Bangladeshi visual artist Ashfika Rahman has been recognized by The New York Times as one of the six must-see shows at the Venice Biennale, with her work "Than Para — No Land Without Us" featured in the collateral exhibition "Still Joy — From Ukraine into the World." The installation, presented by the PinchukArtCentre and curated by Björn Geldhof and Oleksandra Pohrebnyak, incorporates thousands of small temple bells gathered from different spiritual traditions and draws on testimonies from Ukraine as well as the struggles of Indigenous communities in Bangladesh's Hill Tracts.
The recognition matters because it marks a rare moment of global visibility for a Bangladeshi artist within the international art world, which Rahman frames not as a personal achievement but as a responsibility to amplify marginalized voices. Her work addresses themes of displacement, war, memory, and erasure, connecting local Indigenous struggles in Bangladesh to broader global patterns of conflict and loss. The New York Times praised the exhibition as "thought-provoking and senses-stirring," underscoring how Rahman's intimate, collective approach to art-making challenges dominant narratives and insists on the presence of those often absent from global discourse.