8th Edition CRACK International Art Camp ( CIAC )

A Tapestry of Stories

The 8th edition of the CRACK International Art Camp CIAC (CIAC) 2014, was inaugurated at Smaran Matshya beej Khamar in Kushtia, on 25 December 2014. Curated by Nilanjana Nandy (India), this edition of CIAC involved 30 artists from six countries. Participating artists explored this year's theme, Tapestry of Stories, with equal measure of enthusiasm and conceptual rigour, employing their respective strategies to arrive at the final solutions.
Engaging in art-makining by considering the surrounding milieu as source of both inspiration and materials, imbibing its natural and cultural context, artists also attempted to bring into their respective pieces a materiality which corresponded to the contemporary surge for site-specific art. The site-specific installations, performance art, video art and other conceptual media, thus, were location specific. The interactive, collective process of the art camp stimulated artists to explore their own individual creativity in the realization of their projects which slowly took shape in the duration of four days.
The art camp culminated with an Open Day (30 December 2014, 2 pm to 7pm) wherein viewers both saw the final artworks and met the artists at the camp site in Kushtia, Bangladesh.

The CRACK-initiated camp, since its launch in 2007, has served as a cultural melting pot attracting participants from Bangladesh and beyond. In the current edition there were artists from countries other than that of South Asia. Countries encompassed India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Brazil, and Afghanistan. If the conjugation of artistic act with the natural setting provided the opportunity to organically develop artistic projects, this time round, the Camp saw a healthy mix of various different strategies. If some were satisfied by forging art that genuinely accomplishes 'truth to materials,' others were inclined to expand the horizon to infuse matters with concepts that easily transcended the materials in use.

Artists included: (from abroad) Ram Maharjan (Nepal), Riti Maharjan (Nepal), Sujan Dangol (Nepal), Anupam Singh (India), Cacilda Espíndola (Brazil), Murari Jha (India), Razia Rezaie (Afghanistan), Satadru Sovan Bhanduri(India), Chirantan Mukhopadhyay (India), Gopa Roy (India), Jinal Sangoi (India), Dinesh Ishantha (Sri Lanka), Jinal Patel (India), and several artists from Bangladesh; these were Anadi Boiragi, Kanak Aditya, Mahadi Masud, Tahmina Hafiz Lisa, Polash Chowdhury, Shakti Nomaan, Shaheen Mahmood Reza Rajon, Raihan Rafi, Roksana Amin, Tasnuva Kalam Tonny, Sadika Swarna, Delowar Hossain, Ananta Kumar Das, Tanzim Ahmed Bijoy, Anarja Tapos, ABS Xem and Shawon Akand.

Crack International Art Camp has been regularly held in Kushtia since 2007 under the artistic leadership of Shawon Akand and with the support of Delowar Hossain, with the aim of enabling the osmotic processes of art and living to come to the fore. Bringing together theatre artists, photographers, film makers, psychologists, poets, journalists, performers, sociologists and more, the camp expresses Crack's foundational notion that there is a strong interconnectedness between the various streams of culture and disciplines and therefore a favourable environment for such a multidisciplinary art praxis is vital.

- DEPART DESK