Series Note
The Society, Memory & Political Consciousness series examines the complex relationship between personal experience, collective memory, political structures, and historical transformation. Drawing upon painting, performance, photography, archival materials, and handwritten texts, these works investigate how ordinary lives become intertwined with larger systems of authority, national identity, and geopolitical power.
Rather than documenting political events, the series explores the emotional and ethical consequences of living within history.
Artist’s Note
This work began with the death of a dog, but it eventually became a reflection on democracy.
For many years I felt responsible for what happened. Gradually I realised that my grief was connected to larger questions concerning authority, nationalism, political history, and the position of ordinary people within systems of power.
The photographs embedded in this work are fragments of my own life. The dog comes from a family photograph. The human figure is my own body documented during a public performance. Around the black rectangular field I wrote the complete text of the National Anthem of Bangladesh, a symbol that has appeared repeatedly throughout my performances and visual works.
For me, the anthem represents both love for one’s country and the ideals upon which a nation imagines itself. By surrounding a dark field with the anthem, I wanted to ask whether those ideals are always fully realised in lived experience.
Although this work emerged from Bangladesh, it also reflects my observation of a broader political phenomenon across South and Southeast Asia. In many societies, people continue to express an unwavering desire for democracy, while larger geopolitical interests and unequal power relationships often complicate or delay its full realization.
I do not offer this work as a political verdict. I offer it as a personal testimony, an act of mourning, and an invitation to think about democracy not as a fixed achievement, but as a continuous ethical responsibility shared by citizens, institutions, and the international community.
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