DHAKA ART SUMMIT 2018 REPORT 1 Installation image of Rasheed Araeen’s Rite/Right of Passage (2016-2018) as part of the exhibition, Bearing Points during the Dhaka Art Summit 2018. Commissioned2 and produced by Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2018. Courtesy of the artist, Samdani Art Foundation, and Grosvenor Gallery. Photo Credit: Pablo Bartholomew. DHAKA ART SUMMIT 2-10 FEBRUARY 2018 REPORT 3 CONTENTS DAS 2018 SUMMARY .................................... 6 DAS 2018 Success Stories................................................ 8 DAS 2018 PROGRAMME OVERVIEW......... 11 Bearing Points........................................................................ 12 A Utopian Stage.................................................................... 24 One Hundred Thousand Small Tales.......................... 30 Planetary Planning............................................................... 34 A beast, a god, and a line................................................. 38 Volcano Extravaganza......................................................... 42 Asian Art Biennale in Context....................................... 46 Expression of Time............................................................... 50 Samdani Art Award.............................................................. 54 Samdani Artist-Led Initiatives Forum.......................... 62 4 Education Pavilion................................................................ 66 Critical Writing Ensembles: Sovereign Words........ 76 Talks and Film Programme............................................... 82 Symposium: Displays of Internationalism.................. 96 Symposium: The Sunwise Turn....................................... 100 Illustrated Lectures.............................................................. 106 Other Resources................................................................... 111 Art Mediation Programme................................................ 112 VISITOR COMMENTS.................................. 122 DAS 2018 SELECTED PRESS....................... 134 ABOUT US...................................................... 150 Our Founders........................................................................ 154 Curators.................................................................................... 155 Production Team................................................................... 162 DAS 2018 PARTNERS.................................... 166 DAS 2020......................................................... 170 5 DHAKA ART SUMMIT 2018 SUMMARY 2-10 FEBRUARY 2018 BANGLADESH SHILPAKALA ACADEMY 14/3 SEGUNBAGICHA, SEGUN BAGICHA RD, DHAKA, BANGLADESH • OVER 317,000 VISITORS IN 9 DAYS • OVER 300 ARTISTS WORK EXHIBITED • 7 CURATED EXHIBITIONS • OVER 120 SPEAKERS • 16 PANEL DISCUSSIONS AND 2 SYMPOSIUMS • 12 GUEST CURATORS • 65% OF ARTISTS EXHIBITED WERE BANGLADESHI • A THIRD OF THE WORK EXHIBITED WAS NEWLY COMMISSIONED • 27 EDUCATION PAVILION WORKSHOPS HOSTED BY 39 GUEST FACULTY FROM 14 INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS ENGAGING 430 LOCAL PARTICIPA- TANTS • 11 EMERGING BANGLADESHI ARTISTS WORK EXHIBITED AS PART OF THE SAMDANI ART AWARD • 12 BANGLADESHI ARTIST-LED INITIATIVES CURATED PRESENTATIONS • 19 LOCAL SCHOOLS VISITED BRINGING OVER 2,000 STUDENTS DURING THREE DEDICATED SCHOOL DAYS • 25 EMERGING BANGLADESHI PROFESSIONALS TRAINED AS ART MEDIA- TIORS 6 The 4th edition of the Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) produced by the Samdani Art Foundation (SAF) closed on 10th February, having brought together over 300 artists, 120 speakers, and welcomed record attendance with 317,000 visitors over 9 days: a total of 189,000 additional visitors compared to the 3rd edition in 2016. All of SAF’s programming is free and ticketless allowing DAS to welcome a diverse local public. The Summit aims to expand the audience engaging with contemporary art across Bangladesh and increase international exposure for the country’s artists and architects. Therefore, alongside its core local visitors, it actively encourages international art professionals to travel to Bangladesh for research. This year’s attendees included the directors of Tate, the Museum of Modern Art New York, Castello di Rivoli, and the National Gallery of Singapore, as well as critical theorist Dr. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Swiss President Alain Berset and delegations of patrons from all over the world, including Tate’s International Council. DAS’s interdisciplinary programme creates a generative space for art and exchange, and it is proud to have welcomed audiences ranging from poets and story-tellers of Indigenous communities, to students from the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore, and staff from major institu- tions including: Harvard University, Cornell University, the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto; Artspace, Sydney; Delfina Foundation, London; Fiorucci Art Trust, London; MoMA/PS1, New York; National Gallery of Singapore; Office for Contemporary Art Norway; Para Site, Hong Kong; Raw Material Company, Dakar; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok; Kunsthalle Zurich; The Walker, Minneapolis; The Sharjah Biennial; The Gwangju Biennial; Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow; Swiss Institute, New York, and many others. Enhancing the Summit’s mission to engage with wider geographies, many commissioned projects and exhibitions will travel around the world following their debut at DAS 2018. A beast, a god, and a line curated by Cosmin Costinas will travel to Para Site in Hong Kong (17 March – 20 May, 2018), TS1 in Yangon (9 – 24 June, 2018) and to the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (20 July – 7 Octo- ber, 2018). The Volcano Extravaganza will travel back to its native Stromboli to be staged with a new configuration in the summer of 2018. Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran’s colossal ceramic sculptures that celebrate the fluidity of culture across religions, co-commissioned by Artspace, will travel to Art Basel Hong Kong and Sydney. Reetu Sattar’s performance that conjures sonic memories of musical traditions of South Asia in an act of resistance will be included in the Liverpool Biennial 2018. The 5th edition of the Summit will take place in February 2020 again at the Bangladesh Shilpa- kala Academy, and led for the fourth time by Chief Curator Diana Campbell Betancourt (Artistic Director, Samdani Art Foundation.) 7 DHAKA ART SUMMIT SUCCESS STORIES 2018 TO DATE Serendipity Arts Festival 2017 15-22 December 2017, Goa, India Ahmed Rasel and Reetu Sattar, two of the 11 shortlisted Samdani Art Award 2018 artists were selected to exhibit their works by Riyas Komu, curator of the exhibion Young Subcontinents, at the Serendipity Arts Festival 2017. A beast, a god, and a line 17 March- 20 May, 2018, Para Site, Hong Kong The exhibition A beast, a god and a line curated by Cosmin Costinas for the Dhaka Art Summit 2018 has travelled to Para Site, Hong Kong. Lahore Biennale 18-31 March, 2018, Lahore, Pakistan Samdani Art Award 2016 winner, Rasel Chowdhury was selected to participate in the 1st edition of Lahore Biennale, 2018. A beast, a god, and a line 9 - 24 June 2018, TS1, Myanmar The exhibition A beast, a god, and a line curated by Cosmin Costinas for the Dhaka Art Summit 2018 will travel to TS1 in Yangon, Myanmar. A beast, a god, and a line 20 July- 7 October, 2018, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland The exhibition A beast, a god, and a line curated by Cosmin Costinas for the Dhaka Art Summit 2018 will travel to the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Poland. Liverpool Biennial 14 July - 28 October 2018 Reetu Sattar’s project, Harano Sur (Lost Tune) co-commissioned by the Samdani Art Foundation and Liverpool Biennial, in association with Archaeology of the Final Decade and the New North New South will travel to Liverpool, UK to be included in this year’s edition of the Biennial. Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow 11 September 2018 - 27 January 2019 Kamaruzzaman Shahdin’s work Haven is Elsewhere (2017-2018) commissioned by the Samdani Art Foundation as part of Diana Campbell Betancourt’s Bearing Points for the Dhaka Art Summit 2018, will travel to the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, as part of their upcoming exhibi- tion The Fabric of Felicity. 8 Installation image of Dilara Begum Jolly’s The War That Never Went Away Series (2016-2017) (front) and Sheelasha Rajbhandari’s My Great-Great- Grandmother’s Shawl (2017) (background) as part of the exhibition, A beast, a god, and a line during the Dhaka Art Summit9 2018. Image courtesy of the Dhaka Art Summit. Photo Credit: Noor Photoface. Installation10 image of Jakkai Sitibutr’s The Outlaws Flag (2017) as part of the exhibition, Bearing Points during the Dhaka Art Summit 2018. Image courtesy of the Dhaka Art Summit. Photo Credit: Noor Photoface. DHAKA ART SUMMIT 2018 PROGRAMME OVERVIEW 11 BEARING POINTS DIANA CAMPBELL BETANCOURT WITH RUXMINI RECKVANA Q CHOUDHURY AND ABHIJAN GUPTA Bearing Points was a new section of the Dhaka Art Summit 2018 that derived its name from the term for points on a compass. The five Bearing Points were in- dependent but interconnected exhibitions that wove together and assisted visitors in navigating their way through the many ideas and themes present across the DAS programme– from the exhibitions, to the talks and everything in-between. 12 BEARING POINT 1 POLITICS: THE MOST ARCHITECTURAL THING TO DO ARCHITECTS AND ARTISTS: DAYANITA SINGH, MAKSUDUL KARIM, RASHEED ARAEEN, SEHER SHAH AND RANDHIR SINGH, YONA FRIEDMAN “Architecture must inspire the people, for whom it is built, by creating spaces that incite