Salman Toor and Amitav Ghosh to Collab at Dhaka Art Summit 2023
Salman Toor's illustration for Amitav Ghosh's Jungle Nama (2021). Courtesy of the artist, the author, and Harper Collins.
Over 140 artists and architects will take part in the Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) 2023, subtitled Bonna, when it returns to the Bangladeshi capital from 3 to 11 February.
The summit’s headline exhibition, Very Small Feelings, features a story written by acclaimed Indian author Amitav Ghosh and illustrated by emerging Pakistani-American artist Salman Toor called Jungle Nama (2021). Inspired by an ancient folktale from the Sunderbans, the book will be brought to life in a newly commissioned installation with audio by Ali Sethi.
‘There could be no better way of bringing the different aspects of the work together than in an installation for this exhibition, which celebrates the role of storytelling in society,’ said Ghosh.
Co-produced by Samdani Art Foundation and Delhi’s Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Very Small Feelings gathers stories, rituals, characters, and memories from across Bangladesh and the regions of Northeast India.
DAS’s Chief Curator Diana Campbell suggests the broad scope of the summit will allows visitors to experience things from different perspectives. She said that ‘small things can feel big and big things can feel small and challenge the idea that the biggest and loudest thing is what we should listen to.’
‘Very small feelings can have big impacts,’ she added.
Campbell’s co-curator Akansha Rastogi attributes the title Very Small Feelings to Bangladeshi artist Yasmin Jahan Nupur, who used the phrase when discussing a commission for the show to describe the lost, fuzzy, and buried landscape of her childhood.
Additional commissions include a performance by Indian artist Lapdiang Syiem, Anga Art Collective’s account of the memories of evicted village elders in western Assam, and Afrah Shafiq’s narrative video game exploring the influence of Soviet children’s stories translated into Indian languages.
Other artists participating in DAS 2023 include Rana Begum, Simon Fujiwara, Bhasha Chakrabarti, Antony Gormley, Matt Copson, and Ashfika Rahman, with most producing new commissions for the summit. —[O]
Main image: Salman Toor's illustration for Amitav Ghosh's Jungle Nama (2021). Courtesy of the artist, the author, and Harper Collins.
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