Seeds Shall Set Us Free II. (2019. Cyanotype Prints, Inkjet Prints, Photographic Reproductions of Drawings. Image courtesy of the artist and Taipei Fine Arts Museum.)
Exhibited at the Centre Pompidou and Taipei Biennial 2019, Seeds Shall Set Us Free II represents another move toward consolidating the core themes in the work of the photographer Munem Wasif. In the first articulation, we were given affective tones dripping with irony as his cyanotypes recalled the historically charged hues of indigo in Bengal and Bangladesh. The form of the delicate border recalled the textures of rope; using the ambivalent figure of this rope-border to make the viewer recognise the enforced transition from sustenance farming to the farming of cash crops like jute. Seed forms were carefully arranged to suggest their vulnerability to the twinned forces of colonial disruption and environmental damage.
