Dhaka Art Summit Joins The Dots

WITHIN JUST A few years, the Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) has established itself as one of the world's most influential art platforms, championing in particular South Asian artists under-represented by principal art institutions. Now in its fifth edition, the biennial event has managed to propel several artists such as Ayesha Sultana, Rashid Choudhury and Reetu Sattar into the hallowed halls of Tate Museum, Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. Curator, critics and collectors who fly to Dhaka to explore South Asia's diverse art scene through DAS come away impressed by the diverse and authentic perspectives offered up by the region.

The current edition, which runs till February 15, is once again chief-curated by Diana Campbell Betancourt. She recalls: "In 2012, the year when DAS was launched, Bangladesh was pretty invisible from the international art map. It always had good art, but people didn't know how to access it. By now, though, most major art institutions who claim to be interested in international art have been to or have been in touch with the Dhaka Art Summit as part of their research."

This year's edition features a new immersive installation by Argentinian superstar sculptor Adrián Villar Rojas titled New Mutants, which has visitors entering the show by walking over a marble floor encrusted with 400-million-year-old ammonite and orthoceras fossils. "This work serves as a metaphor to think outside of human-bound time, and to consider common ground on which to come together," explains Campbell Betancourt.