-Najah Tahrim
For the past 8 years, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy has been presenting an astounding art exhibition for people to explore. With every art comes a story. Dhaka Art Summit 2020 (DAS 2020) was not just an art exhibition; it was a movement.
DAS 2020: Seismic Movements contained 9 sections: Feminist Futures, Moving Image, Collective, Geological, Colonial, Independence, Social, Spatial, and Modern Movements.
The collective movement had over 40 collectives from different countries with the purpose to teach the audience about collective values. One of the large collectives was the Reclamation (2019–2020) by Taloi Havini. It was made with grassroots harvested by the artist from the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. It educated people on how to collaboratively work with local existing infrastructure.
We always expect a display to be striking, but, why don’t we find simple things with a deep meaning intriguing? On the floor of the Shilpakala Art Academy entrance, was an evocative installation by Adrián Villar Rojas, New Mutants. It was a display of 400-million-year-old ammonite and orthoceras fossils on the ground which did not attract the visitors much. These now-extinct undersea creatures swam under the super-ocean Panthalassa for millions of years, witnessing the creation and breakup of the single continent, Pangaea. These fossils were found on top of the Himalayas when it was underwater. Artists wanted to show that this is how Bangladesh is expected to be in 50 years. According to https://www.dhakaartsummit.org/ the geological movement, “serves as a metaphor to think of our past, present, and future on this planet.”
The most interesting stories come from the colonial movements. This included the British-era and its effects on Bangladesh, the unpopular 1945 famine in Vietnam which killed nearly 2 million people, and so on. Art has always been a prominent way of telling stories. Paintings, statues, songs, and poetry were used to portray Bangladesh’s independence. Hence, DAS 2020 presented the artworks of the famous artists, Murtaja Baseer, Quamrul Hassan, Rashid Talukder, and Zainul Abedin to show the protests and artistic movements that were part of the struggle for freedom. African and south, southeast Asian independence movements were also presented. Projects and archives were featured showing how these places transformed from being territories to nation-states.
Social movements regarding women's fundamental rights equal to men are a very significant matter. The room shown in the image was a complete representation of woman empowerment done by Chitra Ganesh. The purple walls represented feminism. The pictures hung up on the wall were comics about woman’s rights. The sculpture included faces of women with different appearances.
One of the greatest achievers of spatial movement in Bangladesh is Architect Muzharul Islam (1923-2012). ‘On Muzharul Islam: Surfacing Intention’ was a group project collaboratively done by 17 artists to show his profound works from the 1950s to 1970s. His projects have influenced a majority of Bangladeshi architects and international figures.
Moving Image: Rituals for Temporal Deprogramming was a live-action art. The eye-catching images, expressions, colors, and interesting sounds, gestures, noises of the art exhibition was taken care of by Otolith Group.
The Dhaka Art Summit 2020: Seismic Movements was a very broad and enlightening art exhibition. It intended to inspire the audience to dream, think, and act in a creative and collaborative way so that our world can be a better place.
“DAS 2020 is about shaking up our understanding of the present and the past, creating opportunities to come together and make and write (art) history from new perspectives.” Diana Campbell Betancourt, Chief Curator.
Source: https://www.dhakaartsummit.org/
Comments