Find out about the artists who feature in the Transforming Narratives Mela & Symposium:
Conceptual photography
The Fabric Under My Skin
Shaheen K. Ahmed (UK), Tahia Farhin Haque (BD) & Saba Khan (PK)
Interwoven both materially and historically, Birmingham, Dhaka and Lahore share a history of textiles. Cotton, fabric, dyes - water, canals, agriculture, factories - the chain of processes to make textiles has long been heavy with colonial politics and has been part of colonial littoral trade that fuses together histories of the Sub-continent with the UK. The Fabric Under My Skin, by Shaheen K. Ahmed (Birmingham), Tahia Farhin Haque (Dhaka) and Saba Khan (Lahore), investigates this complex history.
Saba Khan, along with collaborators Shaheen K. Ahmed and Jafrin Gulshan, was awarded a Digital Collaborative Grant in 2020 for the international art-historical project Mapping Memory.
Short film
Idrish
Adam Lewis Jacob (UK)
Idrish (ইদ্রিস) (2021, UK, 30 mins), a new film by artist Adam Lewis Jacob. Filmed in Bangladesh and Birmingham during 2020, the film is simultaneously a portrait of veteran anti-deportation campaigner Muhammad Idrish and a celebration of anti-racist community action. The film is a call to action, its tone established with a reading of Bidrohi (The Rebel / “বিদ্রোহী”) a revolutionary Bengali poem written by Kazi Nazrul Islam in 1921. Muhammad Idrish’s fight to remain in the UK in the 1980s and the trade union campaign that supported him underpins the narrative.
Short film
Double Discrimination
Rinkoo Barpaga (UK)
Rinkoo Barpaga's thought-provoking documentary about racism in the Deaf community, made as part of the British Sign Language Broadcasting Trust (BSLBT) Zoom 2014 scheme and produced by Neath Films. Double Discimination (2014, UK) is a hard-hitting first documentary by Rinkoo Barpaga, who asks Deaf people, including leading figures in the Deaf community, about their experiences of racism. Winner of the Disability Justice Award at Superfest International Film Festival (2016)
Sonic archive
Baba Betar: Bhati-Scape 2
Arfun Ahmed (BD)
Bhati-Scape is a series of audio works by artist Arfun Ahmed focused on the Bhati region in Bangladesh, where there is water for six months and dry season for the remaining six months. The lower reaches of Sunamganj, Sylhet, Moulvibazar, Habiganj, Kishoreganj, Netrokona and Brahmanbaria of Bangladesh are spread over 40 upazilas of these seven districts. The northern part of the Bhati belonged to the ancient kingdom of Kamata (now, south of the Brahmaputra basin, which flows through the Indian state of Assam). Baba Betar is an art radio and contemporary sound archive that began its journey in March 2020, in the height of a countrywide lockdown in Bangladesh due to the spread of COVID-19. Baba Betar traces history and retrieves critical content with varied forms of literature and resumes conversation on divisive geo-political spaces.
Digital exhibition
Emergency Jaruri জরুরী
Curated by Sara Mia (UK)
Emergency Jaruri জরুরী is a digital presentation of artists work from Bangladesh focusing on the complexities of the environmental crisis. Themes include the climate emergency, pollution, habitat destruction, loss of land, species and ways of life for entire communities including tribal people. Emergency Jaruri জরুরী will present artists who are looking to the future and trying to find solutions. This multi-artform presentation includes performance, site specific installation, film, and architecture.
Emergency Jaruri জরুরী creates an inclusive space which is global and accessible by embracing the capabilities of digital platforms instead of trying to recreate a traditional gallery visit experience online. Twitter updates will reach a wide audience with focused tweets about artists projects, newspaper headlines from Bangladeshi newspapers, links to content by Bangladeshi environmental academics and maps of environmental factors in Bangladesh to add context.
Curator Sara Mia comments, "For British Bengalis such as myself, news, media and frames of reference are dominated by makers from the global north. By curating this project of authentic voices I want to challenge preconceived ideas held outside of Bangladesh about how its people view themselves."
Short film
এ্যালহাকার কাথা - Elhakar Katha (A Story of Now)
Kamruzzman Shadhin, Salma Jamal Moushum and Gidree Bawlee Foundation of Arts (BD)
Experimental video and electronic sound
Tales of a Walk
Half Moon Collective
This virtual collaboration explores how artists can reach and connect with audiences from distant places without being physically present together. Exploring the notion that ‘we are all in the same sphere’, artists Dr. Shayekh Mohammad Arif (Dhaka), Makbul Chowdhury (Birmingham), Syed Waseem Haider (Lahore), Nuzhat Tabassum (Dhaka) and Ajibor Rahman (Gazipur) respond to each other’s cities through a combination of field recordings, sound effects and video.
Originally commissioned through the Transforming Narratives Digital Collaborative Grants programme.
Exhibition
Zaibunnisa
Maryam Wahid & Midlands Arts Centre (UK)
This is Maryam Wahid’s first major photographic exhibition in her home city of Birmingham. Zaibunnisa, meaning ‘the beauty of women’ refers to Wahid’s mother’s birth name prior to emigrating from Pakistan to the UK in 1982 for an arranged marriage. The photographs tell the story of Wahid and her mother’s journey to Lahore in 2019, Wahid’s first-ever trip to Pakistan and her mother’s first visit in twenty years.
The artist documented their time spent together during this journey of discovery as her mother reconnected with old friends and family. They spent time exploring her family home, where Wahid reimagined what her life could have been, had she lived there. The artist felt a deep, spiritual connection to the house and particularly to her maternal family whom she never met. The work addresses themes of loss, memory, displacement, identity and migration whilst importantly counterbalancing a celebratory future and the positive married life that the artist’s parents made for themselves in Birmingham.
Film made by Ben Crawford
Photographs and footage from Maryam Wahid
Additional camerawork by Elijah Phillips
Produced by Midlands Arts Centre
2-channel video
Dear… Kindest...
Shehzad Chowdhury (BD) & Mahtab Hussain (UK)
Dear... Kindest... is the crystallisation of Mahtab Hussain's and Shehzad Chowdhury's collaborative research. A two channel HD Video Installation marking a turning point for both artists, no longer behind the lens but in front. Performing powerful monologues and working processes to cultural and colonial questions relating to their personal experience of home, belonging, identity, opening up to wider questions around human relationships and collective trauma.
Short film, Music
Dhaka Say Karachi, Chapter 2
Ahsan Bari (PK) & Sheikh Dina (BD)
A collaborative journey where a group of multidisciplinary artists come together to tell a story across borders, languages and different histories. Ahsan Bari, a multidisciplinary artist of Pakistan, spearheads this collaboration, which is co-produced by Bangladeshi singer and composer Sheikh Dina. The work builds on their Digital Collaborative project Dhaka Say Karachi, Chapter 1 originally commissioned by Transforming Narratives in 2020.
Tik-Talks / Kotha Kaw
Fateha Begum & Sudip Chakroborthy (UK)
Fateha Begum and Sudip Chakroborthy present Tik Talks – Kotha Kaw, a series of 10 two-minute Tik Toks spotlighting Bangladeshi creatives living in Birmingham and Bangladesh. The videos give insight into their field of work and life experiences. Through these works, the artists hope to inspire other young Bangladeshis to pursue a career in the arts.
Lecture performance
Omar A. Chowdhury
Janus Tussle
Janus Tussle is a lecture performance based on a moving image work which lyrically explores a post-colonial history of museological intrigue with stolen art objects, the death of an ambassador and a protest movement that shut down a proposed exhibition of antiquities exchanged between Bangladesh and the West. Through the issues of ambiguous sources, and interviews and imagery from neglected Bangladesh museums, the performance complicates the value of cultural exchange. The context of a similar exchange in the present day between the National Museum of Bangladesh and the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery of art frames the narrative.
Short film, Music
Songs of Solitude
Mukhtar Dar (UK) & Arieb Azhar (PK)
COVID-19 has had a catastrophic impact around the world, with a dramatic loss of human life and unprecedented challenges. Songs Of Solitude reflects on the lived experiences of some of those who have been affected. Amidst the human tragedy, two Pakistani families – a Christian minority family in Pakistan and a Muslim minority family in Birmingham, whilst grieving for their loved ones, share hope for a better tomorrow. The Emanuel family (Amir and Saba Emanuel) in Faisalabad, and the Awan family (Noori Awan) in Birmingham share heart-wrenching accounts of life and loss of loved ones under the pandemic lockdowns.
Interpreting and responding to the family interviews, Kalaboration Arts (Birmingham) and Art Langar (Pakistan) bring together a dynamic range of artists, to reflect on the isolation and loss during the lockdowns.
Originally commissioned through the Transforming Narratives Digital Collaborative Grants programme.
Musical short
Chal Diye
Shallum Xavier, Labik Kamal Gaurob, Armeen Musa, Alycia Dias, Jenaan Hussain, Abdul Rafay , Ghaffar Ghani, Shariyar Rahman Sakib and Lisa Kim Candara
Safar Suroon Ka is a distinct musical collaboration and artistic union between established and aspiring singers and musicians, including artists from the under-served communities of Pakistan and Bangladesh. This cross-cultural collaboration showcases the creative abilities of talented individuals and bring forward the exceptional musical heritage that is a common thread between both cultures.
The artists shared creative melodic ideas, poetry, digital dialogues, workshops, resulting in a brand-new song and music video - Chal Diye - which features an ensemble of musicians from Pakistan and Bangladesh including Shallum Xavier, Labik Kamal Gaurob, Armeen Musa, Alycia Dias, Jenaan Hussain, Abdul Rafay , Ghaffar Ghani, Shariyar Rahman Sakib and Lisa Kim Candara.
Originally commissioned through the Transforming Narratives Digital Collaborative Grants programme.
Experimental video
Dystopia and Property of the People of Birmingham
Nafis Ahmed (BK) and Yas Lime in collaboration with Birmingham Museums Trust (UK)
Dystopia is a digital abstract artwork that builds on the experiences of people and places of Dhaka during the Covid-19 lockdown. It explores whether the lockdown really created a challenge or brought to surface the problems that Bangladesh has had for the last five decades, masked under the global portrayal of economic progress.
A multitude of disciplines create this synergistic production that plunges the viewer into the artist's take on this dystopian world, sometimes through 3D features, and at times through interactive technologies. A mix of techniques audio-visual features are included but distorted towards a meaning-making process of dystopia. This narrative is created in real-time as a generative audio-reactive piece, and will render different renditions if reproduced even under the same circumstances.
Dystopia was produced by new media project BLKBX. A sister film, by Birmingham-based artist Yas Lime, also appears in the Mela & Symposium. Both works were originally commissioned for the Transforming Narratives Digital Collaborative Grants programme.
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Note: The views and opinions expressed in the Transforming Narratives Mela & Symposium are those of artists, practitioners and speakers and do not necessarily reflect the policies or position of Transforming Narratives, Culture Central, the British Council or Arts Council England.