Shahidul Alam: Truth to Power
Rubin Museum
150 W. 17th St., NYC
Shahidul Alam (b. 1955, Dhaka, Bangladesh); Smriti Azad, Dhaka; 1994; photograph courtesy of Drik.
Azad attended political rallies with her sister when she was a child. As a singer and performer, she was
involved with the women’s movement, the committee demanding the trial of war criminals, and the
cultural group Charon Shangshkritik Kenro, which led to her joining Shommilito Shangshkritik Jote. As
part of this group, she was active in the movement to bring down President Ershad. Here, Azad is
pictured protesting at a rally at Shahid Minar.
Shahidul Alam: Truth to Power presents the first comprehensive US museum survey of the renowned Bangladeshi photographer, writer, activist, and institution-builder and a TIME magazine Person of the Year in 2018. Over 40 images and ephemera show the breadth of Shahidul Alam’s practice and impact throughout his four-decade career. The exhibition includes portraits, landscapes, and scenes of daily life, strife, and resistance in the “majority world”—a phrase Alam has used since the 1990s to reframe the notion of the “third world” or “global south.” The term also confronts the ways in which Western media continues to define how the majority of the world’s population—especially Bangladesh—is portrayed in relation to poverty and disaster.
