Artist Statement

The new normal. Mission accomplished. But the residues are still here. A temporary camp for highway construction. Phantom investor. New chairman. List of approved guests. Shadow falls. A theorist talks about the architecture of occupation, hollow land. But security presence in Asia is subtle. Suit tie coat bideshi degree. Think tanks, seminars, conferences, talk shows, newspapers. Everyone has an opinion on the century’s obsession. War against an invisible enemy. They tell us, we know all the answers. How to catch them, inside and outside borders. How to keep them out. Facial hair, surname, skin hue, city of birth, passport – the full spectrum domination of motivation recognition. It’s not who you are, it’s who we say you are.
Dhaka is now inside a security zone bubble. Will democracy remove the steel wire barricades and midnight checks on Dhanmondi Bridge? On the day after the state of emergency was lifted, I saw a homeless woman drying her family clothes on that same wire barricade. A sweet, fleeting moment. But a few days later, the barricades were back in action. The demand for ID, the sudden stop and search, the rummaging inside your camera bag, the interrogation.

• Naeem Mohaiemen is an artist and writer working in Dhaka and New York. He uses text, photography and video to explore histories of the international left and utopia-dystopia slippage. Mohaiemen’s projects have been shown at venues including Gallery Chitrak (Dhaka), Experimenter (Kolkata), Third Line (Dubai), Ashkal Alwan (Beirut), Queens Museum of Art (New York), Shedhalle (Zurich) and the Finnish Museum of Photography. He organised the Visible Collective, a group of artists, lawyers and activists who had a video project shown at the 2004 Whitney Biennial (‘Wrong Gallery’). Excerpts from his current research on 1970s ultra-left movements will be shown at the 2011 Sharjah Biennial. Naeem also works on activist projects in Bangladesh. He writes on religious and ethnic minorities in the Ain Salish Kendro Annual Report (askbd.org) and the Daily Star newspaper (thedailystar.net). Working between two countries, this work explores contradictions between Bengalis in marginal  migrant status in northern countries, and majoritarian (and authoritarian) status inside Bangladesh. As part of this work, his film Muslims or Heretics: My Camera Can Lie was screened for an ancillary meeting of the EU Human Rights Commission at the UK House of Lords. shobak.org

Full text (PDF) p. 79-82