Artpro International Video Art Festival (AIVAF) will be the first contemporary exhibition showcasing thematic, conceptual and experimental video art & film within Bangladesh. Our aim is to promote and represent international contemporary video art to live audiences in Dhaka, Bangladesh with a yearly festival held in Bangladesh’s National Art Gallery, Shilpakala, Dhaka. The International Festival wishes to establish itself as an open space that experiments, identifies and critically examines the latest trends in the art world. Bangladesh will be the ambassador that will establish a shared space for contemporary video artists globally, showcasing and promoting video art and artists.
Aims and Objectives | AIVAF’s fundamental aim is to provide young artists with the opportunity to introduce themselves to a broad audience, advance their artistic carrer and create a networking platform within South Asia for talented artist with galleries, art critics and art collectors. Furthermore, this is a great opportunity to open up the art scene to the public in Bangladesh seeing it will be held in a major public gallery in Dhaka.
Brief description of project | The festival will include exhibitions, seminars and workshops of 100 selected artists and artisans from more than 20 countries with the invitation of over 12.000 visitors. AIVAF will be an inspirational event that will add to the growing art scene and culture appearing in Bangladesh, generating narratives and imageries that seek to inspire the communities across the city of Dhaka. The festival calls for the audiences to rethink their identity and reorient their thoughts on issues artists are raising today, with particular interest on issues related to cultural homogeneity to rethink and raise questions regarding it and its opposites such as cultural diversity and heterogeneity. Each artwork has within it interwoven the past, present and the future, of not only the person but also, their cultures and traditions. The community in Dhaka/Bangladesh is rich in history, traditions and cultures and each Bangladeshi artist have these interconnected within their artform, and most importantly with the present socio-political realities, different living traditions and past ritual activities in Bangladesh. Video art being a less recognized artform within art academies or institution in their academic calendar in Bangladesh, Artpro wants to develop a culture for video art in Bangladesh, and the AIVAF will work as a springboard for this vision.
Implementation of project | AIVAF is designed as week-long festival, the main activity being the exhibition that will be held in Shilpakala. In Addition to this there will be a series of workshops, artist talks, and panel discussions throughout the festival for the artists and people to take part in. the main theme pushed by Artpro within these activities is the one of Neighborhoods. Promoting further understanding between the artists and the audience.
AIVAF19 Selected Artist:
Abir Shome- Bangladesh
Alexander Isaenko- Ukraine
Avner Pinchover- Switzerland
Carles Pamies- Spain
David Anthony Sant- Australia
Firoz Mahmud- Bangladesh
Fran Orallo- UK
Guilherme Bergamini- Brazil
Jean-Michel Rolland- France
Johannes Christopher Gerard- Netherlands
Joacelio Batista- Brazil
Jiasrin Hoque- Bangladesh
Julio- Germany
Karan Shrestha- Nepal
Marco Valdivia- Peru
Mercedes Aqui- Mexico
Octavianus Frans- Indonesia
Sandrine- France
Sanjid Mahmud- Bangladesh
Sophia Moffa- UK
Sumana Akter- Bangladesh
Ushnish Mukhopadhyay- India
Vasilios Papaioannu- USA
Yasmin Jahan Nupur- Bangladesh
