Programme on garment workers’ life at AFD

A programme shedding lights on the lives of garment workers of the country was held at Nouvelle Vague auditorium of Alliance Fran?aise de Dhaka, Dhanmondi in the city on March 17. The performance based event was held as part ot the LUCKY DAY project which in turn is part of the exhibition, “On the 21st century’s own settlement form – Manifesto of Post-Informality”. The parent exhibition is being orchestrated by Habitat Forum Berlin, in cooperation with the Weissensee School of Art. It will be finally presented with outcomes of all its child projects and event in Berlin in 2017 by its curator G?nter Nest and Elisa Bertuzzo. Alexine Chanel is the planner behind the Lucky Day project.
Star of the event on March 17 was Sharmili Akther Lucky.

“I am Lucky, but I am not lucky” These are Lucky’s own words. She uttered them shortly after meeting Alexine in the streets of Karai Basti, a self-organized settlement in Dhaka. Lucky then began to spin her sad tale, which has been recorded and will be rewritten as a “Banglawood” pop song.Lucky is a textile worker, one of the many thousands of essentially invisible women making clothes for foreign consumers. Lucky is the star of this show, in stark contrast to her daily life. It may seem that nobody outside Karai Basti knows about her work, existence, or presence, especially not the foreign consumers who buy the clothes she makes. The Tshirt, signed by Lucky, the artist, and therefore transformed into an artwork of inestimable value, will be brought back to Berlin to be exhibited and potentially auctioned off.LUCKY DAY opens up a space of negotiation between anonymity and subjectivity. It strives to break the textile chain of anonymity with a single life story, to jumpstart our consciousness, make us aware of the existence of the worker as a persona grata with a life and a personality, problems, hopes, dreams and desires.
source: Culture Desk