Commissioned installations
More than an art fair, Asia NOW is an edited platform with international galleries presenting artists from across Asia and its diaspora.
Each year, Asia NOW presents an ambitious public program featuring commissioned site-specific installations, performances, conversations, and artist workshops. Its program is redefined to feature highly anticipated artistic proposals to continuously address and contribute to global issues.
Britto Arts Trust, a Dhaka-based artist-run non-profit, presents for Asia NOW 2024 Palan & Pakghor (The Kitchen Garden and The Social Kitchen), an outdoor kitchen and garden where people gather to cook, tell stories, and serve food, snacks, and drinks prepared from recipes representing a variety of communities residing in Riyadh.
Presented as part of After Rain, 2024 Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, where the artists welcomed visitors into an ecological, social, and diasporic space defined by the structures of the Bengali palan and pakghor.
© Nils Klinger
documenta fifteen: PAKGHOR – the social kitchen, Britto Arts Trust, 2022, documenta Halle, Kassel, 18 juin 2022
Britto Arts Trust
Water in One Hand and Fire in the Other by Sumayya Vally – artist and architect, founder of Counterspace (Johannesburg/London), who in 2021 became the youngest architect to design a Serpentine Pavilion in London, and served as artistic director of the first Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah in 2023, will be presented for the first time in the Cour d’Honneur of the Monnaie de Paris. This performative installation, draws its energy from its organic and natural material, which combines earth, air, fire and water.
The vessels comes to life through the breath and movement of performers, accompanied by a musical program that activates, transforms, and regenerates the work until it finally dissolves, celebrating the connection between matter and spirit, earth and cosmos.
Curated by Kathy Alliou, in partnership with the Musée d’Art et de Culture Soufis MTO.
Water in One Hand and Fire in the Other is part of a lineage of performative installations by Sumayya Vally, beginning with her first work They Who Brings Rain, Brings Life, presented at the Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh, in 2023, commissioned by the Samdani Art Foundation.
© Shadman Sakib
Image courtesy Dhaka Arts Summit, “They Who Brings Rain, Brings Life”
Contribution Sumayya Vally – Counterspace to the 2023 Dhaka Art Summit.
Curated and produced by the Samdani Art Foundation for Dhaka Art Summit 2023
Sumayya Vally
Special Project
The Mingei Spirit: Minimalist by Nature
The beauty of mingei (Japanese folk craft) is the beauty of austerity.
The exhibition reexamines the mingei spirit by exploring plant-fiber textiles worn by laborers between the Edo and Meiji period (1603-1912), reframing them as art for today. The clothing will be displayed under the concept of “austerity” as a vehicle for their reevaluation.
Financially supported by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the Government of Japan, Japan Arts Council, and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG).
© Image rights : Shintaro Shiratori
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