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https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebecc...rve-as-an-antidote-to-extremism/#57e269ff782b
#ChangeTheWorld Feb 2, 2018 @ 08:52 AM 824 2 Free Issues of Forbes
Bangladesh: Where Art, Fashion and Literature Serve As An Antidote To Extremism
Rebecca Suhrawardi , Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Tilda Swinton on stage at the 2017 Dhaka Literary Festival.
A fresh, savvy cultural scene is emerging unto the world from the unlikeliest of places: Bangladesh.
Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton visited Bangladesh a few months back to participate in the Dhaka Literary Festival. In about a month's time, the Bangladesh-based fashion line Zurhem will present another collection of its boundary-pushing men's and womenswear. While today, The Dhaka Art Summit opened free of charge to the public, hosted by one of the top 100 art collectors in the world (who happen to be Bangladeshi), Rajeeb and Nadia Samdani and their Samdani Art Foundation. The summit will host guest curators from esteemed institutions such as the Guggenheim, the Swiss Institute and the British Museum.
The impact of these artistic endeavors is two-fold in a country like Bangladesh. The obvious outcome is the emergence of talent from a developing part of the world on the global stage while reciprocally bringing global talent to the country. The second reason—and possibly the more impactful of the two—is that promoting and growing free and open culture there holds the potential to be a catalyst against the rising tide of religious extremism in the South Asian nation.
“We bring leaders, thinkers and writers together and we encourage interactive sessions where members of the audience can ask questions,” says Ahsan Akbar, co-founder of the Dhaka Literary Festival, a yearly event which like the Dhaka Art Summit is free and open to the public. “We encourage this because it’s the ones who are left out or those who feel marginalized who are soft targets for radicalization, and there are agencies in place to recruit these impressionable, young minds.”
Like many countries in the world these days, Bangladesh is victim to the burgeoning threat of religious extremism, which for this historically secular—albeit Muslim—country, is mind-boggling for many of its citizens. The country was brought to its knees when 5 militants attacked an upscale coffee shop in the capital city of Dhaka, taking dozens of people hostage and killing 29 in June of 2016.
Which is why the emergence of a rich arts scene has never been more poignant. Culture has always given an intellectual prescription against extremist ideologies in the form of ideas, dialogue, conversation and inclusion.
A part of India before the British divided the subcontinent based on religion in 1947 as they exited from colonial rule, Bangladesh was, for millennia, a part of India’s Bengal state and shares its language (Bangla) and rich cultural identity steeped in arts, intellectualism and literature. It’s hardly a surprise to people from South Asia that the first Asian Nobel laureate, poet Rabindranath Tagore, was Bengali, and the most recent Nobel Laureate from South Asia, Mohammed Yunus, is also a Bengali from Bangladesh. And it's because of its love of the arts that the Bangladeshi government gave legendary architect Louis Kahn carte blanche to create their National Assembly building, which then became the architect's crowning achievement as well as a source of national pride for the country.
“Arts and culture have always been embedded in the roots of Bangladesh, and it is abundantly reflected in our rich history of literature, music, dance, drama and architecture,” says designer Mehruz Munir, Creative Director of Zurhem. “Large-scale cultural events such as the Dhaka Art Summit, Bengal Classical Music Festival and the Dhaka Lit Festival prove to extremists around the globe year after year, that we will continue to be a country that stands together against extremism and celebrate our heritage through arts and culture.”
So what is happening in Bangladesh that one should take note? Here’s what you need to know.
DHAKA ART SUMMIT
Students from Chittagong grammar school at the 2016 Dhaka Art Summit. (Photo by Turjoy Chowdhury/NurPhoto) (Photo by NurPhoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Now in its fourth incarnation, the Dhaka Art Summit (DAS), a biannual event, clocked 138,000 guests at its last summit in 2016. This year’s summit, which is taking place right now until February 10, will show works from over 300 artists of the South Asian diaspora and is expanding its reach from prior years to include works from artists in Thailand, Malaysia, Madagascar and the Philippines.
The founders, Rajeeb and Nadia Samdani, are international art-world luminaries both as collectors and influencers, who utilize their position to draw curators from institutions as esteemed as the Tate Modern, The Centre Pompidou, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Rubin Museum to the DAS. The result is an incredibly thoughtful, and thought-provoking, selection of art with global resonance. As such, DAS has become a pivotal platform for artists in the region as well as an opportunity for scholars, curators and researchers to educate themselves on what is happening in the arts scene in South Asia.
The Dhaka Art Summit is a completely non-for-profit venture—it's not an art fair in that sense as no transactions take place—and 90% of the costs are underwritten by the couple through their Samdani Arts Foundation.
DHAKA LITERARY FESTIVAL
Syed Zakir Hossain
Dhaka Literary Festival Co-Founder, Ahsan Akbar interviews Tilda Swinton on stage at the 2017 Dhaka Literary Festival.
You know what you are doing is impactful when Tilda Swinton decides to travel halfway around the globe to one of the tiniest countries in the world to be a headlining guest at your literary festival. That is exactly what happened at the 2017 Dhaka Literary Festival this past November, which celebrated its fifth anniversary with the Oscar-winning actress.
The festival hosted over 200 speakers from over 23 countries around the world over three days. It is attended by nearly 30,000 guests and its alumni, as they like to call their participants, have included literary greats such as Nobel prize winners VS Naipaul and Harold Varmus, as well as Booker Prize winner Ben Okri. The festival lineup includes everything from book releases, screenings and discussions and also is a platform to announce the winners for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and Gemcon Literary Awards—the highest monetary prize in Bangladesh.
"The festival has been defiant against all odds and remains as one of the few creative and intellectual spaces for literary expression in the country," says Akbar. "We believe it's crucial to encourage the younger generation to take interest in the arts. By attending our festival they get to be a part of the dialogues and panels that are programmed in both Bangla and English in subjects ranging from fiction, poetry, politics, contemporary issues, science, and philosophy."
Their mission is to create and exchange literature and conversation between Bangladesh and the world, but also to foster fresh creative expression and imbue the region with ideas and dialogue to help encourage curiosity while keeping people informed.
ZURHEM
With an undergraduate degree in business and a menswear degree from London College of Fashion, Mehruz Munir has always felt there was a large gap in the fashion scene in Bangladesh. “I wanted to prove to both myself and others around me that, we too, could have a homegrown fashion label in Bangladesh that can be on par with the international fashion scene and, we too, can have a fashion brand that is constantly taking risks,” says Munir. In his last fashion show, he achieved just that.
Zurhem
Menswear runway look by Zurhem.
In a dark, cavernous room with a runway that snaked through the setup of chairs while electronic music boomed in the background, the scene was one which could have easily been in London, New York, or Milan.
The collection was inspired by the underground and BDSM scenes of Berlin’s famous nightlife, which was seen through Munir’s use of leather harnesses layered over and under suits and dresses, looks constructed of head-to-toe sequins for both men and women and pieces that had an infusion of colorful fur and brightly-colored metallic fabrics.
While the show consisted of both mens and womenswear, it was the menswear that were the high notes of the collection. Tailored and clean but sometimes over-the-top, one could easily imagine some of it on the backs of male street style stars peacocking in the streets of Milan during Pitti Uomo. This knack for menswear crossed over into several womenswear pieces, which resulted in sharp, tailored suits for women varying from Armani-esque to something for a night out at the Berghain.
When asked whether he wanted to take his collection to the international markets, Munir said, “We are currently in the works to take Zurhem international but for now, I feel it is a little too early to discuss.”
Zurhem
Womenswear runway look by Zurhem.
Zurhem
Menswear look by Zurhem.
Zurhem
Menswear runway look by Zurhem.
Zurhem Menswear runway look by Zurhem.
Rebecca Suhrawardi is a Fashion and Features journalist residing in New York City. Her work appears in the international editions of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, where she is a Contributing Editor.
#ChangeTheWorld Feb 2, 2018 @ 08:52 AM 824 2 Free Issues of Forbes
Bangladesh: Where Art, Fashion and Literature Serve As An Antidote To Extremism
Rebecca Suhrawardi , Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Tilda Swinton on stage at the 2017 Dhaka Literary Festival.
A fresh, savvy cultural scene is emerging unto the world from the unlikeliest of places: Bangladesh.
Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton visited Bangladesh a few months back to participate in the Dhaka Literary Festival. In about a month's time, the Bangladesh-based fashion line Zurhem will present another collection of its boundary-pushing men's and womenswear. While today, The Dhaka Art Summit opened free of charge to the public, hosted by one of the top 100 art collectors in the world (who happen to be Bangladeshi), Rajeeb and Nadia Samdani and their Samdani Art Foundation. The summit will host guest curators from esteemed institutions such as the Guggenheim, the Swiss Institute and the British Museum.
The impact of these artistic endeavors is two-fold in a country like Bangladesh. The obvious outcome is the emergence of talent from a developing part of the world on the global stage while reciprocally bringing global talent to the country. The second reason—and possibly the more impactful of the two—is that promoting and growing free and open culture there holds the potential to be a catalyst against the rising tide of religious extremism in the South Asian nation.
“We bring leaders, thinkers and writers together and we encourage interactive sessions where members of the audience can ask questions,” says Ahsan Akbar, co-founder of the Dhaka Literary Festival, a yearly event which like the Dhaka Art Summit is free and open to the public. “We encourage this because it’s the ones who are left out or those who feel marginalized who are soft targets for radicalization, and there are agencies in place to recruit these impressionable, young minds.”
Like many countries in the world these days, Bangladesh is victim to the burgeoning threat of religious extremism, which for this historically secular—albeit Muslim—country, is mind-boggling for many of its citizens. The country was brought to its knees when 5 militants attacked an upscale coffee shop in the capital city of Dhaka, taking dozens of people hostage and killing 29 in June of 2016.
Which is why the emergence of a rich arts scene has never been more poignant. Culture has always given an intellectual prescription against extremist ideologies in the form of ideas, dialogue, conversation and inclusion.
A part of India before the British divided the subcontinent based on religion in 1947 as they exited from colonial rule, Bangladesh was, for millennia, a part of India’s Bengal state and shares its language (Bangla) and rich cultural identity steeped in arts, intellectualism and literature. It’s hardly a surprise to people from South Asia that the first Asian Nobel laureate, poet Rabindranath Tagore, was Bengali, and the most recent Nobel Laureate from South Asia, Mohammed Yunus, is also a Bengali from Bangladesh. And it's because of its love of the arts that the Bangladeshi government gave legendary architect Louis Kahn carte blanche to create their National Assembly building, which then became the architect's crowning achievement as well as a source of national pride for the country.
“Arts and culture have always been embedded in the roots of Bangladesh, and it is abundantly reflected in our rich history of literature, music, dance, drama and architecture,” says designer Mehruz Munir, Creative Director of Zurhem. “Large-scale cultural events such as the Dhaka Art Summit, Bengal Classical Music Festival and the Dhaka Lit Festival prove to extremists around the globe year after year, that we will continue to be a country that stands together against extremism and celebrate our heritage through arts and culture.”
So what is happening in Bangladesh that one should take note? Here’s what you need to know.
DHAKA ART SUMMIT
Students from Chittagong grammar school at the 2016 Dhaka Art Summit. (Photo by Turjoy Chowdhury/NurPhoto) (Photo by NurPhoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Now in its fourth incarnation, the Dhaka Art Summit (DAS), a biannual event, clocked 138,000 guests at its last summit in 2016. This year’s summit, which is taking place right now until February 10, will show works from over 300 artists of the South Asian diaspora and is expanding its reach from prior years to include works from artists in Thailand, Malaysia, Madagascar and the Philippines.
The founders, Rajeeb and Nadia Samdani, are international art-world luminaries both as collectors and influencers, who utilize their position to draw curators from institutions as esteemed as the Tate Modern, The Centre Pompidou, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Rubin Museum to the DAS. The result is an incredibly thoughtful, and thought-provoking, selection of art with global resonance. As such, DAS has become a pivotal platform for artists in the region as well as an opportunity for scholars, curators and researchers to educate themselves on what is happening in the arts scene in South Asia.
The Dhaka Art Summit is a completely non-for-profit venture—it's not an art fair in that sense as no transactions take place—and 90% of the costs are underwritten by the couple through their Samdani Arts Foundation.
DHAKA LITERARY FESTIVAL
Dhaka Literary Festival Co-Founder, Ahsan Akbar interviews Tilda Swinton on stage at the 2017 Dhaka Literary Festival.
You know what you are doing is impactful when Tilda Swinton decides to travel halfway around the globe to one of the tiniest countries in the world to be a headlining guest at your literary festival. That is exactly what happened at the 2017 Dhaka Literary Festival this past November, which celebrated its fifth anniversary with the Oscar-winning actress.
The festival hosted over 200 speakers from over 23 countries around the world over three days. It is attended by nearly 30,000 guests and its alumni, as they like to call their participants, have included literary greats such as Nobel prize winners VS Naipaul and Harold Varmus, as well as Booker Prize winner Ben Okri. The festival lineup includes everything from book releases, screenings and discussions and also is a platform to announce the winners for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and Gemcon Literary Awards—the highest monetary prize in Bangladesh.
"The festival has been defiant against all odds and remains as one of the few creative and intellectual spaces for literary expression in the country," says Akbar. "We believe it's crucial to encourage the younger generation to take interest in the arts. By attending our festival they get to be a part of the dialogues and panels that are programmed in both Bangla and English in subjects ranging from fiction, poetry, politics, contemporary issues, science, and philosophy."
Their mission is to create and exchange literature and conversation between Bangladesh and the world, but also to foster fresh creative expression and imbue the region with ideas and dialogue to help encourage curiosity while keeping people informed.
ZURHEM
With an undergraduate degree in business and a menswear degree from London College of Fashion, Mehruz Munir has always felt there was a large gap in the fashion scene in Bangladesh. “I wanted to prove to both myself and others around me that, we too, could have a homegrown fashion label in Bangladesh that can be on par with the international fashion scene and, we too, can have a fashion brand that is constantly taking risks,” says Munir. In his last fashion show, he achieved just that.
Menswear runway look by Zurhem.
In a dark, cavernous room with a runway that snaked through the setup of chairs while electronic music boomed in the background, the scene was one which could have easily been in London, New York, or Milan.
The collection was inspired by the underground and BDSM scenes of Berlin’s famous nightlife, which was seen through Munir’s use of leather harnesses layered over and under suits and dresses, looks constructed of head-to-toe sequins for both men and women and pieces that had an infusion of colorful fur and brightly-colored metallic fabrics.
While the show consisted of both mens and womenswear, it was the menswear that were the high notes of the collection. Tailored and clean but sometimes over-the-top, one could easily imagine some of it on the backs of male street style stars peacocking in the streets of Milan during Pitti Uomo. This knack for menswear crossed over into several womenswear pieces, which resulted in sharp, tailored suits for women varying from Armani-esque to something for a night out at the Berghain.
When asked whether he wanted to take his collection to the international markets, Munir said, “We are currently in the works to take Zurhem international but for now, I feel it is a little too early to discuss.”
Womenswear runway look by Zurhem.
Menswear look by Zurhem.
Menswear runway look by Zurhem.
Zurhem Menswear runway look by Zurhem.
Rebecca Suhrawardi is a Fashion and Features journalist residing in New York City. Her work appears in the international editions of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, where she is a Contributing Editor.
