EVENTS
Online Symposium
Decolonizing Heritage Exhibition
Architectural Heritage, Craft and the Cultural Landscape of South Asia
symposium highlights
Exhibition of cultural heritage has a deep-rooted history in the colonial period that goes back to the
Great Exhibition in London in 1851, which was followed by several other world exhibitions in other parts of Europe as well as in the distant colonies. In thinking about heritage exhibition in the postcolonial contexts, these colonial exhibitions are invisible yet inevitable references that influence/shape our current day exhibition thinking. Museum is one such architectural product that facilitates exhibition in a particular manner. In the colonial context it stored and exhibited heritage items in the name of conservation and cosmopolitanism, whereas in the postcolonial context, museum and heritage work hand in hand in establishing the root of national identity. The continuity of exoticization remains through its emphasis on the visual aspects of the heritage object marginalizing crucial factors of its making process, its makers and associated politics. In discussing the topic of ‘decolonizing heritage exhibition’, these are some aspects that need to be critically questioned to initiate the process for alternative ways of heritage exhibition.
Date and Time:
August 29, 6PM BD (GMT +6), 8AM US Eastern (GMT -5)
Schedule:
Introduction and Opening Remark on Jamdani Heritage: 6:00 – 6:15 PM (BD time, GMT +6)
Niharika Momtaz, Founder of Heritage Bangladesh
Panel 1: Decolonize Exhibiting Art and Craft/Textile: 6:15 – 7:45 PM (BD time, GMT +6)
• The Status of Tradition in Ananda Coomaraswamy’s writings on Ceylonese Crafts
Iftikhar Dadi, Associate Professor and Director of South Asia Program, Cornell University
• Decolonizing the Exhibitionary Complex
Farhan Karim, Associate Professor, University of Kansas and President of SAUH Asia
• Symbiosis of Creative Economy and Habitat: Traditional Textile of Salkuchi, Assam
Mainak Ghosh, Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, Jadavpur University, India
• In Search of Authenticity: Cultural Heritage of Bangladesh
Huda Mohammed Faisal, Ph.D. Student, Kyushu University, Japan and Founder, REVIVAL
Moderator: Labib Hossain
Panel 2: Decolonize Exhibiting Architectural Heritage and Cultural Landscape:
7:45 - 9:15 PM (BD time, GMT +6)
• Decolonizing the Ground of Heritage
Dilip da Cunha, Adjunct Professor, Columbia University
• Looking Through and Looking At: Rethinking the Customary Display of Cultural Properties
Dr. Abu Sayeed M Ahmed, Dean, School of Environmental Sciences and Design
University of Asia Pacific
• Community Engagement for Cultural Preservation
Ishita Shah, Independent Practitioner (Designer, Historian, Curator)
• Colonial Representation of Muslin Weaving Practice and the Politics of its Marginalization
Labib Hossain, Ph.D. Candidate, Cornell University
Moderator: Farhan Karim
Organized by: Heritage Bangladesh Foundation (HBF) and in association with The Society of Architectural and Urban Historians of Asia (SAUHA)
Sponsored by: Niharika Momtaz
Zoom Link QR Code:
Password: 264204
DILIP DA CUNHA
Dilip da Cunha is an architect and planner based in Philadelphia and Bangalore.He is an Adjunct Professor at the GSAPP, Columbia University and was co-director of the Risk and Resilience program at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University. He is author with Anuradha Mathur of Mississippi Floods: Designing a Shifting Landscape (2001); Deccan Traverses: The Making of Bangalore’s Terrain (2006); Soak: Mumbai in an Estuary (2009); and co-editor of Design in the Terrain of Water (2014). "His recent book, The Invention of Rivers: Alexander' Eye and Ganga' Descent, was published by University of Pennsylvania Press in 2019. It makes the case that the river, far from being natural, is a product of design made possible by the drawn line separating land from water and a choice of a fairweather moment in the hydrologic cycle." Watch out this presentation on his recent book:
Iftikhar Dadi will present his work in the upcoming symposium.
Dilip da Cunha is one of the speakers in our upcoming symposium.
IFTIKHAR DADI
Iftikhar Dadi is an associate professor in Cornell's Department of History of Art. Dadi is an artist and art historian broadly interested in the relation between art practice in the contexts of modernity, globalization, urbanization, mediatization, and post-colonialism. He has authored numerous scholarly works, including Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia. As an artist, Dadi works collaboratively with Elizabeth Dadi. Their practice investigates popular media's construction of memory, borders, and identity in contemporary globalization and creative resilience in urban informalities. Here is a link of his presentation on 'Calligraphic Abstraction.'
Iftikhar Dadi will present his work in the upcoming symposium.
Selected published works:
A Critical Reading of Dry and Permanent Grounds Through the Practice of Muslin Weaving in Lindsay Bremner, ed., Monsoon Assemblages: Monsoon [+ Other] Grounds, (London: University of Westminster, 2020): 113-120.
Symbiosis Between Water and Architecture; Towards Hydro Based Urbanism in Keraniganj, Dhaka in Nancy Clark, ed., Urban Waterways: Evolving Paradigms for Hydro-based Urbanisms, UNESCO Chair Publication Series n.3: L'architettura delle città; The Journal of the Scientific Society Ludovico Quaroni (Rome, Italy: Edizioni Nuova Cultura, 2016), 143-154.
Prospect of an Ecosophic Project for Gram-Bangla’s Transformation in an Emerging Urban: Reflections on Compact Townships (co-written with S. Ghafur, F. Sharmin, N. Jahan) in BDI 2015 Conference (California: University of California Berkeley, October 2015)
LABIB HOSSAIN
Labib Hossain's research focuses on the traditional practices (muslin weaving) in the monsoon landscape that can offer an alternative reading of human habitation, one that challenges the dry/permanent ground and serves to open a new imagination that shifts us from a divided landscape of contained waters to a ground of wetness. The idea of dwelling derived from weaving questions the dichotomy of land and water and the way they are conventionally categorized as separate entities. His other research interests include land-water separation in colonial Bengal, wetness and the city, and representation of water in south Asia. Prior to Cornell, Hossain graduated from the University of Pennsylvania under the supervision of Dilip da Cunha and Anuradha Mathur. He received his B.Arch. and M.Arch. from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology and worked there as a lecturer for three years. At Cornell, he is working with Jeremy Foster (architecture), Robert Travers (history), and Iftikhar Dadi (history of art).
Email: lh636@cornell.edu