In this concluding piece on the Dhaka Art Summit, that took place in early February in the capital city of Bangladesh, I will wind up with a brief description of the two sections, called Rewind and Soul Searching.

‘Rewind builds on the Dhaka Art Summit’s mandate as a research platform by assembling works from public collections in Europe, South East Asia, and the United States that chart the diverse manifestations on abstraction in pre-1980’s South Asia,’ says the DAS catalogue. It indeed was an extraordinary selection that allowed us a peek into works not easily available for viewing and opened up a fresh understanding of the trajectory that artmaking has taken, and the many silences that go with it, in this region. This was by far my favourite section in DAS 2016.

A clutch of rarely seen before print works and paintings by Bangladesh’s Safiuddin Ahmed (1922 -2012) let us a glimpse a semi-abstract tradition that coincided with but differed from the lyrical realism of the more well known Zainul Abedin’s.

Abstraction also wove together the tapestries that hung next, by the Mumbai based Monika Correa, who explored nature’s vitality through textured weaves. The weave burst into brilliant, unlikely exuberance in the 8 tapestries by Rashid Chowdhury (1932-1986) that capture Bangladesh’s cultural and geophysical diversity through minimalist motifs in rare fluidity. Five works of Zahoor Ul Akhlaq (1949-1999) and another 16 by Anwar Jalal Shemza (1928-1985) acted as an infrequently opened window into Pakistan’s encounter with modernist abstraction post 1960. Akhlaq’s minimalist drawings were particularly interesting given his fame for being the architect behind the neo-miniaturist trend that has somewhat overwhelmed Pakistani contemporary art today. Yet another exciting glimpse, this time into a rarely explored art historical narrative, was on show through the works of Bagyi Aung Soe (1924-1990) of Burma. The quirky, felt-pen illustrations breathed life into the myth of Bagyi, the eccentric artist/writer/actor who led the Burmese modern art movement. 

The Indian contingent in Rewind was represented by Arpita Singh, Nalini Malani, and Krishna Reddy, among others, and offered an interesting juxtaposition across media as diverse as Malani’s 2-channel digital video (Utopia, 1969-76), etchings and drawings by Singh from the 1980’s and 12 intaglio prints by Reddy created between 1952 and 1973. Bangladesh’s S M Sultan’s luminous watercolour landscapes and Sri Lankan Lionel Wendt’s photographs added further excitement to an already vibrant exposition that wove together parallel yet distinct narratives that permeated artmaking in South Asia during the second half of the 20th century.  

The section called Soul Searching was devoted to the works of 52 artists, who have helped build the identity of pre- and post-Independence Bangladeshi art and many of whom continue to practice today. Though Soul Searching was meant to trace the cultural influences and roots that inspired a senior generation of artists, it happily ended up as a cartography of the contextual hinges that hold together and inspire the artmaking of even the newest generation of contemporary artists in Bangladesh today. The reason I have elaborated at length on these two sections at DAS 2016 is because I feel that future incarnations of international art events like the Kathmandu International Art Fair in Nepal might benefit from a similar effort at tracing the art historical narrative behind Nepali modern and contemporary art. 

Instead of clubbing together senior artists and fresh new blood, it might be more interesting to firstly position Nepal’s artistic modernity in the context of larger, regional socio-political history of influences and then, trace that same modernity through individual artists and their career trajectories. 

The section called Soul Searching was devoted to the works of 52 artists, who have helped build the identity of pre- and post-Independence Bangladeshi art and many of whom continue to practice today