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The Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation/Kochi-Muziris Biennale (DBF-KMB) Award is a new, multi-year exhibition and lecture programme that brings together the Hayward Gallery, the Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation and the Kochi Biennale Foundation.
The DBF-KMB Award will grant an emerging South Asian artist participating in the biennale the opportunity to present their first institutional solo show in the UK at Hayward Gallery’s HENI Project Space. The first recipient will be chosen from the fifth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, curated by artist and writer Shubigo Rao and titled In Our Veins Flow Ink and Fire, opening in Kerala, India on December 12, 2022.
The DBF-KMB Award has been created with the aim of supporting the artist at a crucial juncture in their professional development while creating a new pathway for cultural exchange between South Asia, the UK and Europe. The recipient of the Award will be selected by the DBF-KMB Award selection committee, including members of Hayward Gallery’s curatorial team and its Director, Ralph Rugoff, as well as representatives from the DBF and the Kochi Biennale Foundation. Artists shortlisted for the DBF-KMB Award will originate from a South Asian country (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) and will not have had any prior solo exhibitions in UK’s public institutions.
Every alternate year and between biennales, the Hayward Gallery will also host a public programme titled “The Durjoy Bangladesh Lecture Series.” Co-curated with the Kochi Biennale Foundation, these talks will draw on the Biennale’s legacy by featuring leading artist-curators and creative practitioners from the South Asian region. Exploring salient artistic concerns of the present, the Durjoy Bangladesh Lecture Series will serve to further build the Hayward Gallery’s critical and research-driven engagement with exhibition-making practices in South Asia, and in particular with the progressive and cosmopolitan approach formulated by the KMB, which has established itself as a centre for artistic engagement in India by drawing from the rich tradition of public action and engagement in Kerala, as well as aesthetic interventions that have subverted notions of social and cultural hierarchies.
Since opening in 2007, the HENI Project Space at Hayward Gallery has presented free to the public exhibitions from a wide-ranging group of innovative international artists, including many UK premieres. Over the past 15 years, the Project Space has served as a crucial portal of cross-cultural connection, featuring artists from five continents and over 40 different countries.
“This forward-looking Award and partnership with DBF-KMB will connect the Hayward Gallery with new artistic and discursive practices from South Asia, which we will in turn aim to disseminate across the UK and Europe. At a moment in history that demands increased international collaboration, this kind of cultural exchange is absolutely essential to helping us better understand the cogent issues that our colleagues in South Asia are exploring,” says Hayward Gallery Director Ralph Rugoff.
“The Kochi-Muziris Biennale was founded on the principle of keeping the artist at its core with the aim to build new audiences and develop meaningful platforms for emerging practices,” notes Bose Krishnamachari, President of KMB. “We wanted to move beyond regions and think globally, building a peer to peer network that foregrounded our shared yet distinct realities. We believe a lot of this intention will come to fruition with the DBF and the Hayward Gallery partnership. Together, we hope to support and learn from the spirited ideas and work of artists from the South Asian region.”
“Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation is delighted to be partnering with the Hayward Gallery and the Kochi Muziris Biennale in developing a new programme of art production, exhibition and discourse in support of South Asian practitioners,” says Durjoy Rahman, founder of DBF. “Through the DBF-KMB Award and Lecture series, we aim to cultivate art innovation and critical thinking, while emphasising the need for connection and collaboration, which is at the core of the foundation’s mandate.”
For press information, please contact press [at] southbankcentre.co.uk
