Censorship always leaves traces. It reconfigures whatever it operates on, even if it is ‘unsuccessful’ in suppressing artistic expressions in their entirety. Rather than destroying artworks, images or otherwise, censorship seems to break the bonds among people, among communities.
Multiplicity comprises the technical drawings of various different kinds of dumplings from all around the world in the form of simplified and abstracted images. The piece represents the diversity and simplicity of dumplings as a series of images.
Sofia Karim first produced ‘Samosa Packets’ in 2018 for a campaign to protest the arrest of Bangladeshi photographer and activist Shahidul Alam. They went on to become the artistic expression of a solidarity movement against widespread human rights violations in India and Bangladesh. The movement, called ‘Turbine Bagh’, continues its campaign, especially for journalists and political prisoners who are deprived of their freedom of expression.
As the inequalities widen the gaps, the art world continues to ponder and produce on issues of human rights, feminism, and injustices. Yet, seeing begins from the one closest to you.
Cartoonists resort to indirect narratives on subjects they otherwise find suffocating; they make references and associations by experimenting with allegory and abstraction.
8 MINS
