The 5th edition of Dhaka Art Summit (DAS), known as South Asia’s biggest art and painting biennale exhibition, was inaugurated at the National Art Gallery of Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy (BSA) on Friday.

State Minister for Cultural Affairs KM Khalid inaugurated the nine-day event. Dhaka Art Summit Organising Committee Chairman Farooq Sobhan and Co-Founder and Director of Samdani Art Foundation Nadia Samdani delivered welcome speeches at the ceremony, presided over by BSA Director General Liaquat Ali Lucky.

“The Dhaka Art Summit has provided an opportunity as a place of harmony by putting both international and Bangladeshi artists and their artworks on display under one roof, side by side. For building a global platform, I thank the organisers of this summit,” Khalid said.

Nadia Samdani said this year’s summit theme is ‘Seismic Movements’, where different artworks related to geological movements, colonial movements, independence movement, social movements are on display.

The opening day witnessed performance by Bangladeshi artist Ariful Kabir and live art by Otobong Enkangar apart from a panel discussion.

Performance action titled ‘Movimientos Emisores de Existencia’ under the direction of Hector Zamorah was displayed in the lobby of the first floor of the National Picture gallery. A puppet show for children titled ‘Golpo ta shobar’ by Gidori Bauli also took place on Friday.

The last performance of the opening day, ‘Together’, took place in the National Art Gallery performed by Arunaddhyachal and Alexix Vozia.

This edition of DAS is being billed as ‘plastic-free’ and no air-conditioning is being used.

A special exhibition titled ‘Lighting the Fire of Freedom Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’ is on display at the first floor of the Academy throughout the exhibition marking the birth centenary of Bangladesh’s founding father.

The exhibition is being held under the overall supervision of the Centre for Research and Information (CRI) with support from the Department of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy. A huge number of historical photographs of Bangabandhu are on display.

Along with 290 participating Bangladeshi artists, a total of 500 painters, sculptors, curators, art critics, art professionals, art collectors, architects and media personalities from 44 countries are scheduled to take part in the nine-day art extravaganza.

Biswajit Goswami is the curator of Bangladeshi artists at the summit. A special exhibition titled ‘Shekor’ will take place under the supervision of Goswami in this year’s summit. The life and works of Joynul Abedin, SM Sultan and Kamrun Hasan and other painters who contributed a lot to the development of painting education is being highlighted through different arrangements.

Samdani Art Foundation Director Nadia is serving as the Chief Coordinator of the summit while Diana Campbell Betancourt, Artistic Director of the Samdani Art Foundation, is serving as Chief Curator of the team consisting of 32 curators from home and abroad.

The summit is supported by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, in association with the Department of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Bangladesh Art Academy. Title sponsor of this year’s summit is Golden Harvest.

DAS-2020 is open for all till February 15, every day from 10am to 8pm.