My journey with the Dhaka Art Summit commenced in 2014, a time when youthful skepticism almost kept me away. Influenced by a friend‘s negativity about the summit being a trashy art fair, I reluctantly stepped into the National Gallery of Fine Arts at Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, half-expecting to find reasons to protest against what felt like an ambitious intrusion into Bangladesh‘s art scene. Yet, as I wandered through the halls, something shifted within me. The Summit wasn‘t just an event—it was a revelation.

Back then, I was an undergraduate student, shaped by limited exposure to art beyond Dhaka and online spaces. The Summit became my gateway to a world of artistic richness I hadn‘t fathomed. From the very start, it challenged my assumptions of what art means. What I initially perceived as an intrusion of Western practice turned out to be an indispensable addition to our artistic landscape.

Moving forward to late-2014 when I found myself working with the Samdani Art Foundation, it was then that my connection with the Dhaka Art Summit deepened. It was not just about attending an event—it was about becoming part of a movement, a living, breathing entity that learned and grew with each passing edition. Foundation’s Artistic Director Diana Campbell‘s words, “Dhaka Art Summit is not an event but a movement,” echoed through every edition I have worked in. The Summit, far from being a static event, operates as a dynamic organism, learning and growing from each edition to the next.

In 2023 we completed our 6th edition of the Dhaka Art Summit under the theme বন্যা (Bonna), or ‘flood’ in English. However, the Bangla term carries a profound significance beyond the mere natural disaster denoted by the English word ‚flood‘. As a riverine country with agriculture being the primary source of income/living, floods here were never seen as only a disaster. There is a love -hate relationship with the water and the human in this delta land. There are women named Bonna here. No one names their children after a disaster. In this Summit we wanted to play with the word itself and find common ground with the rest of the world without translating it into another language that would take away its true feeling.

Before I explain how we decided the name for the 2023 Summit (Bonna), I need to backtrack a little bit. The Summit started quite differently than what it is now. The 2012 summit was just a regular exhibition of Bangladeshi artists with great intentions. Samdani Art Foundation’s co-founders Nadia and Rajeeb Samdani wanted to promote Bangladeshi artists to the world’s art scene. At the time, we would only know of a few Bangladeshi contemporary artists making it to the important biennales and art institutions in the world. They appointed Diana Campbell for the 2014 Dhaka Art Summit, as they wanted to bring in a South Asian context to a well-curated event. Diana, with whom I have been working for more than ten years now, has been the key person to experiment with the Summit. When I first started, the Summit had a format of Solo Art Projects and several curated group exhibitions. 

Although I studied Art History at the University of Dhaka and explored contemporary art practices, those learnings were nothing compared to what I learned in my first year of working at the Summit. It was an experience for me to understand and see how artists found inspiration to create their works. I remember Sandeep Mukherjee was amazed by the rusty and mossy green-blue ceiling of Shilpakala Academy’s South Plaza, and his floor piece became the reflection of the ceiling in his work The Sky Remains (2016). It was also my first time to experience a work that played with technology, which changed our perception of sound, light, space, and time through Haroon Mirza’s work The National Apavilion of Then and Now (2011). Through the volunteers stationed in each project, I heard the stories of audiences trying to understand how and why these are considered art and what they mean. These audiences were local and came from diverse backgrounds. On the other hand, this Summit brought a lot of attention to us, making it internationally well-known. Journalist Michael Snyder in Scroll had written, “The world doesn’t identify Bangladesh with contemporary art and design, but the Dhaka Art Summit might just change that.”[1] We hosted talk programs and Critical Writing Ensembles (curated by Katya García-Antón, Antonio Cataldo, Diana Campbell, Chandrika Grover and Bhavna Kakar) which brought in a lot of international artists, writers, curators, museum directors and art collectors.

Sandeep Mukherjee, The Sky Remains, 2016, Solo Art Project of DAS 2016. Courtesy of the artist and Project 88. Photograph by Jenni Carter

After the 2016 summit, we sat down to discuss what was successful and what needed to be improved. Although we showed works of Bangladeshi artists such as Munem Wasif’s ‘Land of Undefined Territory (2016) a three-channel video and photographs of an undefined land that questions the relation between land and its identity through the concept of the nation-state, or Ayesha Sultana’s A Space Between Things (2015-2016), a room sculpted with found and reclaimed objects, in the Solo Projects section, we felt that we missed showing a lot more artists. We also started to question ourselves, “What can we offer, so that the world will be interested in Bangladesh?” So, for the DAS 2018 Diana put Bangladesh at the center of its cartography rather than at the periphery of someone else’s, recalibrating how we think about art in South Asia by focusing on the increased inclusion of minority positions and conflicted terrains. The Solo Projects section of the Dhaka Art Summit was replaced with Bearing Points. This new initiative comprised large-scale thematic presentations from artists and architects, orienting the viewer towards lesser-explored transcultural histories of the region.

Ayesha Sultana, A Space Between Things, 2015-2016. Commissioned for Solo Art Project by the Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2016.
Courtesy of the artist, Samdani Art Foundation and Experimenter. Photography by Noor Photoface

During this period, we made a strategic decision to cultivate lasting connections and transform the summit from a one-time event into a continuous process, aligning the Samdani Art Foundation‘s endeavors with the Summit. Recognizing the importance of inclusivity, we sought ways to foster stronger ties with Bangladeshi artists, moving beyond collaborating with individual artists to supporting broader initiatives. This led to the establishment of the Samdani Artists’-led Initiatives Forum in 2017, a result of a thorough research conducted throughout Bangladesh. The initiatives themselves play a vital role in cultivating young artists as well as working with a diverse group of people. Our goal was to create a bridge between them and to the international art audience. At the same time, I wanted to create a dialogue between art and the local audience. We launched an Art Mediation program with Rachel Mader and Lena Eriksson, supported by Pro-Helvetia, and trained twenty-five individuals coming from diverse backgrounds.

We also undertook the challenge of organizing a museum-quality exhibition featuring Raqib Shaw. We successfully curated an exhibition that met museum standards, borrowing 19th-century Ukiyo prints from Whitworth Gallery and a ceremonial chair, (along with some other items) belonging to the Dinajpur Maharaja, from the National Museum of Bangladesh. The exhibition was a success but it threw light on the repercussions of it, which aided us to shift the curatorial format. We realized that the logistical challenges of managing shipment and insurance for the Dhaka Art Summit were substantial. We recognized that the time and energy invested in transporting artworks contributed to carbon footprints. Besides, it did not foster a meaningful exchange with the artists or the people of Bangladesh.

Seismic Movements

Dhaka Art Summit 2020 marked the beginning of our journey with the themed edition, where our focus delved into the intricate connection of people, geography, history, and ideas. Our focus thus shifted from displaying artworks to prioritizing people, to facilitate meaningful conversations and exchanges. Through my research on collective practices in Bangladesh and Kathryn Weir and Diana Campbell’s curation, we invited more than twenty artist-led initiatives from Bangladesh and all over the world for the Collective Body exhibition to create dialogues between them. Akaliko, a Bangladesh-based electronic music group, collaborated with the Indonesia-based Jatiwangi Art Factory, where music was created using clay-based instruments. Throughout the Summit, they engaged in live sessions, fostering connections through their unique musical expression. RAW Material Company curated the symposium ‚Condition Report 4 - Stepping out of line; Art Collectives and Trans-local Parallelism,‘ exploring the transformative potential of collective action. ‚Condition Report 4’ delved into the rich history and current realities of cooperative efforts, with a special focus on the crucial role played by artistic, physical, and social interventions within art collectives.

The National Art Gallery of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy where we have been hosting the Summit has open spaces that we always boxed up to create white cube rooms. However, for 2020, we wanted to change how we use the space. Through the project Srijan-Abartan we worked with architects, exhibition designers and creatives to find more sustainable ways to design exhibitions. Nina Paim (former design researcher at common-interest, Switzerland) helped us to look at the building in a new light.

She showed us the potential of the building and how we can use open spaces. With the help of architect Inteza Shahriar and our production team members, we designed a space in the open plaza of Shilpakala using jute dividers which simultaneously was an artwork and a surface to hold works. Bangladesh-based initiative Jothashilpa, in collaboration with Berlin-based SAVVY Contemporary and Master Artist of Cinema Banner Painting Mohammad Shoaib and his disciples to realize a timeline that contains exhibitions about collectivity within, grounding us in solidarities of the past and imagining solidarities of the future. The jute divider worked as the painting surface which wrapped around the plaza creating spaces where discussion sessions, performances, and puppet shows were held. On the other side of the space displayed the exhibition Nobody Told Me There Would be Days Like These curated by Mustafa Zaman (present Director of Fine Art Department, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy) which mapped the history of Bangladeshi groups that laid the ground for art and theatre, film and literary movements in the 1980s. 

Reflecting on the lessons learned from the 2020 Dhaka Art Summit, DAS 2023 took a deeply personal approach. It passionately encouraged artists to embark on a journey with local materials and to forge connections with local artisans, infusing their creations with a touch of community. We aimed to unravel the beauty of local wisdom and its unique interpretations, to intimately connect with hearts globally. Enid Tsui’s description of the DAS 2023 is etched in my mind as “…an inspiration for the world with its focus on local communities and accumulated learnings”[2]. This was our goal for the Summit and we managed to foster it through collaborations and contributions from people who believe in this platform. From the massive Minecraft-inspired ant-hill in the middle of the atrium by Afrah Shafiq, Bhasha Chakrabarti’s nine feminine structures, Sumayya Vally’s clay pot pillars, to 2.5km of bamboo into Antony Gormley’s drawing in space, were only made possible because of the collaboration between the artists and the Bangladeshi artisans. Miet Warlop’s project Board II was a dynamic collaboration with Bangladeshi garment workers who performed wearing the pants they made, challenging preconceptions of “who wears the pants” in society. Her other project Chant for Hope brought in a choreographer, musician, sculptor, performers, a rapper, and a whole lot of crowds!

From left: Raqib Shaw, The Adoration (After Jan Gossaert) (2015-2016), courtesy of the artist and White Cube; Chair (used for ceremony-from The Palace of Dinajpur Maharaja, 19th Century, from the collection of the Bangladesh National Museum); and Kashmiri Shawl (from the collection of Raqib Shaw) at the Raqib Shaw exhibition, co-curated by Diana Campbell Betancourt and Dr. Maria Balshaw and the artist. Photographer: Noor Photoface.

View of Geographies of Imagination by SAVVY and Jothashilpa, Khela-Ramer Khel by BACK Art and puppets of Gidree Bawlee from DAS 2020. Photographer: Noor Photoface

DAS 2018 Art Mediator is giving a tour to the school students, at the Bearing Point 4 exhibition. Photographer: Noor Photoface

Installation view of Nobody Told Me There Would be Days Like These curated by Mustafa Zaman at DAS 2020. Photographer: Noor Photoface

Miet Warlop, Chant For Hope, 2022-2023. Commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation in partnership with KANAL-Centre Pompidou, Brussels with support from the Flemish Region of Belgium and EUNIC and Beximco. Photographer: Shahrear Kabir Heemel

Very Small Feelings, co-curated by Akansha Rastogi, Diana Campbell and me, never failed to bring out the inner child in all the visitors regardless of their ages. The exhibition was designed to look, ponder, and engage with the artworks and the artists. From the performance of Joydeb Roaja and his son, Sanjoy Chakraborty’s participatory research-based work on the children’s magazine from 1950s-1970s and combining them with children’s live drawing sessions in the space, Neha Choksi and Rachelle Rojany’s swings, Afrah Shafiq’s interactive game on Soviet Union books from 1980s, Aditya Novali and his sister Ade Dianita‘s interactive projection to Marzia Farhana’s collaborative project with 270 school children, the exhibition carried height of collaboration and connection.

What makes the Dhaka Art Summit truly unique is the immense engagement it cultivates. This lured in folks from all strata of society, curious from social media posts and the attention it created, the exciting part is that they repeat their visits and come back again with their friends and families, making it a community event.

Bhasha Chakrabarti, নরম অতিক্রমণ (Tender Transgressions), 2022-2023.Commissioned and Produced by Samdani Art Foundation with support from EMK Center, Dhaka Courtesy of the artist and Experimenter. Photographer: Farhad Rahman

Sanjoy Chakraborty, Shades of Flowers, 2022-2023 from Very Small Feelings exhibition at DAS 2023. Co-commissioned by Samdani Art Foundation and Kiran Nadar Museum of Art. Photographer: Shadman Sakib

Neha Choksi and Rachelle Rojany, Swing for friends (used in Faith in friction), 2017 from Very Small Feelings exhibition at DAS 2023 from Samdani Art Foundation Collection. Photographer: Shadman Sakib

The 6th edition of the Dhaka Art Summit in 2023, witnessed an incredible milestone, welcoming over half a million visitors in just nine days. This surge in attendance not only underscores the growing popularity of the Summit but also highlights its enduring appeal to a broad audience. They initiate conversations, offer insights, and transform art from a distant spectacle into a shared experience. It‘s this intimate interaction that turns a casual observer into an engaged participant, making the Dhaka Art Summit not just an exhibition, but a communal celebration of creativity. In Diana’s words, “…There’s collaboration between artists and interaction with the audience. I think that’s where Dhaka Art Summit has been most successful.”[3] Every time I navigated through the vibrant crowds and diverse conversations during the Summit, I became more aware that audience engagement is not just a byproduct; it‘s a fundamental element of the Dhaka Art Summit‘s success.

As we prepare for the next chapter of the foundation, I reflect on my initial skepticism back in 2014, it‘s incredible to see how my journey with the Dhaka Art Summit has mirrored the evolution of this extraordinary movement. From questioning its existence to being an active participant in its growth, I‘ve come to realize that the Summit isn‘t just an event—it‘s a part of my story, an integral chapter in the narrative of Bangladeshi art, and a force that continues to shape our creative identity on a global scale.

Ruxmini Choudhury is a curator, art writer, researcher, and bilingual translator based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She has been working at the Samdani Art
Foundation since 2014. Among the many initiatives she has introduced and developed for the Samdani Art Foundation are its art mediation program and the Samdani Artist Led Initiatives Forum, which are part of her ongoing interest in exploring ways to make art more approachable and interactive for the public. Her research has supported the growth of curatorial knowledge about Bangladesh through her collaborations assisting many international curators on shows in Dhaka, such as the Dhaka Art Summit, as well as in Hong Kong, India, Austria, Norway, Dubai, among others.