Korean Cultural Centre presents the exhibition (Dis)Place which explores the place variously referred to as Bengal, East Pakistan or Bangladesh at different points in recent history. The exhibition presents the works of 10 artists and 1 research collective from Bangladesh and is co-curated by Tanzim Wahab and Hadrien Diez. Total 11 bodies of work are displayed in various forms such as drawings, video and video installations, photography, etc. The exhibition is open for all and is on view till 22^nd February 2019 at KCCI.

The exhibitions displays artworks and spatializes archives to inquire about the specifics of that place – the "local", while also attempting to bring perspective into the very notion of place. Sketching the contours of a place while also discussing what place as an idea might entail: here is the paradox of the project.

(Dis)Place is structured around various areas of contention, each framing questions connected to the general line of inquiry while they also open specific discussions. It touches upon topics as urgent to Bengal and Bangladesh as they are to the world: shifting environments, migration, marginalisation, economic and/or cultural appropriation. The exhibition further discusses related issues of borders and place(s) ownership, and of utopian sensibilities vis-à-vis forced displacements.

Polemics inherent to the notion of place are magnified when discussing Bengal/Bangladesh fractious histories and split geography. The inquiry held in (Dis)Place is intended as a symbolic point of discharge where this dense polemical weight can be off-loaded, dissected and debated. The Korean Cultural Centre is a particularly fitting locus to hold this inquiry: potent considerations of parallel histories and shared trauma bring added intensity to the conversation

Mr. Kim Kum-pyoung, Director of Korean Cultural Centre India, highlighted the topic of the exhibition that can be related to people not only from Bangladesh but also from India or Korea through various art forms. He mentioned that KCCI intends to bring various exhibition practices from SAARC countries to address the notion of the region.  

Talking on the exhibition Co-curators Hadrien Diez & Tanzim Wahab: Being awarded the first FICA South Asia grant for exhibition making presented us with a dilemma. We naturally felt that our project would have to touch upon Bangladesh, the place where we are active as curators and where our practice is rooted. At the same time, we were wary of the postcard effect under which we would present an exotic somewhere else to foreign audience while eschewing essential topics that would normally have found place in other of our projects. The solution came as an evidence: we would discuss a place, that of Bengal/Bangladesh, of which the many historical and geographical particulars would provide a fertile ground for polemics, while also discussing place as a general idea.

Our first source of inspiration was the work of a long list of artists, those we present in the exhibition and others whom we did not have enough space to include. We are grateful to all of them. Our research has also been spurred by the work of various writers and thinkers, and singularly that of Edouard Glissant whose postulate of a fertile relationship between the particular of place and the total of all places – the “Whole-world” – has had a profound impact on this exhibition.

Discourse as terrain

 Shahidul Alam – Further, the essentially local characteristic of violence comes as a stark realisation when looking at Shahidul Alam’s series of contact sheets. The photographs document various movements of protest in Dhaka in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a period during which activists were taking to the streets to ask for political reform. Shot over more than a decade, the series are not conceived as a single, unified narrative: they illustrate a multi-faceted struggle that carries on today, as recent events in Bangladesh remind. The unifying constant behind the chaos they depict are a handful of streets in Dhaka. Put together, the sheets show that violence is always anchored within a specific locus.

Affective Histories: Along with much of South Asia, Bangladesh is currently enthralled by “development”. While cities and villages – the traditional markers of locality – are being transformed round the clock, dwellers struggle to reconcile the cycle of perpetual change with the traces, souvenirs and memories anchoring their sense of belonging.

Najmun Nahar Keya comments on the shifting ecology of the Old Dhaka neighbourhood with The Vibe, a series of drawings on paper. The idiosyncratic area has always exerted a strong sense of locality on dwellers. It is now a place in flux where colonial mansions and warehouses are rapidly replaced with concrete towers. Adorning with golden leaf the fading traces of the old neighbourhood, some in the form of photographs and others as recollections she draws, Keya gives a dream-like quality to these vanishing memories.

Tayeba Begum Lipi  - Rituals, sacred or profane, form a universal way to acknowledge the past and link it to the present. Rituals are performed in specific places which are chosen for their symbolic value. In here two channel video “No One Home” Tayeba Begum Lipi is seen cleaning up her ancestors' graveyard on the family property. Through the painstaking process of removing moss and dusting off walls, the artist lays bare the complex, multi-layered status of the place within her and her family’s history, and charts her affective history with the place.

Emotional landscapes: What factors trigger the complex sentiment of belonging to a place? At the meeting point of three of the most powerful rivers on earth, Bengal’s deltaic plain imposes itself on those who inhabit it. Neighbourhoods in this specific environment are ephemeral, transient: they are constantly subjected to various wills and designs – that of flows and seasons, of tides and typhoons.

Afsana Sharmin Zhumpa celebrates primal deltaic elements – the water, the sand, the mud… – in her performances and installations while suggesting other means of relationship to nature. Submitting her body to nature, she re-enacts the lost bond between primal and human forces. The lines she builds across space during her performances, the threads she leaves behind an ephemeral installation, lay the boundaries of complex emotional landscapes.

Utopia: Ronni Ahmmed's "Seventh Mukkam" carries the paradox of a utopia: it is both a yearning and an imaginary point in space. Mukkam refers to the tomb of a saint in Arabic, a shrine acting as a getaway to the divine. Yet the religious paradigm does not account for the entirety of Ronni’s utopia. The latest iteration in a series exploring death and its aftermath, the artwork points at other possibilities of place.