Creative Place-Making: Contemporary Art Practice and Urbanization in Dhaka

Abstract

This article focuses on the creative ways in which contemporary artists in Dhaka approach a specific locality within the city, its architecture, its communities and its histories. I show how they not only make sense of these encounters in their art works but how they actively claim the right to shape alternative images of and approaches to these localities. The analysis draws from my ethnographic material on 1mile2, a research-based public arts project organized by the Britto Arts Trust for the second time in 2014. Although many of the participating artists today live in the northern parts of the city, Britto chose to carry out the project in Old Dhaka, the erstwhile center and most southern part of the capital of Bangladesh. The article brings together considerations on ethnography, transculturality and creativity. I use these theoretical ‘building-blocks’ to discuss the (re)negotiation of urban space through the lens of place -making practices and the production of site-specific art works.