Home Installation
On a late Friday afternoon in February, Nadia and Rajeeb Samdani—the mega art-collecting couple based in Dhaka, Bangladesh—had just placed their Haegue Yang commission, a tall, almost Seussian-looking sculpture titled North of the Mountain, by a floor-to-ceiling window on the fifth floor of their six-story house in the capital’s fashionable Gulshan neighborhood. The Berlin-based artist’s joyful piece, which invites viewers to join the fun by giving it a gentle push, thereby ringing its hundreds of tiny gold-colored bells, is the newest jewel in their growing cutting-edge modern and contemporary collection, which totals around 2,000 artworks. “You can try it later,” Rajeeb promises with a broad smile.
The Samdanis situated the sound work next to a second piece with a musical theme: a copper, granite and coal sculpture of long tubes that lead to what looks like the flared bell of a trumpet or trombone, a commission by another sought-after artist, Alicja Kwade. Together, the artworks epitomize many of the Samdanis’ collecting habits: They are by rising stars the collectors know personally, are acquired on the globe-trotting couple’s travels like souvenirs
