10 Nov URONTO Residential Art Exchange Program- 6th Episode

URONTO stood up to its Sixth Episode the residential art exchange program successfully completed in Sept-Oct 2017. The sixth Episode Located at the Gourarang Palace in Sunamganj District in Sylhet Division, Bangladesh.

Sylhet Division also known as Greater Sylhet or Sylhet region is the northeastern division of Bangladesh, named after its main city, Sylhet. Sunamganj is one of the four districts in Sylhet. The name Sunamganj is derived from its founder, Sipahi Sunamuddin.

Gourarang is an old palace near the Sunamganj city area. Nidhiram was the primogenitor of the Gourarang Jaminder(landlord) family.  He was the son from a Kayasth Family (Kayasth are considered to be members of the scribe caste in Hindu Religion). He was sent to Sylhet (previously known as Srihatya) for most probably treasury work with a promotion too. There he married a beautiful daughter of a landlord and ended up living there in a high forest land on the east side of Surma River which he got as a gift from a prince. Since then his generations expanded in this country.

The Gourarang Palace is standing on the last bricks, also the stories of this family and the palace are almost lost now-a-days but luckily one priest named Nirad Chandra Chakrabarti, who use to be one of the record keeper once in the family court room, wrote a small piece about the family where he tried his best to give detail about the family generations and the histories behind the palace of Gourarang. According to Nirad Chandra’s finding and Bichitra Kumars words, In the beginning of the palace design, A Kali temple with a Kali and Shiva incarnation of black stone was placed on the east of the palace entrance and on left which is the west, a great Gourango temple with a brass incarnation of great Gourango and Nityananda was placed.

The palace had more than 80 rooms including family residence, office area, farms area, maids and other employee’s residence area etc. Maybe before 1904 the entire palace was done with its constructions and decoration. The entire palace was a very worthy and attractive one. The palace had elephants, horses, big and small boats, very decorative palanquin, maid servants, passenger, workers, personal servants, postman, cook, headmaster, Scholar, guard, treasurer and many more. There was a court room where records were kept in a very systematic and work friendly way. Nirad chandra the writer of all these history, worked in that court room as a record keeper for certain period.  Many important documents from there was stolen, burnt and destroyed while the 1971 liberation war. Presently the lands are mostly sold to the local village people who have kept the palace abandoned and farming in the lands around.

The present Generation of the original owners of the palace still lives in the city of Sunamganj. Anjan Chowdhury and his family(the present generation of the owners) are very much respective to contemporary art practice and are members of local cultural club Udichi with regular participation. Their cultural understanding and interest was a big motivation for the participating artists and Uronto team.

Like all the other Episodes in the Sixth also participants were invited to explore the history, glory, memories of the house and the community cultures around. During the stay at the exchange program, artists became a major part of the community.

The projects are mostly curated by Sadya Mizan but other visiting curators were assigned for the selection process.

Choosing spaces for such program has been a combination of research and fate. One of the most problematic aspects of using non-art spaces to create art is that the spaces themselves are difficult to get and often lack even a the basic infrastructure. Sometimes spaces become unavailable at the last moment too– forcing a rethink of the entire project

– Sadya Mizan

This time the largest number of artists were selected but for unfortunate reasons some of them could not make it to the project. The selected artists (form the open call) were: Anjali Goel (India), Ananda Ahsan (BD), Anupam Saikia (India), Ashraf Abbas (Egypt), Asif Kader Siddique (BD), Bhanu Pratap (India), Fernando Hermógenes (Brazil), Habiba Nowrose (BD), Jinson Joseph (India), Katarina Rasic (Serbia), Lalit Patil (India), Manjot Kaur (India), Monon Muntaka (BD), Md. Shafayet Hossain (BD), Nazim Uddinh Khan (BD), Ritwik Kar (India), Santua Tripura (BD), Shahriare khan shihab (BD), Shams Zaman (BD), Shamsul Kabir Sinin (BD), Tareque Hasan (BD).

The project took place between 29 September – 06 October 2017 with the Open Studio Day on the 6^th October.

At the open studio day the entire area was full with nearby village people and visitors from city. Though some of the new land owners had different reaction as the Government people took interest in restoring the space after visiting UORNTO’s activities. But a hug crowd gathered and was enjoying experiencing the artworks and performances. There were nature art, Painting, poetry, performance art, installation, photography work, sound work and an interactive sound session with local cultural club and village kids. Also, there were participatory workshops arranged with local kids.

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

URONTO is hosting site responsive residential art exchange programmes since 2012, within disused or abandoned spaces and heritage buildings to document cultural memories and brand Bangladesh globally through multidisciplinary artists’ collaborations. URONTO’s activities not only provide much-needed opportunities for emerging artists to expand their working practice and collaborate with international artists, but through each residency, they create an alternative documentation about the history of the selected site before it’s demolished and forgotten.
The Project invite artists and practitioners through open call and selects then through a curatorial board created newly for every Episode. It is an international program open for all kind of discipline.