Partnering with Chobi Mela

PhotoSouthAsia (PSA), a project of the MurthyNAYAK Foundation, is pleased to be a Prime Partner of Chobi Mela, which takes place 12-21 February 2021, in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Entitled Shunno (O), the 2021 edition of Chobi Mela reinvents itself in a (hopefully) post-COVID world. It asks the hard questions and invites artists and curators to respond. Shunno, in Bangla, is a word and a number. It is emptiness – a void – and with this, Chobi Mela questions its own purpose. Participants are invited to create a “testimony of the present time.” This year’s festival intends to engage more digital and multi-disciplinary practices, weaving the physical with the digital, and exploring where these overlap with one another.

“Chobi Mela mounts a special edition, Shunno, to create a space for artists, thinkers, healers, activists, and visionaries in self-reflective, experimental processes; to assemble and disassemble, to navigate a web of communities, relationships, and collaborations.” [from the Chobi Mela Website]

Encouragement and financial support are important to artists who have the talent and the courage to hold a magnifying glass before unpleasantness and a mirror to the face of society. By funding events like Chobi Mela, PSA aims to highlight important issues, transforming ignorance and apathy into concern and action. If a picture was once worth a thousand words, video and social media have increased that exponentially. It is our goal to support emerging artists producing socially relevant work that will raise awareness, sustain involvement, and ignite social change.

[Created 01.Feb.2021]