Extra Academy: OMAR CHOWDHURY
Unmasking Saturn: coping with para-fiction: A confession isn’t as simple as a revelation followed by forgiveness. Some say that it’s a way of repairing oneself in the field of the other. Others say it’s the social fabric being repaired.
EXTRA ACADEMY
Extra Academy organizes an open program of lectures, performances, workshops and screenings around artistic practice, reflection and research. The platform that they offer, is one where participants become acquainted with practices and visions that are hardly or not at all addressed in the media or art education. In this way they aspire to create a much broader picture of the stratification and rich complexity of what contemporary artistic practice can mean in dialogue with, among other things, art-historical, socio-political, philosophical and economic implications.
OMAR CHOWDHURY (1984)
Is a Bengali-Australian artist and filmmaker, trained in Industrial Relations and Information Systems, who lives and works in Dhaka and Brussels. He makes para-fictional installations, films and performances that animate the ambiguities and fault lines of diasporic life. He has had recent solo presentations and performances at Contour Biennial 10 (Mechelen), Beursschouwburg (Brussels), Dhaka Art Summit 2023 (collateral), Annet Gelink Gallery (Amsterdam), Network (Aalst), De Appel (Amsterdam), 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Sydney) and screenings at International Film Festival Rotterdam, Film and Video Umbrella (London), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), La Gaîté lyrique (Paris), and Queensland Gallery of Modern Art (Brisbane) for Asia Pacific Triennial 8. He attended post-academic residencies at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (Amsterdam) and the Hoger Instituut voor Schone Kunsten (Gent).
Image Credits: Atelier Brenda