Dhaka Art Summit 2016 announced

The third edition of the Dhaka Art Summit -- dubbed the world's largest platform for South Asian art-- will be held on February 5-8, 2016 at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, the organisers announced in a press conference yesterday.

Presented by the Samdani Art Foundation, the biennial art exhibition is organised in collaboration with Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy. A pioneering research and exhibition platform for South Asian art, the event brings together artists, curators, museums, scholars, and visitors from across Bangladesh and the world to discover institutional-quality works in a non-commercial environment. Its curatorial team will include representatives from the world's biggest art museums, such as the Tate Modern in London, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Guggenheim in New York, as well as artist Nikhil Chopra and many others. New programmes for architecture, experimental writing and historic archives will also launch in the 2016 edition of the festival.

A press conference was held in this regard at the auditorium of National Art Gallery of Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy yesterday. Nadia Samdani, director of Dhaka Art Summit; Liaquat Ali Lucky, director general, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy; Gousul Alam Shaon, member, Dhaka Art Summit Organising Committee and Muniruzzaman, curator for Bangladeshi Contemporary Art Exhibition, Dhaka Art Summit were present at the event.

Noted curator Diana Campbell Betancourt will return to the Summit to curate the solo projects, public art project and the talks. Tate Modern's Nada Raza will explore the influence of sci-fi and retro-futurism in South Asia across generations. Aurelien Lemonier will curate an exhibition on Bangladeshi architecture as part of a wider research project for the Centre Pompidou. Shanay Jhaveri will curate a film programme while Nikhil Chopra and Madhavi Gorewill curate the performance programme and conduct educational workshops with Bangladeshi performance artists. The Summit will also include an exhibition of Bangladeshi art, curated by the founder of Gallery Chitrak, Mohammad Muniruzzaman.

The third edition of the Summit will also include several new programmes, such as the non-commercial “Rewind” section, highlighting practices of South Asian artists active before 1980 and advised by a team from the Rubin Museum (NY), Asia Art Archive (Hong Kong) and the Guggenheim (NY). The Summit will also feature 20 international writers in Critical Writing Ensembles that explore forms of experimental writing in South Asia and the rest of the world and help Bangladeshi art writers to develop their skills. Dhaka Art Summit 2016's speaker panel will consist of 35 speakers from 15 different countries, including Bangladesh.

Samdani Art Foundation has again partnered with the Delfina Foundation to award an outstanding young Bangladeshi artist the opportunity to attend a three-month residency in London as part of the Samdani Art Award.