Farzana Hossen
Farzana Hossen, born in 1982 in Chittagong, completed her Professional Program in Photography from Pathshala South Asian Media Institute after completing her Bachelors of Arts from the Chittagong Government College. She is currently a freelance photographer based in Dhaka.
Her works have been exhibited worldwide including Chobi Mela of Bangladesh in 2011, Hong Kong International Photo Festival “Voice of Tacitness: Asian Women Photography” in 2014, Women as Witness, New York 2015, Leymosun Art Center in Girne 2016, DOK Foto Festival of Norway and many more.
Sadia Marium
Sadia Marium, born in 1982, is an independent photographer based in Dhaka and her practice pollinates with the process of creating photographs, videos, alternative printing methods, enactment of text and sound. Sadia studied Professional Photography at Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, Dhaka, Bangladesh and is currently teaching the “Darkroom practice” course at the same institute.
She has participated in numerous exhibitions, noteworthy of them are “Convergence” at Container Village in the Lumix Photo Festival in Germany (2018), “PIXELATION V & VI” in 2017 and “ERROR” in 2016 by Britto Arts & Trusts and “Days Untitled” that was exhibited in the Chobi Mela VIII in 2015. She was also part of the residency program “ASA-SouthNorth Internship Program” in Berlin.
Though Photography was their primary tools of expression, its limitation inspired them to explore “Performance art”.
The two freelance photographers started to working in-group dealing with contents such as identity, body, symbols, violence against women and gender.
Work Title: Paridhan Chakra
Duration: 3 hours
‘Paridhan Chakra’ reminisces on the gruesome events of the Bengali New Year celebration of 2014 where several women were sexually harassed and assaulted in broad daylight on the streets in front of thousands of public. The groups who were responsible got away with it on the pretext that it is indeed women who bring their own danger through their actions based on their attire or behavior.
‘Paridhan Chakra’ mocks the patriarchal society’s repetitive process of accusing women for their own share of violence in a sarcastic way. Two women, standing side by side, repeat the activity of wearing dresses; from usual everyday salwar-kameez or sarees to black socks, black hand-gloves. Their individual identities, faces, bodies disappear along with their colorful dresses and they turn into big black sacks. A communicative approach was taken by collecting the audiences’ statements and comments collected from social media which were printed and installed in a circular form creating “The Venus” symbol.
