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Reetu Sattar

Shabnam

Film expérimental | 4k | couleur et n&b | 22:32 | Bangladesh | 2022

Shabnam unfolded a research on my colonial history in relation to Muslin where I tried to visualize a certain nerve-racking situation when people from a certain part of the world reflect an accumulation of knowledge and wealth. Sometimes the monumental museum display gives a strange complexity. The difference between the one who needs to rumble around archives all around the world to connect the threads between past and present and one who gets everything compiled and labelled is an important one. By process, Shabnam is like a patchwork. The idea was cautiously extended over found images and sounds. Here, the Bangla language is a part of the sonic experience; that is why the subtitle is always coming later as part of an image. I think the sonic experience of the film is something to bear the uneasiness about unequal relationships and exchanges that we have in this world. The drawing of the Bangla letters or the sound of the language played a pivotal role in telling disturbed cartography. What was a work about cotton and lost heritage, has reached me to few questions. How do you visualize the feeling of ‘other’? How do you visualize the churn in your stomach when you find yourself in front of unresolved loss?

Reetu Sattar is an artist and film-maker, based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her practice, both performative and experimental in nature, questions human perception and imperceptible nature by re-examining history and the creation of knowledge. In a constant dialogue with immediate surroundings, her work engages with the poetics of environments and explores inner urges for change, perception, (re)relation to body and matter. Born in Dhaka Reetu works and lives in Dhaka. Her recent exhibitions include Istanbul Biennial, British Textile Biennial, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Liverpool Biennial, and Dhaka Art Summit as well as venues including the British Film Institute, London; Alserkal Avenue, Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai; Artspace, Sydney; Palais de Tokyo, Paris and NTU CCA Singapore. Her performances have been staged internationally at venues in London, Birmingham, Bangkok and Goa. Reetu’s first film premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam, in 2019 and the second film Shabnam premiered at the latest IFFR. Reetu’s performance installation programmed in Spring 2020 will be presented at The Museum of Modern Art, New York on a date forthcoming. Reetu Sattar is a member of Britto Arts Trust, an artist collective based in Dhaka. She also works with Dhaka-based theatre group Prachyanat. Reetu is currently in an 11-month residency at Jan Van Eyck, Netherlands.