Uronto Artist Community Archive- Art practices in the non-Western world

URONTO is an Artist-Led Open Collective in Bangladesh, founded in 2012, in order to enforce a new organic platform for creative practitioners and researchers from all possible disciplines to collaborate and enhance their trans-disciplinary works to inspire local and Global community. At the same time upholding their Artistic responsibilities toward the Society. URONTO works toward making ART a strong tool to change the way people look at everything.

For the last seven years the Artist Community has endeavored to archive heritage, by harnessing the power of artists’ multidisciplinary interventions through interactive ‘pop-up residencies,’ artist exchange programs and workshops at sites that are mostly abandoned and/or soon to be demolished.

The intervention concerns the creation of a bamboo bridge structure, with an appearance similar to the temporary scaffolding used in traditional Bengali construction sites, painted blue and which connects the Court room (Adalot/kachari), the only building where subjects could make their voices heard by bringing their requests to the king, to the central building, housing the king’s son. 

In these photographs, artist used the darkness of the palace at night, as an opportunity to highlight the haunting details and the transverse historic myth by using artificial light. By transforming the Palace in such manner, artist hope to preserve the mundane ambience and perennial leftovers of the time, its history, now and the transformation of space it used to be.....

Uronto believes that if we lose a heritage building we lose a part of our sense of ‘belonging’. Through artistic labor, they intend to reconnect with lost memories of forgotten places and create opportunities to share the joy of connecting to cultural histories through co-existing and co-creating, gaining access to memories that inspire creative workers and empower current generations with knowledge.

Her impressions of the Rajbari and it’s surroundings are in these personal notes in a form of postcards to Bau, who is friend of her in New Zeland. As her memory fades with time, she find herself documenting places this way. Gives her access to memories irrespective of time and space.

Birgitta usually prints the bark of old and special trees. According to her, the trees record the history of their place and of its “clandestine” inhabitants. It was a magical encounter for her, when she saw, how many Bangladeshi and local mythical stories unfolded from the plaster. For the first time she was taking prints of a wall or a plaster surface and she describes this experience as a new dimension to her practice and passion.

Sadya Mizan -Founder and Curator of URONTO Artists Community (2012). She is also one of the founding trustee of Art Initiatives BD (AIB) since 2018.