11 Apr URONTO Artist Community Exhibition at the Dhaka Art Summit 2018.

Uronto Artist community had their first ever Exhibition in Dhaka at the Dhaka Art Summit 2018 under the Artist Led Initiative Forum.

The exhibition was the first-hand experience for Dhaka based audiences who could not attend the open studio day exhibitions on the out of city locations that URONTO activates. The show was design in the most-possible interactive and informative way. The exhibition was a combination of selected art works from previous seven episodes of URONTO Residential Art exchange program, Archive materials from different working sites, Architectural model of one of the site, preview of community engagement through the intervention.

The Exhibition was executed successfully by the team effort of members, including Mehedi Hasan Rupok, Nazim Uddin Khan, Shams Xaman, Shahariare Shihab, Tasmin Chowdhury.

The selected artworks were very thoughtfully displayed through interactive installations. A wall with images of previous artworks done by the different participants in different episodes were displayed. But the displayed works were framed with paper boxes to express how Uronto encourage working with found materials. So, all kind of framing at the show were done with low-cost brown paper boxes and recycle boxes. The display wall had variation of disciplines arranged to showcase the multidisciplinary participation.

The major interactive section in the show were an old window with an invisible monitor in the center, a door with old calling bells connected to a small monitor and a Flip book archive. The invisible monitor was displaying one of the Documentary work from the seventh episode and that can be only seen through a special eye-glasses provided by Uronto. The experience of exploring the invisible monitor was mysterious and fun to all and so a lot of people ended up watching an entire 15-minute documentary at the show. Then the door with the old bells allowed people to touch works expressing the message that art is not always untouchable. So, the audience could press the bell and enjoy the works displayed in the small monitor there. The show stopper was the Flipbook, which was a simple flipbook structure made with images of family members from all the palaces that Uronto located their projects.  Again, that was something everybody could touch and scroll, so it interacted with a large audience. It was simple but interesting to make everybody think how to make one.

Other than these there was a beautiful Model of P K Sen Building in Chottogram which was the fifth Episode venue of UORNTO, the model was a collaborative project with a group of Architects from Premier University in Chottogram and Studio 25 in Dhaka.

The archive was displaying antique things from the Kalikananda Chattyapadhhayas house which was the venue of the Third Episode of URONTO’s project. The collection contained a Leg bone of an elephant, a skull of crocodile, old books, reading-glasses, bricks, coins and broken pottery pieces. The Elephant leg bone was clearly a mysterious appearance at the show. The show had many other interesting small pieces of work which added great value to the entire booth. Total 110 artists were presented through the booth at DAS 2018.

Above all, there was sky created by Tasmin Chowdhury on the roof area of the booth to give the is a outdoor appearance. As a whole, the exhibition was design to have the maximum communication with the audience and take them through an aesthetical-nostalgic journey.

A massive amount of audience visited the show. A lot of them got very nostalgic and shared their experience. Audiences shared their feelings gracefully and agreed that such initiatives should be done more in large scale to save such cultural memories. Art enthusiasts from all over the world was visiting Dhaka Art Summit, which gave us a prime opportunity to show our work and get connected to the global audiences.

The show continued from 02-10 February 2019.

Detail of all the works done in the exhibition will be soon uploaded in the archive section.