ARTPRO ART INITIATIVE
ARTPRO ART INITIATIVE
Mission of Artpro:
Artpro art initiative is an artist led contemporary art organization based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Artpro binds multiple art-related notion into a promotional platform. where artist can innovate and research with challenging art project.
Vision of Artpro
Artpro art initiative is committed contemporary platform to promote art along with country’s artist & notion to run with innovative art project, collective, collaboration & new idea.
About Artpro:
Artpro art initiative is an artist run contemporary art initiative based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Artpro is a non-profitable art organization which is binds multiple art-related notion into a promotional platform. where artist can innovate and research with challenging art project. The basic notion is collective, collaboration & promotion of local & international emerging artist community.
Artpro art initiative is committed to long way walk with contemporary art & artist. Artpro is going organize workshop, Exhibition, land art, public art, video art performance art project & artists’ talks/ presentation during in the year.
Member of Artpro:
Zannatun Nahar Nijhum, Rasedul Islam
Founder of Artpro:
Arpita Singha Lopa, Farah Naz Moon, Md. Zahid Hossain & Ashim Halder Sagor.
+8801712592068, artproinitiative@gmail.com, www.artpro.com.bd
Artpro Art Initiative (f. 2016)
Artpro is an artist run contemporary art initiative based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Artpro is a non-profitable art organization which is binds multiple art-related notion into a promotional platform. where artist can innovate and research with challenging art project. The basic notion is collective, collaboration & promotion of local & international emerging artist community. Founded by artists, Arpita Singha Lopa (b. 1986), Md. Zahid Hossain (b. 1986), Farah Naz Moon (b. 1983) and Ashim Halder ‘Sagor’ (b. 1983), each of who actively maintains their own practice, the group’s multi-discipline approach utilises each of the founding members individual expertise while rigorously following the group’s collaborative mission to create unique opportunities for visual artists—and for the public to engage with their work—through innovate research and art projects.
Aware of the impact art can have for social good, one of Artpro’s primary missions (as a newly formed initiative) was to mobilise artists to help marginalised segments of Dhaka’s society through workshops and innovative art projects hosted within their local communities. Establishing a series of collaborations with organisations working with Dhaka’s street children, Artpro took to Dhaka’s streets running a series of day-long educational and hands-on workshops, introducing the children to art while building their knowledge of what art is and how they can embrace creativity in their own lives. Several other workshops in this series collaborated with organisations assisting single mothers living in sheltered housing, opening up art to both the mothers and their children and providing them with the opportunity for a creative break from their daily lives.
Keen to expand the impact of their work outside of Dhaka, in mid-2017, the group began conducting Weekend Art Works, a series of daylong public art project which takes a group of selected contemporary artists to work within a rural village community outside of Dhaka for one day. Starting from Dhaka in the early hours, the inaugural event in this series took place in Trimohini, situated on Bangladesh’s Western border with India, with subsequent editions having been hosted in Shahjadpur Upazila situated around one hour north of Dhaka. Like a flash mob, the group and their artists arrive in the village, create their work and leave, but are careful to ensure their project collaborates with the local community, leaving them with the knowledge, and the ability, to continue the legacy of the event after the group leaves.
With a growing ambition for how they want to expand Artpro’s activities, the group’s 2018 commitments already include a series of projects, some of which will be hosted in collaboration with the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, and include workshops in ceramics, Sound, image manipulation, performance, land art and video art. The group’s most ambitious project to date will involve the hosting the first Video Art Biennale at the Shilpakala Academy, cited to take place in March/ April 2018. Bringing together 55 Bangladeshi artists, and 25 international artists, the project will be produced solely through self-sourced funds: the group expressing that their energy as a collective and their passion for project will help them find a way to produce the Biennale on a low budget through their local and international networks.
Committed to building long-term relationships with the contemporary artists they work with, Artpro’s output is a programme workshops, exhibitions, public art projects, artist talks and presentations, all of which attempt to maximise their audience reach and the impact their work has on the group’s they choose to work with. Remaining primarily self-funded, Artpro’s determination to change Bangladesh’s view on a variety of contemporary art is driven by its members endless energy which will undoubtedly continue to steer this relatively your initiative forward.
Emma Sumner
Head of Publications
Samdani Art Foundation
