Reetu Sattar - Shabnam

Reetu Sattar, an international artist based in Dhaka, often working between film and performance, develops work that began with a residency in Burnley in 2019 where she met with members of the Bangladeshi community. The developing work, in a variety of media, explores the contemporary tensions between traditional cultures in the Bangladeshi diaspora and the forces of modernity through the ever-evolving history of the cotton industry embedded in calico. This white piece of coarse, unbleached and unfinished cloth, carried along the waterways from Kalikat, Kerala to England, carries the memories of the relationship between the English and Subcontinental past; of trade, labour and mechanisation, migration and inequalities that continue around its production.

Shabnam is co-presented by Lancashire Encounters and the British Textile Biennial