Lucky Day, a project by Alexine Chanel including a performance event featuring Sharmili Akther Lucky, will take place today at the Nouvelle Vague auditorium of Alliance Française de Dhaka at 5pm.
The project will be a part of the exhibition, on 21st century’s own settlement form – Manifesto of Post-Informality by Habitat Forum Berlin, in cooperation with the Weissensee School of Art, curated by Günter Nest and Elisa Bertuzzo, in Berlin in 2017.
“I am Lucky, but I am not lucky,” states Lucky. She said this shortly after meeting Alexine in the streets of Karail Basti, a self-organised settlement in Dhaka. Lucky then begins to spin her sad tale, which has been recorded and will be rewritten as a “Banglawood” pop song.
Lucky is a textile worker, one of the many thousands of essentially invisible women making clothes for foreign consumers. Lucky is the star of this show, in stark contrast to her daily life. It may seem that nobody outside Karai Basti knows about her work, existence, or presence, especially not the foreign consumers who buy the clothes she makes.
Yet on this “lucky day,” she will become a star and perform, signing an H&M t-shirt of the “Conscious” range, made in Bangladesh, bought in Berlin, and flown back to Dhaka for the event.