Alliance Francaise de Dhaka (AFD), one of the regular and prominent venues of art exhibitions in the country, resumed its regular exhibitions on Thursday with the group exhibition titled ‘PSA: Beyond the Gaze’ at its La Galerie.

The participating artists in this exhibition are Ashima Raizada, Jatin Gulati, Ritika Sharma, Kunga Tashi Lepcha, Rinoshan Susiman, Aniruddha Sarkar, and Arshadul Hoque Rocky.

Artist and critic Mostofa Zaman and critic Moinuddin Khaled attended the inauguration event on Thursday as special guests.

Displaying pieces from the PSA: Beyond the Gaze 2023–2024 workshop, supported by Photo South Asia, an initiative of the MurthyNayak Foundation, the exhibition is also in partnership with Alliance Francaise de Dhaka in Bangladesh and the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in Delhi, India.

A six-month workshop was held to initiate this exhibition, welcoming young photographers and lens-based artists from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. The workshop was led by Soumya Sankar Bose (India) and Ashfika Rahman (Bangladesh), while Tanvi Mishra reviewed the editing.

This workshop engaged participants in a discussion that explores photography as a social tool, dedicated to exploring different narratives from individual and collaborative vantage points. Participants are challenged to create a different narrative—one that not only records but also addresses a deep understanding of possibilities, where the entire community is included as collaborators.

According to the exhibition’s note, the artists in this exhibition ruminate over these provocations, sieving through lived experiences, family histories, state narratives, telltales, myths, and collective memories. The group show is a testament to our times in which legacies, identities, gazes, norms, systems, and selves are conceived beyond set notions, and practitioners from parts of Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka present stories of their dispositions through works that share a common ground of the present.

The exhibition will be open to all till Monday, September 2, from 3 pm to 9 pm.