Biography
Naeem Mohaiemen combines essays, films, drawings and installations to research socialist utopias, incomplete decolonisations, language wars and shifting borders. His work has taken on the state-sanctioned urge to enforce ‘correct history’, decolonial moments that replicate old oppressions in new forms, the obscuring of class as a mode of thinking through the idea of utopia, and the hegemonic and suffocating position of the English language.
Mohaiemen’s solo shows include Moderna Museet, Sweden (2021); MUAC, Seville (2020); Bengal Foundation, Dhaka (2020); Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai (2019); MoMA PS1, New York (2017); Mahmoud Darwish Museum, Ramallah (2017); and Gallery Chitrak, Dhaka (2008). Group shows include Yokohama Triennale (2021); Chobi Mela, Dhaka (2009, 2016, 2019); Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague (2021); Tate Britain, London (2018); Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017); documenta 14 (2017); Marrakech Biennale 6 (2016); 56th Venice Biennale (2015); Dhaka Art Summit (2014); Sharjah Biennial 10 (2011); The Third Line, Dubai (2009); Whitney Biennial of American Art, New York (2006); and Queens Museum of Art, New York (2005).
His work is in the collections of Sharjah Art Foundation; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Kiran Nadar Museum, Delhi; Art Institute of Chicago; Tate Modern, London; MACBA, Barcelona; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoeven; Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; and British Museum, London.
He is the author of Midnight’s Third Child (Nokta, 2022) and Prisoners of Shothik Itihash (Kunsthalle Basel, 2014); editor of Between Ashes and Hope: Chittagong Hill Tracts in the Blind Spot of Bangladesh Nationalism (Drishtipat, 2010); and co-editor (w/ Eszter Szakacs) of Solidarity Must Be Defended (Van Abbe-Salt-Tricontinental-Tranzit, 2022) and (w/ Lorenzo Fusi) of System Error (Papesse, 2007).
Mohaiemen received Andy Warhol Writers Grant (2021) and Guggenheim Fellowship (2014). He was a finalist for the Herb Alpert Award (2019), Turner Prize (2018), Mario Merz Prize (2015) and Vilem Flusser Theory Award (2009).
He has been a member of, Gulf Labor Coalition (2011–2016), Visible Collective (2002–2007), 3rd i South Asian Film (2000–2004) and Samar: South Asian Magazine for Action and Reflection (1995–1999) in New York and the writers’ collectives Alal O Dulal (2011–2016) and Drishtipat (2001–2011) in Dhaka.
Mohaiemen is currently Associate Professor of Visual Arts and Concentration Head of Photography at School of the Arts, Columbia University.
Born in 1969 in London, he currently works in Dhaka and New York.
SAF participation:
March Meeting 2022
Sharjah Film Platform (December 2019)
March Meeting 2018
Active Forms (2018)
Sharjah Biennials 10 and 13
