Residency complex references the vernacular brick architecture of Bangladesh. The design also looks to the modernist legacy left by visionary architects such as and Louis Kahn, who built some of their best work in Bangladesh, including the Dhaka University Library (1953-1954) and Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban (Parliament House, 1961-1982). The 10,000-square-foot residency space will house eleven brick- dyed, cast-concrete apartments, with windows facing Srihatta’s landscape. Created as a meditative space to inspire creativity and mesmerize the senses, these apartments will have 11- foot ceilings—each with a different species of local scented tree to grow inside.

The apartments, dining, recreation, and reading spaces, to include a library, are visually linked by an additional 10,000 square feet of plazas and walkways made of local green-tinged grey Kota stone. Blending the residency space with the surrounding landscape and sculpture park, the complex will exhibit works from the Foundation’s collection on a rotating basis.

In addition to residencies with local and international artists, Srihatta will also host future writing and curatorial residencies as part of a wider initiative of training a new generation of arts professionals in Bangladesh. The Residency program will be organized by SAF, with additional collaborations with international foundations and cultural councils. The residency will be a separate entity from the Samdani’s collecting activities.

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Srihatta’s Exhibition Space

Chowdhury has also designed the first of several future gallery spaces for exhibitions of works from the Samdani Art Foundation’s collection. An undulating brick façade welcomes visitors into a 5,000 square-foot gallery with 14-foot ceilings anchored by an immersive installation of video, sound, and new media works by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Anthony McCall, Lucy Raven, Shahzia Sikander, Ceal Floyer, and Cardiff and Miller—with further acquisitions to be announced in mid-2018. This inaugural exhibition will serve as an inspirational introduction to the multifaceted identity of contemporary art: miniature painting transforms into whirling video (Shahzia Sikander), cinema can become sculpture (Anthony McCall, Lucy Raven), sound can sculpt space (Ceal Floyer, Cardiff and Miller), and a performance can maintain a flickering, haunting physical presence beyond the bounds of time (Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster).

In the same gallery, a temporary exhibition chronicling the last decade of new media and performance art in Bangladesh will feature the work of artists from the Samdani Art Foundation’s collection, including Zihan Karim, Kabir Ahmed Masum Chisty, Rafiqul Shuvo, Munem Wasif, Shumon Ahmed, Ayesha Sultana, Naeem Mohaiemen, and Yasmin Jahan Nupur. Several of these works have outstanding international exhibition histories, such as inclusion in the 54th Venice Biennale, 1st Yinchuan Biennale, 11th Gwangju Biennale, 11th Shanghai Biennale, the 5th Singapore Biennale, the Kunsthalle Basel, the Singapore Art Museum, the 5th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, and 4A Centre for Contemporary Art. Further details about this show will be released in mid-2018.

Future galleries will be built to allow for rotating temporary exhibitions produced by the Samdani Art Foundation.

Srihatta’s Sculpture Park

The first phase of architectural elements of Srihatta will take up only a half-acre of the 100-acre property, with the majority of the grounds comprising a vast sculpture park. URBANA’s plan for the landscape design will embrace the natural phenomena that surround the site: winding rivers, a swamp forest, golden hills made of sand, and flaming natural-gas-fields with views of India’s Assam Hills and Sylhet’s tea gardens in the distance. Site-sensitive commissions by artists from Bangladesh and around the world will further transform the landscape.

The Foundation welcomes artists to develop long-term projects for the site, asking that each engage with the site and surrounding community. The site will have a mix of permanent works, temporary works, and works on long-term loan, in an attempt to make Srihatta a living, evolving entity that changes regularly and welcomes repeat visits. All of the works in the sculpture park will be produced in Bangladesh, as part of the Foundation’s desire to engage the local community with craftsmanship and production, fostering collaboration as a tool for greater understanding.

While Srihatta officially opens at the end of 2018, the first work for the Park, Rokeya, was completed in February 2017 after two years of development—setting precedence for local collaboration. As part of the annual Samdani Seminars programme, Polish artist Paweł

3 Althamer—along with members of his community (neighbours) from Bródno, Poland—engaged patients of Protisruti (the Promise) drug rehabilitation centre in Sylhet and the local community in an eight-day-long creative and collaborative Sculptural Congress workshop. This first project at Srihatta was realized in partnership with Bródno Sculpture Park, which Pawel Althamer inaugurated in 2009 with the Museum of Modern Art Warsaw. Bridging understanding across social and cultural divides, they created the communal work of art, Rokeya, which the village children named after the nineteenth century pioneer of female education in Bangladesh, Begum Rokeya. The resulting sculpture is a reclining woman constructed of locally woven palm fronds over a bamboo frame. She wears a colourful fabric costume stitched from local textiles by nearby village women, who also helped to drape the fabric. Rokeya also contains a kiln inside, for village children to use in ceramic workshops.

Srihatta will continue its initial collaboration with Bródno Sculpture Park into 2017, inviting Polish artist Monika Sosnowska to realize a monumental concrete river that will serve as a walking path through the landscape. Here tributaries will meander through and disappear into unexpected places, allowing for contemplation of one’s surroundings. The piece ties back to the natural terrain of Bangladesh, which has over 700 rivers (and is officially the country with the most rivers within its borders).

Indian artist Asim Waqif has begun the initial planting of bamboo saplings for what will become a monumental living sculpture titled Bamsera Bamsi (meaning Bamboo flute in Bangla). The sculpture is envisioned as a living bamboo forest, consisting of several bamboo species researched and planted as part of a long-term collaboration with the Bangladesh Forest Research Institute, Chittagong. As it grows, Waqif will sculpt the forest into a sculptural wind instrument reminiscent of a flute, which will emit sound when the wind blows through it. Bamsera Bamsi will take nearly two years before it will be audible, and five years to be fully mature. The initial size of the work is 140 x 100 ft. and will expand as the project develops.

Emerging Nepali artist Subas Tamang, the descendent of a family of indigenous stone carvers, will expand upon his series I Want to Die in My Own House. Tamang will create monumental slate roofs inspired by a fading form of vernacular South Asian architecture, not seen in Sylhet, that was once prevalent across South Asia. These roofs will then be intricately carved with the images of Tamang’s migrant worker parents who build homes for others without owning their own. This piece seeks to articulate the dreams of many such villagers: to own their own homes and to live life on their own terms.

In collaboration with the children from Srihatta’s nearest local village, the renowned French architect Yona Friedman will realize an aerial drawing inspired by the mythology of Ancient Bengal, to be shaped from local stones sourced in Sylhet. This drawing will be visible both from the hilltop site of the Artist Residency space, but also from planes and helicopters flying over Sylhet.

Additional artists with commissions to be completed by Srihatta’s late 2018 opening include Rana Begum, Raqs Media Collective, L.N. Tallur, Mithu Sen, Ayesha Sultana, and Rupam Roy. Further artists and details will be released in mid-2018.

4 About the Location

Sylhet, an important city in Northeast Bangladesh on the banks of the Surma River, is approximately 250km from the capital of Dhaka (or a short 45-minute flight away). Srihatta is a 10km drive from Sylhet international airport, which has direct flights from London, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Dhaka.

Press Contact

Shayna McClelland (English) 195 Plymouth Street, Brooklyn, New York, NY 11201, USA +1 347 744 5991 [email protected] www.mcclellandco.com

Samdani Art Foundation Contacts

Emma Sumner (English) Head of Publications Shanta Western Tower, 186 Gulshan-Tejgaon Link Road, Tejgaon I/A, Dhaka 1208, Bangladesh [email protected] +880 1799988504

Ruxmini Choudhury (English and Bangla) Assistant Curator Shanta Western Tower, 186 Gulshan-Tejgaon Link Road, Tejgaon I/A, Dhaka 1208, Bangladesh [email protected] +880 1872-550465

NOTE TO EDITORS

About the Samdani Art Foundation The Samdani Art Foundation (SAF) is a private arts trust based in Dhaka, Bangladesh founded in 2011 by collector couple Nadia and Rajeeb Samdani to support the work of the country’s contemporary artists and architects. Led by Artistic Director and Curator Diana Campbell Betancourt, SAF seeks to expand the audience engaging with contemporary art across Bangladesh and increase international exposure for the country’s artists. Its programmes support Bangladeshi artists in broadening their creative horizons through production grants, residencies, education programs, and exhibitions. To achieve this, SAF collaborates with the

5 Bangladeshi government through official partnerships with the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, People’s Republic of Bangladesh, and the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy.

SAF produces the biannual Dhaka Art Summit, a non-commercial research and exhibition platform for art and architecture related to South Asia, which re-examines how we think about these art forms in a regional and wider context. As part of its commitment to increasing international engagement with Bangladeshi and South Asian artists work, SAF’s collection of modern and contemporary art from South Asia is lent to institutions and festivals around the globe. The collection is currently based at Golpo, the Samdani Art Foundation’s residence in Gulshan, Dhaka, and is open to the public by appointment.

Nadia Samdani Nadia Samdani is the Co-Founder & President of the Samdani Art Foundation and Director of the Dhaka Art Summit. In 2011, she and her husband Rajeeb began the Samdani Art Foundation to support local artists and promote Bangladeshi and South Asian art in the region and around the world. As part of this initiative, she founded the Dhaka Art Summit, which has since completed three successful editions in 2012 and 2014 under her leadership. Nadia is a member of Tate’s South Asia Acquisitions Committee, Tate's International Council, Art Dubai’s Advisory Council, Alserkal Avenue’s Programming Committee, and is part of Parasol Unit’s International Committee. Most recently she has been named as one of the founding members of Harvard University’s, South Asia Institute Art Council, and awarded the Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage Award 2017.

Nadia is a second-generation collector and began her own collection at the age of 22. She collects both Bangladeshi and international art, reflecting her experience as both a proud Bangladeshi and a global citizen. She has written about collecting for Art Asia Pacific, Wall Street Journal ‘Live Mint’, and has been invited to speak about collecting at various international art fairs. Nadia has been named one of the Top 200 Collectors by Artnews, included in Art Review’s Power 100 in 2015 and 2016, and ArtNet News World's Top 100 Art Collectors in 2016. Her collection has been featured in many leading international publications.

Rajeeb Samdani Rajeeb Samdani is the Co-Founder and a Trustee of the Samdani Art Foundation and is the Managing Director of Golden Harvest Group, one of the leading diversified conglomerates in Bangladesh. Golden Harvest is involved in several sectors including: food processing, dairy, commodities, logistics, information technology, real estate, aviation and insurance. In addition to his philanthropy with art, Rajeeb is the Secretary General of the Bangladesh Human Rights Foundation, one of the largest Human Rights organisation in the country, and founder of the Taher Ahmed Chowdhury Charitable Hospital in the city of Sylhet, and the Alvina Samdani Trust.

Rajeeb is an ardent collector of contemporary art and began collecting with his wife Nadia Samdani, with whom he founded the Samdani Art Foundation in 2011. Their collection was featured as one of the top 200 collections globally by Artnews in 2015, and named as one of the Top200 Collectors by Artnews, included in Art Review’s Power 100 in 2015 and 2016, and ArtNet News World's Top 100 Art Collectors in 2016, and their collection has been featured in many leading international publications. Mr. Samdani is the Co-Chair and a founding committee

6 member of Tate’s South Asian Acquisitions Committee, a member of Tate's International Council, Art Dubai’s Advisory Council, and Alserkal Avenue’s Programming Committee. Most recently, he has been named as one of the founding members of Harvard University’s, South Asia Institute Art Council, and awarded the Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage Award 2017.

Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury graduated in architecture from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in 1995. After working with architect Uttam Kumar Saha, Chowdhury established the practice URBANA as a partnership in 1995, and from 2004, continued as the Principal of the firm. Chowdhury has been a visiting faculty member at the North South University and BRAC University, both in Bangladesh, and has been a juror of final year critiques for universities in Dhaka. Chowdhury was twice a finalist in the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2016 for the Friendship Centre. He was the first Bangladeshi architect to feature in the central curated exhibition in the Venice Biennale during the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, Reporting from the Front. He won first prize in the 2016 International Baku Architectural Ward and was a finalist for the 2016 BSI Architectural Award in Switzerland. In 2012, Chowdhury was awarded Architectural Review’s AR+D Emerging Architecture Award.

Kashef Chowdhury has a studio-based practice, creating work that finds its root in history, with strong emphasis on climate, materials and context—both natural and human. Projects in the studio are given extended time for research so as to realise a level of innovation and original expression. Works range from the conversion of ships and low-cost raised settlements in “chars” to training centres, mosques, art galleries, museums, residences and multi-family housing to corporate headquarters.

Diana Campbell Betancourt Diana Campbell Betancourt (b. 1984, Los Angeles) is Artistic Director of Samdani Art Foundation and Chief Curator of Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka, Bangladesh, a major research and exhibition platform for art in South Asia. Leading the Samdani Art Foundation since nearly its inception, she is developing the Foundation’s forthcoming Srihatta- Samdani Sculpture Park and Art Centre opening in Sylhet at the end of 2018. In addition, Betancourt is Artistic Director of Bellas Artes Projects, Bagac, Philippines and chairs the Mumbai Art Room board. She has collaborated with several sculpture parks across the world on commissions of Indian sculpture and has curated numerous solo projects with artists such as Haroon Mirza, Simryn Gill, Tino Sehgal, Lynda Benglis, Shilpa Gupta, Shahzia Sikander, Naeem Mohaiemen, Runa Islam, Shumon Ahmed, Pawel Althamer, Raqs Media Collective, among others.

Betancourt has consulted with the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the New Museum, the FRONT Triennial in Cleveland, and Alserkal Avenue in Dubai on their inclusion of South Asia in their exhibitions programs and has presented her research as part of MoMA’s C-MAP initiative. She is on the editorial board of the Exhibitionist and recently published a book with Mousse in Milan (co-edited with Katya Garcia Anton and Antonio Cataldo) on the Dhaka Art Summit and its Critical Writing Ensembles.

7 Srihatta vs. Dhaka Art Summit The Dhaka Art Summit is a research and exhibition platform produced by the Samdani Art Foundation every two years in Dhaka, at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy in collaboration with the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, People’s Republic of Bangladesh. The Dhaka Art Summit will continue to occur in Dhaka parallel to and separate from the Samdani Art Foundation’s activities in Sylhet. While several of the works exhibited at Srihatta will be previewed at DAS 2018 from February 2-10th—and several works from the Samdani collection that will be exhibited at Srihatta have exhibited in the past at Dhaka Art Summits—Srihatta is a distinct entity from the Dhaka Art Summit.

FURTHER INFORMATION

To keep up to date on all the latest from the Samdani Art Foundation and the Dhaka Art Summit, follow @DhakaArtSummit on Twitter, @samdaniartfoundation and @dhakaartsummit on Instagram and like us on Facebook.

For further information please visit samdani.com.bd or dhakaartsummit.org

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