Features
Escape or re-imprisonment?
Coursing critically through the Dhaka Art Summit 2016
The third edition of the Dhaka Art Summit attracted around 138,000 visitors, almost double the number of the previous edition. This year it opened to the public with free entry as before, but stayed for a longer time – four days in all. ‘A sea of people on the verge of an apocalypse’ is probably the best way to describe the experience of swarms of crowd passing through one segment after another on three levels of the five-story building. This certainly is puzzling. Especially when Bangladesh does not have a single contemporary art institution per se, except for this designated venue for the third edition of the Dhaka Art Summit – the Fine Art section of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy engaged in the promotions of the arts including theatre, music and dance. As has been declared by the curator of the Summit, Diana Campbell Betancourt, the event which held in its folds several exhibitions seemed like a ‘pop-up museum’.
Once outside of the Academy, one would feel this juggernaut of a plurality of events was more like a thing from outer space. A deviation from what the officially designed trail to encounter the city would roll out – there are people wrapped in blankets sleeping in the streets, including scavenging children. Due to a colder than normal winter (thanks to the effects of climate change), they were burning garbage to try and keep warm. The scenes on the streets formed a stark contrast to the interior space of the galleries. But even in the face of such ubiquitous poverty, contemporary art is still thriving in Bangladesh as is the economy which primarily relies on the export-oriented garment industries and remittance from expatriates. The innate desire of the artist to create and to be seen remains inexhaustible, and Bangladesh is taking its initial, tentative steps in line with the global Capital Order taking lead from the homegrown capitalists, social elites, and a burgeoning middle class emerging out of the vortex of a peripheral market to cater to an ever increasing demand for culture and the arts.
Bangladesh's art scene has been anything but stagnant since the War of Independence in 1971. By 1981, with the financial support from local government and the United Nations, Europe and Japan, it hosted the inaugural of the Asian Art Biennale in Dhaka, an event the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy continues to host to the present day. Although this large-scale arts event is little conservative in nature and is criticized by some for growing nepotism, its overall logic tends to favour the modern art vocabulary of local art academies, encouraging artists with specific styles and shoring up the authority of certain individuals. However, under conditions of subsidized exchange, at least Bangladesh's arts community has had the opportunity to connect with the outside art world, to see some European and Japanese innovative, multidimensional, conceptual artworks. But it is still difficult to escape the confines of the domestic ‘power structures’ and its attendant hegemony over the staging of the arts.
How + Why to Interpret the South Asian Art
Samdani Art Foundation uses the framework of ‘South Asia’ to break this predicament. They define South Asia as comprising India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan, as well as Myanmar. Mining Warm Data, a themed exhibition curated by Diana herself, either inadvertently or intentionally, included Afghanistan in South Asia. Termed ‘the world's largest non-commercial platform for South Asian art’, it desires to proclaim itself to the world as ‘South Asian art’.
What was not in sympathy with the declared goal is that at this arts event tasked with raising the profile of local South Asian and Bangladeshi artists, all forums were conducted in English and all presenters were required to give addresses in English. With no Bengali interpreters provided, when participants discussed cultural productions and their context, they unanimously sourced their core energy from the academic languages of European and American background. These discourses left one feeling there was a lack of solid local research and resources, and an overlooking of the regional cultural and socio-economic context and the predicaments that continue to befall Bangladesh and its neighbouring countries. The forums seemed to resemble more closely a Western enclave parachuted in for the duration of the event without regard to local expectation/feeling. The audience too were mostly comprised of western faces as well as Indian and Pakistani participants. Bangladeshi audience members were a mere minority.
At one forum entitled Art Initiatives off the Centre, eight participants representing local art organizations from Sri Lanka, Myanmar, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan were each given a mere eight minutes presentation time, with no extension allowed for discussion and hence no chance for any creative sparks to be ignited. In contrast, other forums featuring curators from overseas arts institutions gave their speakers time to talk at length.
The cheapest curation: performance pavilion
There has been a high concentration of performance artists in this edition of the Summit. The complexities of politics, culture, religion and philosophy are all expressed physically – the flesh became the bearer of signs ready to explode in that given space and time. The hosting of an interesting performance art workshop a month before the Summit paved the way for the later events during the Summit. The workshop worked as an incubator – conducted by Indian performance duo Nikhil Chopra and Madhavi Gore along with Slovenian Jana Prepeluh. South Asian artists were led to occupy ad-hoc spaces to stage their performances – be that on the street or any secluded place. From eight participants five were selected to finally perform at the Summit. The performance artists were not compensated for their works some of which were six to eight hour long and some even spilled over to a longer period, lasting for days on end. It was difficult for the artists to get funding for materials (not to mention the artist’s fee), as performance art as a genre eludes the officialdom in this region. Even traditional modern artists are hesitant to acknowledge the value it adds to the cultivation of the ‘new’. Thus the hosting of performances also necessitated an astute planning. One Sri Lankan artist even discovered on arriving at the exhibition venue that the organizers had not set up the space as agreed, leaving the artists to do it all by themselves. This led to the space being termed, ironically, the ‘Hall of Exploitation. The Samdani Art Award, given to young Bangladeshi artists, did not offer any funding for materials either. In contrast to the 17 solo projects and few curatorial exhibitions of the Dhaka Art Summit, these additional spaces also reflected a very high standard.
South Asian contemporary art or contemporary South Asian Art
The exhibition entitled Soul Searching, curated by Bangladeshi curator Md Muniruzzaman, and the section for the Bangladeshi art spaces and galleries mirrored the sluggishness on the part of the participants in acknowledging the emerging firmament. These artists were assigned spaces on the highest plain which was the 4rth floor, an unpopular locale. The quality of exhibits at Soul Searching simply left one flabbergasted mulling over the selection of works. A total of 52 local artists were brought in, and the final display seemed like an attempt to appease the artists rather than a true showcasing of modernist paintings and sculptures that still have currency in this region. Perhaps it was an honest reflection of the state of Bangladeshi art – conceptually it seems to favour conservative academism.
Seen in the context of the rise of global conservatism and fascism in the so-called ‘first world’ as well as the profound trauma of the colonial experience and the extremely rich development of post-colonial narratives in South Asia, one may feel compelled to re-organize the resistant corpuses/narratives to elicit contextual meaning. Also the fact that European debt and financial crises have enforced a remapping of the possible locales by the globetrotting art elites in order to identify the nest of talents badly needed for the global as well as South Asian art to continue on their paths which seem visibly entwined.
Nevertheless the Summit makes it obvious that it is less and less possible to ignore the desire to see ‘South Asia’ as a distinct entity – whether for a globally powerful art museum or for smaller organizations such as the likes from Taiwan. South Asia is recognized as a significant region with a rich cultural heritage – it is the place where one is able to locate some of the oldest civilizations of the world. One is also aware that the nations and territories of South Asia have historically been entangled in countless disputes and conflicts, with many wars of separation and battles for land and resources still haunt the region. This means that exchanges and cooperation between counties are still problematic. A certain Indian art critic wondered aloud, ‘How are we to ignore history and the complexities of the situation? In this alleged community of ‘South Asia’, who is the subject addressed in the sentence?’ The answer is obvious.
From organizing exhibitions to inviting overseas guests, to hosting a VIP banquet, the Dhaka Art Summit made a big effort to leave an impact. Nearly 700 international art activists participated in this event, including famous artists, celebrity curators, critics, arts media, researchers, scholars, even the auction houses sent their scouts to look for the next big thing. We all know it is truly difficult in Bangladesh; the expenditure must have been considerable! Apart from a governmental subsidy and private support (under 10%)1, all other funding came from the Samdani Art Foundation and related enterprises. With a view to the scenes of destitution encountered outside the venue walls, we might easily feel demoralized. But then again maybe this is the way: to let outsiders with resources and knowledge witness first-hand the social realities of Bangladesh, to appreciate the creative power of contemporary art, and to generate more investment and open the doors to overseas exhibition opportunities.
This is only the first step towards the construction of a futurity in light of the current situation. Yet, what one needs to avoid is the compromise struck between the imported structural hegemony and the cultural complicity which is already ailing the institutes across the region. Thus a new agenda must be scripted to ensure that the artists who were trying to escape from local structures are not rushed into re-imprisonment, lured in by the carrot stick of a little more artistic freedom, within a bigger system.
FIONA CHENG is a Taiwan-based art researcher and writer. She co-founhded Art Observer Field Archive and contributes to a number of local and international art magazines.
Note
- Samdani Art Foundation Frequently Asked Questions [official website message]. Retrieved from http://samdani.com.bd/faq/ (retrieved date: 27 Feb 2016