Seeds Shall Set Us Free
 21 March – 12 May 2024
 Fotogalleriet, Oslo







INDEX






পতন / Collapse


In these photographs, we see a man-made structure, geometric, brutal and monumental in scale, standing tall against the forces of vigorous currents of the Jamuna river that race down on the horizontal plane, amidst soft and fragile elements of nature. Bringing forward this juxtaposition of a horizontal and vertical axis, Munem Wasif’s image based installation discloses a contradictory tale of climate, life, nature, and development.

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2021-2023



STEREO

In “Stereo”, Wasif shifts his lens to the architecture of inanimate objects as encountered within the cityscape. Verging almost to the point of abstraction, these colored sets of diptychs and triptychs discuss various forms of uniformization.


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2001-2022





LAND OF THE UNDEFINED TERRITORY

Munem Wasif’s haunting series of photographs and three-channel video of an undefined land elucidates the dialectic relationship between a land and its identity

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2014-2015
 





SEEDS SHALL SET US FREE 

Seeds Shall Set Us Free is a series of cyanotype prints of rice seeds, Wasif juxtaposes his cyanotypes of rice grains and plants with archive documents and photographs from one of the largest community grain banks in the country. 

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2017-2023






SPRING SONG

Spring Song is a work in progress that revolves around objects found in the camps. Placed against vivid monochromatic backgrounds, these precarious assemblages, decaying documents, and faded photographs convey fragmented memories and feelings of displacement.

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2017-2019






MACHINE MATTER

In Machine Matter, Wasif examines the death of the jute industry in Bangladesh and the destruction of the livelihoods the ‘golden fibre’ once supported. Using long takes and tight shots, the artist turns his lens to an abandoned jute mill and the former workers who ran the machines—the union of man and machine that formed the heart of a major industry.

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2017-2022





খেয়াল / KHEYAL

Kheyal follows four characters through the streets of Old Dhaka in Bangladesh. The title is derived from the Arabic word ‘Khyal’ or ‘Khayal’, meaning fiction or imagination, and the film captures the enigmatic environments and unique identities; shifting between real and imagined narratives

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2015-2019





IN GOD WE TRUST

A cluster of ethereal Black & White photographs, some intimate objects and the video conversations of the close ones, Munem Wasif connects these pieces together to inquire the riskiest subject-matters; religion, identity and personal belongings.

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2009-2016









SALT WATER TEARS

Rippling sea waves, dried river beds and endless fields. Water everywhere, but not a drop to drink. There is no fresh water any more, only a salty, rotten corpse. Shrimp farming has choked off the very foundation of coastal agriculture. Birds, fishes, insects– everything on the land has been burnt away by the tyranny of brackish water.

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2009-2011