Speakers at the press conference.

The second edition of Dhaka Art Summit, one of the largest platforms for South Asian art, will take place from February 7 to 9 at Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy in the city. An initiative of the Samdani Art Foundation in collaboration with Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, and in partnership with Airtel Bangladesh and Golden Harvest Group, the event will present over 250 artists from the region aiming to support the development of South Asian art, bring museum-quality exhibitions to Bangladesh and promote international artistic exchange.
On the occasion of the festival, a press conference was held at the auditorium of National Art Gallery of Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, yesterday. Nadia Samdani, director of Dhaka Art Summit; Rajnish Kaul, chief operating officer of Airtel Bangladesh Limited; Anwar Hossain, director of Fine Arts Department of Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy and Mohius Samad Choudhury, chief operating officer of Golden Harvest Agro Industries were present at the event.
The summit will present the works of artists from South Asian countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Noted internationally acclaimed artists Jitish Kallat, Runa Islam, Rana Begum, Shilpa Gupta, Shahzia Sikander, Rashid Rana, Nikhil Chopra, Rathin Barman, Tsherin Sherpa and others will present their projects.
A range of group exhibitions will include--- Liberty (title of the exhibition), Bangladeshi modern and contemporary art, curated by Md. Muniruzzaman; emerging Bangladeshi contemporary art curated by Deepak Ananth; Pakistani contemporary art curated by Ambereen Karamat; emerging Indian Art curated by Veeranganakumari Solanki; LifeBlood (title of the exhibition), Bangladeshi Photography, curated by Rosa Maria Falvo.
A number of recognised critics, thinkers will participate in a series of talks about institutional collecting and support for art from South Asia including: Richard Blurton (Head of South Asian Section of the British Museum's Asia Department), Aurélien Lemonier (Curator, Centre Pompidou), Sandhini Poddar (Adjunct Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum), Jessica Morgan (The Daskalopoulos Curator, International Art, Tate Modern) and Dr Ziba Ardalan (Director/Curator, Parasol Unit). Further international curators: Beatrice Ruf (Director, Kunsthalle Zurich), Lauren Cornell (Curator 2015 Triennial, New Museum, New York) and Milovan Farronato (Director, Fiorucci Art Trust) will lead a panel on the theme of 'curatorial innovation'.
This year, the Samdani Art Foundation has collaborated with the Delfina Foundation (UK) to award an outstanding young Bangladeshi artist the opportunity to attend a three-month residency at the Delfina Foundation in London as part of the bi-annual Samdani Art Award.
A ground-breaking public art initiative created by New-Dehli based Raqs Media Collective, and curated by Diana Campbell Betancourt, will take over 160 road signs and billboards across the city of Dhaka as part of the Summit. The piece, entitled “Meanwhile Elsewhere”, presents a series of clocks where numbers are replaced with Bengali words, registering a subjective experience of time and duration.
Several Bangladeshi art galleries like Gallery Chitrak, Galleri Kaya, Athena Gallery of Fine Arts, Dhaka Art Centre, Drik Gallery, Gallery 21, Gallery Cosmos, Institute of Asian Creatives, Radius Centre, Tivoli Art Gallery, Saju Art Gallery and others will take part with artworks of their preferred artists' at the festival.
 The exhibition is open for all on February 8 and 9.