Nadia Samdani

Nadia Samdani (born 12 December 1981) also known as Nadia Khalil Choudhury, is a British born Bangladeshi businesswoman, art collector, and philanthropist, internationally recognized for her visionary leadership in developing platforms for art and culture in Bangladesh. Along with her husband Rajeeb Samdani, she is the co-founder of Samdani Art Foundation and its headline event the Dhaka Art Summit, which she also leads as its director. She serves as the Vice President of the Alliance Française de Dhaka.

A second-generation collector, Nadia began her own collection at the age of 22. She collects both Bangladeshi and international art, reflecting her experience as both a proud Bangladeshi and a global citizen. She has written about collecting for Art Asia Pacific and Live Mint, and has been a guest speaker at art fairs and institutions including University of California, Berkeley and Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. Works from the Samdanis’ collection have been lent to institutions and festivals including: Tate, London (2019); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2019); Para Site, Hong Kong (2018); Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2018); documenta14, Kassel and Athens, (2017); Shanghai Biennale (2017); Office for Contemporary Art Norway, Olso (2016); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015); Kunstsammlung Nordrhein, Düsseldorf (2015); Gwangju Biennale (2014); and Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2014). Nadia is Director of the Director of Golden Harvest Group, one of Bangladesh’s leading conglomerates which is active in information technology, commodities, logistics, food processing, agriculture, dairy, aviation, insurance, banking, infrastructure development and real estate. She is the Chairperson of Braintrain Studio, a subsidiary of Golden Harvest which is active in architecture and interior design consultancy in Bangladesh. She is also a Director of the Khalil Group.

Her vision can be found in a recent interview with Dinis Guarda. When Rajeeb and I started together we traveled all over the world to learn and discover about other cultures, art scenes and meet people. And people didn’t know about the Bangladeshi art scene at all. Here it is everything very local and we went on the mission to help develop the fantastic art heritage and culture and promote it abroad”. “In our exhibitions and summit we have hundreds of thousands of visitors, including top personalities in the art industry, collectors, promoters, etc. Our exhibitions are travelling around the world and gaining important traction in the art world”. “This pandemic is making things complicated, not only for the art world but also for most industries. So we wanted to do something for the public and we invited experts and important personalities to do workshops which we would share to everyone. This idea is what is behind the Art Around The Table. With this initiative we wanted to build a charity platform where people could connect and ultimately provide food for the most in need during this time”.