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Reetu Sattar

@reetusattar

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Theatre, Performance and Film
Currently:
https://echotoning.gcsmus.org/research-based-art-reetu/
Studio: Gulshan 1, Dhaka, Bangladesh

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Reetu Sattar

Shabnam. 2023
Film, 22 minutes 32 seconds
Commissioned by British Textile Biennial with support from Samdani Art Foundation, Dhaka
In Shabnam, the fragmented history of the fabrication of muslin and its scattered documentation across archives all over the world is stitched back together in a piece that is as stunning as it is confrontational.

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Reetu Sattar is a performance artist and filmmaker who works with theatre, video and text to explore themes of collective memories, missing histories and personal objectives. Her exhibitions and performances have been showcased in Rotterdam, Sydney, Liverpool, Tokyo, London, Paris and Singapore. Based in Dhaka, she is a member of the arts collective Britto Arts Trust.
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What Empire Took, What Empire Left: Museums, Borders and the Politics of Return in South Asia emerges from a central provocation: what happens when the sacred is violently dislocated—not only from place, but from time, ritual, and meaning?

Curated by Dr. Arshiya Lokhandwala, the exhibition talks about how across South Asia, deities, manuscripts, and ritual objects have been removed from living contexts and reclassified within Western museums, where they are aestheticized, contained, and severed from the cosmologies that once animated them. This exhibition confronts that rupture.

What Empire Took, What Empire Left is supported by the Saraf Foundation and is exhibiting at Taragaon Next, Kathmandu from August 23 - October 31

Photos by Abishek Pariyar

Reetu Sattar

Shabnam. 2023
Film, 22 minutes 32 seconds
Commissioned by British Textile Biennial with support from Samdani Art Foundation, Dhaka
In Shabnam, the fragmented history of the fabrication of muslin and its scattered documentation across archives all over the world is stitched back together in a piece that is as stunning as it is confrontational.

—
Reetu Sattar is a performance artist and filmmaker who works with theatre, video and text to explore themes of collective memories, missing histories and personal objectives. Her exhibitions and performances have been showcased in Rotterdam, Sydney, Liverpool, Tokyo, London, Paris and Singapore. Based in Dhaka, she is a member of the taken in Taragaon next by @reetusattar

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a month ago

Shabnam (2022) is now on show at the Backyard Biennial @whitechapelgallery, London.

It's a film about our contemporary positional crises as we encounter dispersed archival traces in the form of textiles.
Thank you, @whitechapelgallery. It was a great collaboration between us to bring this installation from a SketchUp file to reality. The work was commissioned by @britishtextilebiennial in addition with @samdaniartfoundation and premiered at @iffr 2023.

Photo Credits 1 and 4: Backyard Biennial: East, Whitechapel Gallery, 15 July - 8 September. Photograph by: Damian Griffiths
2, 3 and 5: @rajeebsamdani by @reetusattar

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3 months ago

Thrilled to see works by Bangladeshi artist Munem Wasif @munemwasif on display at Tate Modern as part of Tate’s permanent collection, alongside works by Joydeb Roaja @joydebroaza

Made even more special to discover these works together with artist Soma Surovi @somasurovijannat , who currently has a solo show at the Ashmolean Museum, and Kamruzzaman Shadhin @shadhin.kamruzzaman who is currently in residence at the Delfina Foundation.

A proud moment to witness Bangladeshi artists being recognised and celebrated on such important international platforms. 🇧🇩✨
@project88mumbai @pathshala.institute @jhavericontemporary @dhakaartsummit @samdaniartfoundation taken in Tate Modern by @reetusattar

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5 months ago

Last year in May, I had the privilege to open an organized walk at the first CAREC Lab Week from @princeclausfund in Indonesia at Labuan Bajo with the first Coastal Community Conference (CCC) organized by @lintasbatasorg and @arkakinari.

At Labuan Bajo, upon invitation, a few from our cohort wished to take a walk. For I was still spreading dusts to settle my dreams, I reached my friends the branches and roots left to me. The walks are to find the dreamers. For to change and to be changed you have to go back to the roots.
The sound was formed from the memories of Karon, Marcella, Diego, Julio, Sheila and Reetu. We brought the sound from the walks we had. Baku and @novaruth Nova Ruth looped the sound while we were making them. Thank you @vharari for being there to support all the time.
These walks are dedicated to Raju Ahmmed, dreamer, planter, father whose only dream was to plant trees and turn the world as it was before. @zencatt___ remembered you.
Photo: @bad.hibat taken in Labuan Bajo Komodo by @reetusattar

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6 months ago

Such a good day! Full day! What a blessing!
Eid Mubarak!
জগতের সকল প্রাণী সুখী হউক। by @reetusattar

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7 months ago

My website was down for almost two years. Rearranging it now.
Thus, revisiting the shoot day of Harano Sur before the performance took place at the @dhakaartsummit in 2018.
Pranabesh Das @pranabesh took these amazing behind-the-scenes photos.

Eid Mubarak! by @reetusattar

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7 months ago

These works have had another chance to be with people and received a lot of careful attention, questions and engagement.
Nothing can beat that.
Thanks again, Latika lasts47, for selecting this entire body of work at the @serendipityartsfestival2025, which I first showed at the beginning of the year @Sharjahbiennial2025, as part of Ancestral Well by Natasha @nginwala.
#10yearsofSAF by @reetusattar

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8 months ago

I am so proud to think that a festival like #chobimela takes place in my city. Many of us across South Asia grew up with Chobi Mela.
Even this year, when cultural sector is more segregated than ever Chobi Mela raised its head with full vigour. I am once again inspired, motivated and ready to jump into my practice by the quality of organisation skills that the festival brought upon, be it in talks or selection of artists or quality of the publications. Among so many favourites hard to choose the highlights. But the reading room at the Shilpokola Academy at the (un) learning Palestine, embodying solidarity, conceived by Munem Wasif and @Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh, the fellowship program curated by Shohrab Jahan ‘dhew’, if the land could speak curated by Munem Wasif and Protick Sarker, Rights of Passage, curated by Tanvi Mishra will be with me even after the end of the festival.

My friends, we may not drink tea anymore, we may not say ‘hi’ to each other any more but remember festivals like #chobimela is a way to say what we all like to say at a moment like this.
Congratulations my friends at the Chobi Mela International Festival of Photography and Pathshala South Asian Media Institute and Drik , your relentless passion to image making blew many of our heads, once again. by @reetusattar

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9 months ago

'All that could be held closely' (2025) is a cabinet designed from an old box at Chowkbazar, Dhaka. That box was made of teak, stained with 100 years of memories - definitely a family heirloom that is not meant to give away to an onlooker like me. The owners of the general store seemed like a few brothers, and their old man reaffirmed to me the value of the box to them. It felt like they were hugging the box close to their bosom.
So, in the box I decided to put a small glass pouch of revived photi kapas seeds, photi cotton, kuchia fish skin, which used to be a prime material to keep the muslin cotton soft, two pieces of bovine's backbone shrew used to be an essential part of the cotton shredder, a photo of Raghunath Basak, Raghunath Basak's accounts book as a symbol of lost manuscripts written by him along with muslin design instruments like maku and two pairs of ‘malshi’ with a rust iron weaver's finger. This has become one of my own cabinets of loss that could be held closely. by @reetusattar

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10 months ago

I am thrilled to exhibit a part of my exhibition ‘jot’ (knot) at the @serendipityartsfestival as part of bitter soil by @lats47.
Earlier this year I have exhibited the works at #the ancestral trail: pulse of terrain curated by @natasha_ginwala at the @sharjahart biennial. I send Natasha a big hug for being there at the beginning of #Shabnam when I was thinking its done after making the earlier version. As I keep on researching on the film, I could produce this body of works. Thank you love for being there, always.

Also, a big shout out to @lats47 for daring to bring these works at a time when we are in so much hostilities and uncertainties.

The audience at the Serendipity is amazing. It shows how people of a city can grow on visual arts lovers over 10 years. Congratulations @smriti.r @serendipityartsfestival and everyone at the festival for doing it for 10 years.
I am proud to be a part of the 10th year celebration. Thanks for inviting me. by @reetusattar

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10 months ago

@superslowway love.
Remembering this with @jaipers, along with so many beautiful people I met there.
As part of the lecture performance, three rooms of the mill had been activated: the weavers' shed, the packing room, and the loom room. I was tempted to use the loom room, as the mill is considered one of the last remaining steam-engine-operated mills. The mill operates the looms for only a few hours, demonstrating their capabilities to produce tea towels.
Two of the weavers went up to the chimney to play a fanfare on the trumpet to celebrate the weavers' participation as the board of directors of the mill.
It is the mill where Bangladeshi immigrants have worked as third-shift workers since 1950. It is the coarse calico that has been produced from the raw cotton produced by the people around the Indian Ocean.
Thanks @tmul.inge, @jennyclairerutter @jackie_jones_producer by @reetusattar

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a year ago

Shabnam
Jogja Biennial, 2025

It's one of the most humbling experiences to be part of @biennialjogja
This experience gave me space to breathe in a porous world where we really need to look beyond the self and accept the speculative nature of the process with open hearts and hands.
Thanks dear @alia.swastika for this beautiful experience. by @reetusattar

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a year ago