Here and Elsewhere | An installation Britto Arts Trust
in collaboration with Serendipity Arts Foundation
FICA, in collaboration with Serendipity Arts Foundation, was very excited to host an installation by Britto Arts Trust, which opened at the FICA Reading Room on 3rd February 2024.
Here and Elsewhere
An installation by Britto Arts Trust
Display extended till 15 March
at the FICA Reading Room, Lado Sarai
Titled Here and Elsewhere, the installation reflects on a series of projects carried out since 2009 with communities living on the borders as well as on the coasts. The series was titled প্রান্তিকের প্রাকৃতজন - Prantiker Prakritajon (People living in the Margins), and its engagements involved artists travelling to places such as Alikodom, Bandorban (2019), the dissolved Dasiarchhora Enclave in Phulbari, Kurigram (2017), engaging with Hajong Community in Bipinganj village, Sushang Durgapur, Netrokona (2011) and the Rakhain community from South-West coastal areas of Galachipa Village, Potuakhali (2010).
Most of these places do not have electricity, running water, or toilet facilities but are replete with natural resources including minerals, limestone, and the finest ceramic clay, leaving them open to exploitation and victimisation by mainstream traders. These vulnerable communities struggle to protect their landscapes, properties, and homes from the relentless abuse.
Between 2020-2021, Britto members followed a route to revisit seven overlooked ethnic communities across the country to understand their present situation provoked by the enormous global changes taking place. A set of books included in this installation offer a retrospective take on these critical encounters, assimilating tangible and intangible experiences recorded by the artists involved, and the experimental artistic projects they proposed. Housed within cyanotype walls and inclines—a refuge and a space of gathering—Here and Elsewhere invites you to be part of this conversation on community, making, precarity and ways of being.
The installation was also shown as part of the exhibition, Turning: On Field and Work, curated by Vidya Shivadas at Serendipity Arts Festival 2023 in Goa. We look forward to engaging with this beautiful set of publications and sharing them with readers here, through the month of February!
Artists involved in the project include: Amir Faisal Ruscho, Aminul Islam Ashik, Bhabatosh Sutar, Anisuzzaman Sohel, Farah Naz Moon, Jewel A Rob, Kazi Sydul Karim Tuso, Kamruzzaman Shadhin, Jinnatun Jannat, Mahmuda Siddika, Mahbubur Rahman, Mahbubur Rahman, Mehedi Hasan, Mohosin Kabir, Munem Wasif, Nirmal Mallick, Noman Khan, Pradip Das, Sharad Das, Shimul Saha, Shimul Datta, Suborna Morsheada, Tayeba Begum Lipi and Yasmin Jahan Nupur
Below are some of the publications we spotlighted on our Instagram page.
About Britto Arts Trust
Britto Arts Trust is the first artists’ run non- profit collective in Bangladesh with a global reach founded in 2002. Permanently located in Dhaka, it has provided an expansive and sustainable environment for artists, groups and networks to explore the contours of an interdisciplinary and contemporary art practice in Bangladesh. It has also functioned as an alternative learning platform for artists to produce experimental as well as socially engaged work. Britto is part of Triangle Network and also belongs to the South Asian Network for Art (SANA). In partnership with Bengal Foundation, Bangladesh and Gervasuti Foundation Venice/ London, Britto Arts Trust initiated its footprint at the Venice Biennale as the first national participation of Bangladesh in 2011. In 2022 it participated in Documenta 15, creating an ‘interconnected landscape devoted to food politics, displacement and culture’.