Residency brief

The Brihatta Art Foundation was founded by Artist Bishwajit Goswami, a professor in the Department of Drawing and Painting at Dhaka University's Faculty of Fine Arts, and Nusrat Mahmud, an entrepreneur based in Dhaka. The foundation is a research-based artist-run art platform with an aim to extend the accessibility and visibility of art through community engagement and development.

Brihatta means “immensity” in Bangla and is focused on the creation, and curation of art within the public realm, It is a dynamic liaison between artists, craftsmen, local and expat community members, and global practitioners to place artwork within a space that achieves shared goals.

This goes through organizing workshops, residencies, and art talks. They have showcased Bangladeshi art locally and internationally, on global platforms like Dhaka Art Summit and Paris Internationale.

In 2023, Brihatta launched an ongoing, internal research program at its art space with Artists and Artisans. Through this program, it aims to explore the key connections between art and craft; the artist with his intellectual process, versus the artisan with his manual work. How can we nurture creativity while keeping the sustainability of communities in mind? Who does authorship belong to in a collaboration like this? How can an object gain new cultural context through exchange?

In that regard, the Foundation is looking to host an artist who is interested in re-discovering traditional Bangladeshi crafts techniques, experiment with sustainable materials and found objects, keeping in line with its ethos of creating from nature and surrounding elements of old Dhaka.