“I am trying to bring together invisible borders”
Published in The Brussels Times Magazine (September 2019)
Diana Campbell Betancourt has chosen Brussels as her base for many reasons. “It is not really an art world center”, she highlights. But it is a meeting point in terms of flights, trains and at the same time an ideal calm place to retreat yourself from seasonally swarming places like Basel and Venice or constantly hectic Paris and London. Brussels is a place for thinking and processing.
She is convinced that art can make a difference in places beyond those familiar names, which had become the attractor points for the art world tourists. She is a chief curator and initiator of Dhaka Art Summit, “an international, non-commercial research and exhibition platform for art and architecture related to South Asia”. The Summit’s core focus is on Bangladesh. It was founded in 2012 by the Samdani Art Foundation—which continues to produce the festival—in collaboration with the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, People’s Republic of Bangladesh. The Summit also has the support from the Getty Foundation’s Connecting Art Histories initiative. DAS is hosted every two years at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy.
Denis (D): You work mostly with so-called MENASA (the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia) region - geopolitically defined area.
Diana (DI): Kind of, although the problem with ‘MENASA’ is that Islam will be the overarching header within which to frame Bangladesh. But we are much more interested in this kind of ‘global majority’ dialogue in this edition of the Summit. In the previous edition, we looked at Bangladesh as being the cross-section between South and Southeast Asia. India dominates South Asia discussion, while Singapore dominates the Southeast Asia discussion - so the two don’t meet yet. But if you look at indigenous cultures weaving South and Southeast Asia there are tonnes of connections - so it is absolutely essential that these two meet. These are the stories that are talked about in one of the shows that was commissioned for the last Summit, which was curated by Cosmin [Costinas] from Para Site [independent art space in Hong Kong] and the show traveled from us in Bangladesh to Hong Kong, from there to the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and so on.
D: Is it your intention to critically redraw this geopolitical mapping?
DI: Absolutely. For instance, Bangladesh and Thailand are in fact much more connected than Bangladesh and India, for example, you can’t get a direct flight from Delhi to Dhaka, so traveling gets expensive, for Bangladeshis getting visa to India is really complicated. And there are tonnes of daily flights to Bangkok. So the perception that India and Bangladesh must be very close in the current geopolitical climate is actually wrong. Then you can look at other lines of connection - like copper trade and so on.
D: Do you plan to expand beyond Bangladesh in the spirit of “global majority”?
DI: Yes, absolutely, that’s why I just spent a month in South America, and I speak Spanish and Portuguese, so I was able to draw these connections. The whole art world is operating in English and this is the biggest critique of myself. I like the idea of the epicentre - because it can erupt anywhere, right?
D: Indeed. Speaking of the topic of the next Summit in Dhaka - “Seismic Movements” - could you name three top political seismic shifts of nowness you’d consider the most important?
DI: Personally, I would say that an agency for women is a seismic shift that needs to happen. Obviously, we’ve seen the #MeToo movement, but there are move shifts that need to happen in this direction.
Then it is the power of an assembly to instigate change. I am super impressed by what I am seeing in Hong Kong right now - it is one of the largest protests ever in the region.
Then racism is a huge problem. The way that I construct my team is diverse in terms of gender, race, class, and language. What is interesting in the context of Dhaka is that there is nothing in terms of the Western style of art structures - so I can build what I want to see, almost leading by example.
D: How do you safeguard from possible attempts of censorship or possible tensions that can arise in programming the Summit?
DI: The government is not involved at all in the contents of the Summit. Basically, the give us the building, which is a lot as without it we couldn’t do this. The thing we try to do with the summit is to keep it purposely messy. There are over 300 artists shown and it is not about being the best, excellence, etc - it is something I really try to fight against.
Dhaka Art Summit “Seismic Movements” will take place in February 7-15, which full program being an announcement in September.