1 2 Dhaka Art Summit 5-8February 2016 Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy Exhibition Guide SHARE YOUR DAS EXPERIENCE #das2016 @dhakaartsummit Front cover: Ayesha Sultana, Outside the Field of View - VI (detail), 2014, courtesy of the artist and Experimenter Left page: Waqas Khan, The Text in Continuum (detail), 2015, ink on paper, metal, courtesy of the artist and Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna 1 Editor Dhaka Art Summit Team Diana Campbell Betancourt Nadia Samdani Artist and Architect Entries President and Co-Founder Thierry Betancourt Diana Campbell Betancourt Diana Campbell Betancourt Artistic Director and Chief Curator Ruxmini Choudhury Beth Citron Mohammad Sazzad Hossain Head of Administration Aurélien Lemonier Shabnam Lilani Emily Dolan Nivriti Roddam Director of Operations and External Affairs Essays by Guest Curators Eve Lemesle Associate Producer Amara Antilla Daniel Baumann Tasmia Nehreen Ahmed Diana Campbell Betancourt Manager of Communications Katya Garcia Antón Ruxmini Rekhvana Q Choudhury Madhavi Gore, Nikhil Chopra, and Jana Prepeluh Curatorial Assistant Shanay Jhaveri Aurélien Lemonier Shabnam Lilani Md. Muniruzzaman Curatorial Assistant and Assistant to Artistic Director Nada Raza Nivriti Roddam Curatorial Assistant and Institutional Relations Liaison Translation Thierry Betancourt Rezaul Kabir Kochi Tanvir Nahid Khan Architect and Project Manager for Architecture in Bangladesh Reid Masselink Safiqul Islam Shahman Mohsin Assistant Project Manager for Architecture in Bangladesh Copyediting Asifur Rahman Thierry Betancourt Assistant Project Manager for Architecture in Bangladesh Kathy Campbell Khan Md. Mobinul Haque Emily Dolan Engineer Amanda Kelly Aosafur Rahman Asad Helen Pheby Logistics Publisher Mahbub Alam Nazrul Samdani Art Foundation Accounts Shanta Western Tower Nippon Express Level 5 Official Logistics Partner Suite 501 & 502 186 Gulshan, Tejgaon Link Road Dhaka Art Summit Organising Committee Tejgaon 1/A, Dhaka 1208 Bangladesh Farooq Sohban (Chairman) [email protected] Rajeeb Samdani Liaquat Ali Lucky Graphic Identity Mohius Samad Choudhury Shruti Chamaria Anita Gazi Bruno Plasse Design Eeshita Azad Thierry Betancourt Judith Mirschberger Nivriti Roddam Rashed Maqsood Zakir Ibne Hai Distributor Samdani Art Foundation Samdani Art Foundation Advisory Committee Beatrix Ruf Coordination Massimiliano Gioni Mohammad Sazzad Hossain Shahzia Sikander Monica Narula Printers and Binder Sun Press [email protected] ISBN 978-0-692-61881-3 Published on the occasion of the exhibition Dhaka Art Summit 2016 February 5-8 2016 Copyright 2016 by Samdani Art Foundation. 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, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher and the editor. The Publisher has made every effort to contact the copyright holders of the materials included in this book. However, if there are omissions or mistakes in stating the correct name, please let us know ([email protected]) and further editions will be amended. contents Welcome ....................................................... Solo Projects................................................... 1 The Missing One ..............................................41 Mining Warm Data ............................................61 Architecture in Bangladesh ....................................91 Film Prpgramme ............................................. 141 Rewind ...................................................... 151 Performance Pavilion ......................................... 191 Samdani Art Award .......................................... 203 Soul Searching ...............................................221 Talks Programme .............................................225 Critical Writing Ensemble.....................................247 Supplementary Programmes And Workshops ................. 255 Asia Art Archive............................................. 257 Safina Radio Project ..........................................258 Children’s Programme . .259 Bangladesh Art SPaces ...................................... 260 Lenders .....................................................261 Acknowledgements ......................................... 262 Maps ....................................................... 264 Dhaka Art Summit Schedule ................................. 268 Dear Guests, Welcome to the third edition of the Dhaka Art Summit, the world’s largest non-commercial research and exhibition platform for South Asian Art. We were thrilled with the positive local and international responses to the first and the second editions of Dhaka Art Summit. We welcomed 70,000 visitors in the course of three days, making it one of the most important events in the region. We are also happy to say that projects from the 2014 Dhaka Art Summit have since travelled to the Berlin Biennale, the Queens Museum, NYU Abu Dhabi, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, the San Jose Museum of Art, and the Kunsthalle Basel. Encouraged by the last edition, we have decided to lengthen this year’s event to four days with extended hours and while the summit remains free, we have now removed the idea of any form of ticket from the event. For 2016, there will be seventeen solo projects curated by the Samdani Art Foundation’s Artistic Director Diana Campbell Betancourt. Other content includes five curated exhibitions, eight durational performances, a film programme, panel discussions, and book launches. This year we are also collaborating with the Office of Contemporary Art Norway and Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council to launch the Critical Writing Ensemble (CWE). CWE brings together writers, critics and curators from South Asia and across the globe to share writing histories and knowledge with each other, experiment together, and produce new critical impulses regarding art writing, which will be compiled for international publication. To grow Dhaka Art Summit as a research platform we invited curators from different institutions such as Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, the Guggenheim and the Kunsthalle Zürich to extend their research deeper into South Asia. For the first time, Dhaka Art Summit 2016 is introducing a historical section, Rewind, which will highlight practices of South Asian artists active before 1980. Works from the National Gallery archive, National Museum of Bangladesh and various private collections will be shown in this exhibition, many stored behind closed doors for over thirty years. There will be over 300 artists, curators, architects and writers participating from Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan and beyond, celebrating global links to South Asia. We believe this event will further increase the engagement of the region with the rest of the world. To strengthen our research platform, this year we have partnered with academic institutions such as the Harvard South Asia Institute, Yale University, University of San Francisco and University of Maryland to facilitate their faculty to be a part of our program and to create further links across Bangladesh and South Asia. Once again, we are partnering with the Delfina Foundation to award an outstanding young Bangladeshi artist the opportunity to attend a three-month residency at the Delfina Foundation in London as part of the bi-annual Samdani Art Award. This year 13 young artists were selected for the Art Award Show from an applicant pool of over 300 local artists. Once more, keeping young audiences in mind we are excited to realise an interactive workshop for children conducted by VAST Bhutan (Voluntary Artists’ Studio, Thimphu). The second edition of DAS welcomed 1,600 students who took guided tours of the summit. This year we are dedicating 2 days for local schools to visit and experience the event. On behalf of the organisers, I would like to thank Mr. Liaquat Ali Lucky, Director General, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Mr. Akhtaruz Zaman Khan Kabir, CEO of the Bangladesh Tourism Board, Mr. Faizul Latif Chowdhury, Director General, Bangladesh national Museum, Mr. Farooq Shobhan, Chairman of the Summit Organising Committee, Mrs. Diana Campbell Betancourt, Artistic Director, Samdani Art Foundation, all our partners, participating artists, galleries, sponsors and most importantly the Samdani Art Foundation and Dhaka Art Summit team who have been working for the past two years to make this event a success. We look forward to see you again during the 4th edition of the Dhaka Art Summit in 2018. Nadia Samdani, President and Co-Founder Greetings! My team and I are delighted to welcome you to the third edition of the Dhaka Art Summit! We are pleased to witness the expanding regard for art from South Asia, especially the increased interest in looking beyond nationalism and to look instead at shared and cosmopolitan histories across the region, as culture knows no physical border. Collaborations outside of the region are quite easy to facilitate as Western museums have made strong commitments to exhibiting and acquiring works by artists from the region, however lateral collaborations across the region are nearly impossible in contemporary times due to visa restrictions and spiralling costs of moving artworks and people across the region. The art that we ship from India or Pakistan to Bangladesh cannot go directly from country to country, it must first stop in Dubai or Hong Kong. My deepest appreciation goes to Rajeeb and Nadia Samdani, who despite