Artists and curators discussed the politics and passion behind the placement and context of art and art exhibitions in a city yesterday. The panel talk “Can Culture Counter” was held in the Seminar Room of the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, on the second day of the Dhaka Art Summit.
The discussion was kicked off by moderator Marianne Burki, head of Visual Arts of Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council, with how location of placement of art can sometimes be a political statement.
“Location of the art placement is definitely a very political statement,” Shehzad Chowdhury, Dhaka-based curator of Longitude Latitude and Leela, said. “If you consider Dhaka, most of the connoisseurs were initially in the South so all the arts spaces started in the south. But now, the economy has changed, and the connoisseurs have moved to the north – and there are hardly any art spaces in the north.”
“When observing human settlement, we see that it always surrounds the political arena, for instance, the capital of the city will have ministries and facilities,” added Kathmandu-based Sheelasha Rajbhandari regarding the redefinition of art in context of current events. “And in Nepal, almost all the art institutes are in the capital. The politics of that continued even after the earthquake [last year].”
Rajbhandari is a visual artist and co-founder of Artree Nepal.
Drawing on these themes, the curators and artists further discussed the purpose and visibility of art, the method to reach the public, and the growing presence of art across all communities in South Asia.
Other discussants included Hitman Gurung, Kathmandu-based artist and co-founder of Artree Nepal; Nida Ghouse, writer, curator and the director of Mumbai Art Room in India; Joanna Warsza, head of CuratorLab at Konstfack in Stockholm; and Cosmin Costinas, executive director/curator of Para Site in Hong Kong.