For its sixth iteration, themed ‘বন্যা/Bonna’, or flood, the biennial exhibition explored how climate informs culture within a country that is situated on the world’s largest river delta

Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka, Bangladesh
3 – 11 February 2023

Founded in 2012 by the Samdani Art Foundation, the Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) was initially developed to support artists native to Bangladesh who lacked opportunities to show their work. In a decade, this ambitious enterprise, which takes place over nine days, every other year, has become ensconced within an international network of artists, critics and curators, positioning Bangladesh as a country that is cultivating contemporary art. And people are interested to see it: its last edition, in 2020, took in half a million visitors.

At this year’s event, the presence of locals, whether students, state officials or families, was particularly noticeable. As Dhaka lacks a contemporary art museum, the summit is one of the only platforms where those in the city can be exposed to more experimental practices. Eyes were glued to Matt Copson’s laser animation Age of Coming (2021), which was projected on to the soaring wall that framed the entrance hall of the Shilpakala Academy, where the summit has been held since its inception.

In a similar format, the first gallery was dedicated to Lake of Tears (2023), by the Chittagong-based artist Joydeb Roaja, which takes the Kaptai dam on the Karnaphuli River as its starting point. During construction of the dam, by the government of Pakistan in the early 1960s, thousands of acres of land belonging to the Chakma tribe were flooded, resulting in the forceful eviction of about 100,000 people. In his revision of the incident, the artist imagines the community rising from the bottom of the water, bearing the Chakma royal palace in its arms (even the palace was submerged in the floods).

Η συνέχεια εδώ.