A Bird of Stone, 2014
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US Embassy, Gulshan 1, Gulshan 2 of Dhaka North via Hatirjheel, Tejgao, Tejgao-Bijoy Sarani link bridge, Monipuripara, Manik Mia Avenue to Dhanmondi 27 Drik Gallery of Dhaka South.
"The bloody massacre in Bangladesh (1971) quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the assassination of Allende drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the war in the Sinai Desert made people forget Allende, the Cambodian massacre made people forget Sinai, and so on and so forth until ultimately everyone lets everything be forgotten."
~ Milan Kundera (The book of Laughter & Forgetting)
A walk about 0.9 km way from US embassy in Dhaka North to the South-west part in Dhaka was to create collective memories. The image of stones on both feet and singing bowl at hand came out of the ephemerality of human state created by the present emergence of border and neo-lithic crisis of invasion among countries.
In first part of the performance Sattar walked to Drik gallery in Dhanmondi where she invited closest friends to dedicate one of the cherished objects in remembrance of people who lost everything in war or power fight.
These collective memories were revisited after two years to investigate if the collective remembers or it is just something fades away under the rubble. Find press here.