Naeem Mohaiemen

Two Meetings and a Funeral, 2017
Multi-channel digital video installation, colour, multi-channel sound, duration: 85 minutes

Naeem Mohaiemen lives and works in New York and Dhaka.
Mohaiemen combines films and essays to research Bangladesh leftist histories– framed by the periods of world socialism and decolonization. He first worked in Pakistan in 1994 while researching an oral history of 1971, and subsequently showed his work in Karachi as part of Lines of Control: Partition as Productive Space.
At LB01, Mohaiemen presented Two Meetings and a Funeral (2017), the three-channel video installation which explores Bangladesh’s historical pivot from the socialist perspective of the 1973 Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) meeting in Algeria to its ideological counterpoint, the emergence of a strong Islamic perspective at the 1974 Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) meeting in Lahore. Centred on Bangladesh’s navigation of these two historic meetings, as well as its fight for United Nations recognition (vetoed by China, acting as a proxy for Pakistan), the project considers the erosion of the idea of the Third World as a potential space for decolonialism, liberation theology and socialism. In particular, it looks at how a transnational Islamic ‘ummah’ concept was used against socialist forces.
Mohaiemen’s work has shown at Chobi Mela, Dhaka; Mahmoud Darwish Museum, Ramallah; Ashkal Alwan, Beirut; Kiran Nadar Museum, Noida; Sharjah Biennale, UAE; documenta 14, Kassel/Athens; and Museum of Modern Art, New York. In Dhaka, he was a member of activist groups Drishtipat (2001-2011), and Alal O Dulal (2011-2016), and in New York of South Asian Magazine for Action & Reflection (1995-99), 3rdi South Asian Film (2000-04), and Visible Collective (2002-07)