OPEN CALL

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Dhaka Live Art Biennale (D’LAB) is thrilled to announce an Open Call for its 2025 edition, inviting artists from around the world to participate in one of the most dynamic platforms for live and performance art. We welcome artists from all disciplines—those who work with, engage in, or have created art through live or performance-based practices, as well as those seeking to collaborate with these mediums alongside their primary artistic form. Whether you are a dedicated performance artist or exploring intersections with live art, D’LAB aspires to be a sacred, inclusive space for all who seek to connect, challenge, and co-create through the living pulse of art.

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Dhaka Live Art Biennale (D’LAB)   |   Back ART Foundation

Dhaka Live Art Biennale (D’LAB) is Bangladesh’s pioneering international platform dedicated to contemporary performance and live art. Initiated by the Back ART Foundation in 2013, D’LAB bridges heritage and innovation, offering space beyond traditional institutions. The Foundation champions art’s transformative power through exhibitions, workshops, and cross-cultural programs. D’LAB is its most daring project—an inclusive, fluid, and embodied biennale where art merges with life, fostering radical expression, critical dialogue, and collaboration across cultures and disciplines.

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What is D’LAB?

D’LAB is not just an art festival bound by galleries or walls. It unfolds across rooftops, riversides, streets, ruins, and living bodies. Here, art is raw, poetic, and politically urgent. D’LAB gathers artists, thinkers, and communities to engage deeply with the present—where performance is not just a medium but a method of survival, reflection, and transformation. It welcomes artists from all disciplines—those who work with voice, movement, ritual, time, space, and interaction. It is a portal for presence, for belonging, for dialogue, and for resistance.

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D’LAB 2025 

 দি‘লব দর্শন : Healing the Living
The Art of Give & Take   |   Offering & Receiving   |   The Sacred Exchange

D’LAB 2025 embraces the essence of দি’লব—a Bengali word echoing both sound and spirit with “D’LAB,” meaning “give and take.” This exchange lies at the heart of living. From breath to food, from touch to memory, from love to grief—life is sustained through this sacred rhythm of offering and receiving.

In its 2025 edition, D’LAB calls upon artists to explore healing as a reciprocal act. The question is not only “how do we heal?” but also “how do we give healing, and how do we receive it?” Whether in silence or in protest, in movement or in stillness, art becomes the vessel for this dialogue.

Healing the Living is both a question and a declaration: Can performance be medicine? Can it restore what was broken, connect what was lost, and awaken what was forgotten?

We center three core visions:

• The Art of Give & Take — How does the artistic process embody the balance of action and surrender, of intention and intuition?
• Offering & Receiving — In performance, how do we hold space—for others and ourselves—to grieve, to listen, to transform?
• The Sacred Exchange — What happens when art becomes ritual, when presence becomes prayer, and when vulnerability becomes strength?

D’LAB 2025 invites works that reach into ancestry, land, breath, and community—gestures that honor both the giving hand and the receiving heart. Through storytelling, live acts, sound, light, touch, or shared presence, we seek interventions that nurture a collective healing. This is a biennale of reciprocity, resistance, and regeneration.

Art is not only what we make. It is what we give. What we take in. And what we return to the world, transformed.

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History of D’LAB

D’LAB began as an annual performance series called ‘SONGLAAP’—a Bengali word meaning ‘Statement’—organized by Back ART Foundation since 2014. In 2017, it evolved into a biennale, becoming Bangladesh’s first international platform dedicated to live and performance art, connecting local narratives with global experimental practices.

D’LAB 2017

How The Body Traces Language and Culture: Profiles of Performativity

33 artists from 13 countries participated in the 3-day inaugural edition, became Bangladesh’s first major platform for experimental, embodied art and cultural exchange—where artists shared, learned, and merged each other’s cultural expressions through live practices.

D’LAB 2019

Performing Tradition and Text

This edition spotlighted local traditional performers—snake charmers, puppeteers, pot artists, magician and spiritual healers—alongside 37 contemporary artists from 25 countries. It hosted 10 workshops with 110 participants, 3 gallery exhibitions, 5 local live art and unfolded over 150 live and performance presentation for 21 days; 21st January-14th February 2019.

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D’LAB 2025 Timeline

25th November – 5th December 2025.

CALL for Live Art projects is OPEN now.

Deadline for Submissions : 21 JUNE 2025

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Schedule 

・ 21 June, 2025: Call for Entries closes.

・ Early July, 2025: Announcement of results on the official website.

・ July-August, 2025: Coordination between artists and the D’LAB team

・ September-October 2025: Project Discussion and Curatorial support

・ November-December 2025: Project/artwork exhibition during D’LAB 2025

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Selection Process

A board of juries will analyze artists’ artworks for selection and selected artists will be invited to present their work at D’LAB 2025 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Selected artists will be notified via email by the 1st week of July 2025. Selected artist list will be published on Back Art webpage, other social media network.

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Who can apply

1. We welcome creative individuals and groups from around the world who work with live or performance-based art — including voice, body, movement, theatre, action, or dance.

2. Applicants must be at least 21 years old.
3. Bangladeshi artists are not eligible for this segment (but may apply for curatorial and live art workshop opportunities through upcoming Open Calls.)

We encourage applications from visual artists who expand their practice into live art — through objects, movements, voice, body extensions, musical instruments, outdoor actions, collaborative experiments with materials, and other performative expressions.

Whether you are an established artist or someone crossing disciplines to explore performance as a living form, we invite you to submit proposals aligned with the theme.

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Expectation from participant artists

In this project, artists are warmly invited to wander through Dhaka’s vibrant spirit — to explore its colors, transcend the barriers of language, embrace its people, and savor the essence of new experiences.

We hope artists will craft projects that carry the tenderness of healing, drawing from the ancient wisdom and living traditions rooted deep within their own cultures. Participants are encouraged to collaborate across traditions, awakening the timeless bond between art and healing — offering new light to the living, and embodying the soul of ” দি’লব দর্শন :  Healing the Living.”

We dream of artists becoming portals themselves — weaving together memories, healing rituals, and contemporary expressions into performances that gently nurture the collective human spirit.

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Supports by Back ART Foundation

The event will provide:

• A platform to showcase work in front of an international audience.

• 7 days Accommodation in local residence and 3 Meals daily

• Local transports within Dhaka regarding Live Art Event and Activity
• Logistical and technical support for the performance.
• Limited financial assistance (details to be discussed with selected artists).
• Opportunities for collaboration and engagement with local communities and other artists.
• Art tour within the country

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Artists should pay

* International travel, visa fee, insurance and personal expenses.

* D’LAB will provide invitation letters to support international travel grant.

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Proposal Guidelines

Applicants are required to submit a proposal that includes:

• Concept note (pdf file, 500 words max)

how proposed project connects with the theme ‘Living & Healing’.

• Artist statement (pdf file, 300 words max)

describing your practice and approach to live/performance art.

• Technical requirements (pdf file, if applicable)

including space, equipment, and any other necessities.

• A portfolio (pdf file, supporting materials)

Images, videos, or links showcasing previous works or ideas in progress

• CV detailing relevant experience.
• Bio (250 words max)
• Profile photo 1

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Guidelines for Submission

Registration fee :  Registration is FREE

Email Submission:  info.backart@gmail.com

Please mention ‘’(Artist’s name) : D’LAB 2025’’ – in the subject line.

(Attachment should not cross 25 MB)

OR Post to:

Back Art Foundation, Renaissance Palash Garden, House 12/20, Flat 5B, Road 2, North Shyamoli, Dhaka 1207, Bangladesh.

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Submission deadline & Notifications

– JUNE 21st, 2025: Artists must submit their DOCUMENTS

– JULY 3rd, 2025: Selected artists will be notified via email

– JULY 10th, 2025: Formal invitation letter will be sent via email.

• Please visit ‘backart.org’ webpage and ‘Dhaka Live Art Biennale | D’LAB’ Facebook Page to get updated information about ‘D’LAB 2025’.
• Inquiry: info.backart@gmail.com