Jomin o Joban / A tale of the land , Wasif’s first solo show in India, which opened last weekend at Project 88, presents a complex gamut of interconnected stories that spill across the globe as an invisible map, with present day Bangladesh at its epicentre. But at the heart of it, it really is a tale of land, rooted in the history and memory of a nation, that quite like its neighbours was and will always be majority agrarian by default. The mirror Wasif holds up to the current state of affairs in Bangladesh, where a failed modern system of trade and economy is damaging the state’s intrinsic eco-system, also ends up reflecting an image of India’s ongoing agrarian crisis where farm land and farming/ agriculture is forced to take a back seat in the face of burgeoning industrial development.
“Look at the zameen (land) … look at the par (border)”. Horizons, disputed land and fenced boundaries is what may instantly come to mind with this line. But if in Bangladesh, this would most likely be a phrase thrown at you by “a salesman at a saree shop”, relates photographer Munem Wasif. As a South Asian, well familiar with the saree and its anatomy, it won’t be long before a crisp, tangible image of the garment being flown open before your eyes, billowing for just a breath or two, before landing in your lap, emerges in your mind’s eye. You wouldn’t need anything more than mentally running your hand across the cloth to know the zameen from the par . So entrenched are these sensibilities in the culture of a certain region that even geo-political borders fail at fading them out.
