Majhi International Art Residency
July 20th – August 11th, 2019
Venice
The first edition of Majhi International Art Residency Programme, presented by Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation (DBF), will take place in Venice, Italy, from July 20th to August 11th. The programme is organised in collaboration with Lightbox and involves eleven international artists, invited to investigate through their creations compelling topics in the current lines of discourse around contemporary art. The residency programme provides a platform for local and international professionals of the art field to initiate new creative connections and to get in touch with different cultures, triggering in this way new chances of collaboration. This will be the first instalment of a series of brief artistic residencies, to be promoted every year by DBF.
Purpose
The Venice-based project provided artists with the opportunity to come into contact with the European art scene, Specially with Venetian professionals that resulted in the mutually beneficial cultural exchange. Over their stay, the artists were invited to reflect upon the open question “Does life in these uncertain times of crisis and turmoil make art more interesting?” Inspired by the title of the 58th International Art Exhibition- La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Ralph Rogoff ” May you live in interesting times”. As a result of their work, they also chose a title for the final exhibition in which they had been featured. Combo, the location chosen for the residency and the exhibition, is an historic palazzo, offering a quiet accommodation for students and tourists alike. The building also welcomes guests and locals, with a restaurant and bar and a varied programme of cultural events, exhibitions and concerts.
The Residency
The Majhi International Art Residency Programme 2019 will be set at Combo, the former Convento dei Crociferi, just few steps away from the Venetian city centre. Here the artists will live and work over the entire period of residency, from July 20th to August 3rd, to produce in the end a collective exhibition. Inaugurating on August 3rd, 2019, the showcase will be open to the public from August 4th-11th, 2019 in the same location. Majhi will provide the artists with accommodation, production support and exhibition facilities, while they will be advised over their stay by a guest curator.
Photo by Xu Moru & Noor Ahmed Gelal
Photo by Xu Moru & Noor Ahmed Gelal
From July 20th to August 3rd, 2019, the chosen artists will live and work at Combo: the end result of the period spent in residence will be a group exhibition for which the artists will have to choose a title as the result of their experience and the outcome of their collaboration. Inaugurating this August 3rd, 2019, the showcase will be open to the public from August 4th-11th, 2019 in the same location. Combo, the location chosen for the residency and the exhibition is located in the historic former Convento dei Crociferi – just few steps away from the centre of the city. The location offers a quiet accommodation for students and tourists alike and also welcomes locals, with a restaurant and bar and a varied programme of cultural events, exhibitions and concerts.
Photo by Xu Moru & Noor Ahmed Gelal
The Exhibition – The Scent of Time
Curatorial Statement
There is totally no space for people to live. We live in constant lack of time, almost in apnea, we hasten to be able to experience all that our hyper-productive world puts in front of us. The acceleration of technology and social transformations has not only destroyed space and geography itself, but has atomised time, fragmented it into many ‘present moments’ that replace one another, that no longer know pauses and intervals, thresholds and passages, and above all they no longer build a single story: Our Own. Because this disintegration also affects our identity, which is impoverished and reduced, stifled by its activities without duration. The age of breathlessness kills all contemplation. The art restores its fragrance at the time, causing disinterested pleasure. The Artist plays the role of a modern pilgrim who wanders through the world as in a desert, giving shape to the shapeless, continuity of the episode and transforming the fragmentary into a whole. Art feeds on slowness, permanence and memory. Art is actus purus. Art as the alchemy of time, creator of a new world within a temporal crystal exempted both from the present and from the past.
– Caterina Corni.
1.
Ten days with dead tree branch in Venice!
Tree branch, Cotton bandage,surgical tap,artificial foliage;
drawings with iodine on Pape,Photo & moving images, 2019
Dhali Al Mamoon , Bangladesh, 1958
I arrived in Venice without any pre-conceived ideas. The next day I came across a tree branch abandoned by the wall of a house. Upon my return to the hotel, with the branch in hand, I began to ponder upon the relationship between life, death, trees, people, earth and the environment. My series of drawings with iodine and a set of moving images reflect the waters surface in Venice. These works are a multi-disciplinary approach to my reflections upon and my experience of Venice and the environment as a whole.
2.
Scent of Time
Oil on canvas 40x30cm, 2019
David Dalla Venezia , France, 1965
My purpose in these two weeks has been to put my experience as a painter at the disposal of my fellow participants, in an attempt to emancipate myself from my subjectivity as a mean of representation. Each one of the paintings I created is thus the result of an interaction with every single participant with whom I shared ideas, space and time during these past days.
3.
Portraits but not Portrait….!
Photograph,mixed media, 2019
Dilara Begum Jolly, Bangladesh, 1960
Women had their voices muzzled since the dawn of history that was written to serve the dominant culture of power throughout ages. They have been subjected to inhuman tortures in the form of physical mutilation to intellectual suppression. I want to bring to life the stories of eight characters who represent the victims as well as the victors who clinched their emancipation through their various struggles against the monstrosity of patriarchy.
4.
Lost Civilization; Revival Song
100x70cm wood; 100x70cm wood, 2019
Rajaul Islam Lovelu, Bangladesh, 1971
It is very important for me to use wood even if I think that wood itself has individual expression without any application on it. I would like to experiment wood in different ways: high relief, low relief carving, chiseling, burning, pasting other materials and sometimes I also add colour for additional extraordinary feelings. There is a connection between the rings of tree trunk and the subjects of my work which is focused both on human violence and lost civilisations from different periods.
5.
Life – Majhi
Acrylic on canvas, charcoal drawings, 2019
Uttam Kumar Karmaker, Bangladesh, 1962
“Majhi“ means sailor or boatman. In our daily life we all are “majhis” navigating through our lives. My country is Bagladesh, a place full of rivers, so boats are a part of daily life, just like in Venice. As an artist, I want to spread a messages of love through my work to create a positive world without hatred and jealousy. Sometimes we need a Majhi taking us on the same boat from all over the world to spread the message: we all are one.
6.
Maze
Installation, old clothes, 2019
Kamruzzaman Shadhin, Bangladesh, 1974
Where do you run to find me…You will not find me by running like this…I am within you. Every minute, thousands of people are being displaced. Some are running towards a dream leaving everything behind, some are forced to leave their dreams behind. It is a maze created by the exploitative system that we have collectively created in this world. But let’s not talk about it. Let’s focus on something pleasant.
7.
My Place Is Placeless My Trace Is Traceless
Multimedia installation, variable dimensions; 3 audio tracks:
60′ each looped; 3 horn loudspeakers; video performance
audio/video monitors; 52 strips of paper, 2019
Chiara Tubia, Italy, 1982
The installation is composed of three parts: auditory, visual and experiential. For the sound part three audio sources simultaneously reproduce the sounds of the three most widespread religious traditions: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, brought together as a metaphor of contemporary multiculturalism. The same sounds were diffused during a boat performance around the Venetian canals and streets, here on display through a video installation along with various phrases from religious texts installed into bookshelves.
8.
Engagement Acts
Video, 2019
Andrea Morucchio, Italy, 1967
“Engagement Acts” consists of a series of videos documenting the artist’s actions created in a desolate, barren seascape; a specific alienating atmosphere from control shots, to significant contrasts and to a limited colour spectrum. These are actions in which Morucchio interacts with the elements of this environment: tree trunks, rocks and sand; cathartic actions, liberating vent but also manifestations of an instinctual and primitive expression of creativity/rituality that over the years has characterised some of his installation projects.
9.
Achrome/Art Waste
Single-use plastic products, resin, plaster, acrylic, 2019
Cosima Montavoci, Italy, 1988
Trash Project began with the necessity of creating a honest fossil that represents our times, the trash tells an authentic story, no-frills or facades. These single-use products, often white or clear and that are slowly being replaced by biodegradable alternatives, are something that will sadly represent our time, but with candor, innocence and an almost poetic aesthetic.
10.
Der Stapel 37
175x70x80cm steel, plastic, cotton, leather, glass,
aluminum, ink, paper, cardboard, stainless steel,
copper, felt-tip pen, pencil, glue, sand, air, 2019
Umut Yasat, Turkey, 1988
I started to work on “Der Stapel” in 2014. At first this process encompassed tiding all of my previous works together and then it evolved into the agglomeration of not only works of art but also several everyday objects, both meaningful and trivial. I work on these sculptures until they reach my own height and for me they present a way to visualise time.
11.
Merchant of Venice
Photos, 2019
Noor Ahmed Gelal, Bangladesh, 1977
“All that glitters is not gold” – W. Shakespeare. Bangladeshi people came with dreams, many sailed the Mediterranean Sea, entered to catch the rose from heaven and they became the merchants of Venice. Life is a journey, everyone makes a purpose to live, people are trying to make their life worthy as they have chased to find a land of opportunity, many died in the sea trying to reach the shore of Italy.
Italian Contemporary Art Days in Dhaka
Within the 15th Italian Contemporary Art Day
10th – 12th October, 2019
The Embassy of Italy in Dhaka, supported by the Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation and Edge, The Foundation, in collaboration with Lightbox Venice, organised the first Italian Contemporary Art Days in Dhaka, from 10th till 12th of October, 2019.
As part of the programme of the 15th Italian Contemporary Art Day, this is the very first time in which this prominent celebration involved also Bangladesh, bringing together Italian and Bangladeshi artists, who participated in art workshops and a final group exhibition to reflect upon the current situation of Italian Contemporary Art.
Titled “The Scent of Time” and hosted at Edge, The Foundation from 10th to 12th of October, the exhibition featured for the first time in Dhaka four Italian artists, David Dalla Venezia, Cosima Montavoci, Andrea Morucchio, Chiara Tubia, and the curator Caterina Corni, with the Bangladeshi artists, Dilara Begum Jolly, Dhali Al Mamoon, Kamruzzaman Shadhin, Noor Ahmed Gelal.
Coordinated by Caterina Corni, the selected artists already met and worked together in Venice on the occasion of the first Majhi International Art Residence, promoted by Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation, in collaboration with Lightbox.
The 15th Italian Contemporary Art Day is organised yearly by the Association of the Italian Museums of Contemporary Art-AMACI, in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism to introduce the general public to contemporary art.
This is a various programme which, year after year, has allowed wider audiences to experience from up-close the complex and lively world of contemporary art. For further information, please visit the website of AMACI: https://www.amaci.org.
Photo by Xu Moru & Noor Ahmed Gelal
Photo by Xu Moru & Noor Ahmed Gelal
The Artists
The selected artists come from different regions of the world: six of them are born in Bangladesh, another one’s cultural roots divide between Turkey and Germany while four are Venetians. They are: Dilara Begum Jolly, Dhali Al-Mamoon, Rajaul Islam (Lovelu), Noor Ahmed Gelal, Uttam Kumar Karmaker and Kamruzzaman Shadhin from Bangladesh; the Turkish/German Umut Yasat and Chiara Tubia, Cosima Montavoci, Andrea Morucchio and David Dalla Venezia from Venice.
The Curators
The participating artists will be supported over their stay by a small selection of art professionals, who will advise them and will document the evolution of their work. The 2019 edition will feature the guest curator Caterina Corni, from Italy, and the cataloguer and recorder Laura Ammann, from Brazil.
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