Naeem Mohaiemen combines photography, films, archives, and essays to research the many forms of utopia-dystopia (families, borders, architecture, and uprisings)– beginning from Bangladesh’s two postcolonial markers (1947, 1971) and then radiating outward to unlikely, and unstable, transnational alliances and collisions. Despite underlining a historic tendency toward misrecognition of allies, the hope for a future international left, as an alternative to current silos of race and religion, is always a basis for the work. A throughline in all his work is family unit as locus for pain-beauty dyads, abandoned buildings as staging ground for lost souls, and the necessity of small prevarications to keep on living.
He is author of?Midnight’s Third Child?(Nokta, forthcoming) and?Prisoners of Shothik?Itihash (Kunsthalle Basel, 2014);?editor of?Chittagong Hill Tracts in the Blind Spot of Bangladesh Nationalism?(Drishtipat, 2010); and co-editor with?Eszter Szakacs of Solidarity Must be Defended?(Tranzit, forthcoming) and with?Lorenzo Fusi of System Error: War is a Force that Gives us Meaning?(Sylvana, 2007). Monographs on his work include the forthcoming?What We Found After You Left?(Power Plant, 2021).
He has had solo shows at Gallery Chitrak, Dhaka; Cue Art Foundation, New York; MoMA PS1, New York; Bildmuseet, Umea; Power Plant, Toronto; SALT Beyo?lu, Istanbul; Kunsthalle Basel, Basel; Vox Contemporary Image, Montreal; and Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville. Group shows include Venice, Lahore, Sharjah, Marrakech, Momentum (Nordic), Eva (Ireland), and Chobi Mela Biennials; Tate Britain (Turner Prize show), MACBA, and Documenta 14. His work is in the permanent collections of MoMA, Tate Modern, MACBA, Van Abbemuseum, Art Institute of Chicago, and Kiran Nadar Museum. He is represented by Experimenter, Kolkata.
Projects have been supported by Andy Warhol Foundation, Ford Foundation, Creative Time, Guggenheim Fellowship, Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropology, Social Science Research Council, Elephant Trust, Arts Council, and Creative Capital. Mohaiemen was a finalist for the Villem Flusser Theory Award (2009), Mario Merz Prize (2015), Turner Prize (2018), and Herb Alpert Award (2019).
Mohaiemen has done photography archive-based work around the life of his father, military surgeon and photographer, Major General (retd) Dr. M.A. Mohaiemen (1935-2021).?These include?Rankin Street 1953, Baksho Rohoshyo?(Chobi Tumi Kar?),?Our Families Bleed History,?Tripoli Cancelled, and?Jole Dobe Na (Those Who Do Not Drown).
Mohaiemen was born in London, England, and grew up in Tripoli, Libya, and Dhaka Bangladesh. He received a BA in Economics from Oberlin College (1993) and PhD?in Anthropology from Columbia University (2019). He was a Senior Research Fellow at Lunder Institute of American Art, Colby College; Nadir Mohamed Fellow at Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto; and Mellon Fellow at the Society of Fellows, Heyman Center, Columbia University.
http://www.shobak.org
https://naeemmohaiemen.academia.edu/?






Concentration Head, Photography
Associate Professor, Visual Arts
PhD Anthropology Alumnus 2019