Exhibition Details

We Shall Defy includes photographs by Alam and his community of artists and activists, as well as illustrations, verse, and more by three additional artists: Amal Akash, a singer-songwriter and visual and performance artist based in Dhaka; Alam’s niece Sofia Karim, an architect and visual artist in London; and New York-based filmmaker, writer, photographer, and installation artist Naeem Mohaiemen and the King Kortobbyo team. Together, their work explores the turbulent path that Alam and his team have navigated in their struggle to achieve justice and equity.
The primary focus of the exhibition is a series of 9 large banners that are inspired by an ancient form of Bangla art—Patachitara, cloth scrolls containing detailed depictions of mythical narratives. The banners in the exhibition are printed with photographs by Alam and 14 artists, thereby integrating the contemporary and ancient methods of storytelling while expanding on the turbulent experiences of the Bangladeshi people. Panels containing verses with illustrations by Amal Akash and texts by Alam bring context to each banner.

Occupying about 80 feet of wall space, the banners will shed light on a variety of subjects, from migration to sex workers (with an image of a former sex worker who used her savings to establish an orphanage for children of other sex workers), to the lives of indigenous people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, the disappearance of indigenous leader Kalpana Chakma, effectuated by the Bangladesh military, and the photography-based institutions that Alam has created, among other topics.

Elsewhere in the exhibition, a 23-foot wall contains an illustration board with texts and sketches by Sofia Karim that represent Alam’s life in the Keraniganj jail and a multi-media timeline by Naeem Mohaiemen and the King Kortobbyo team that elaborates on the history of photography as a tool for activism.


Shahidul Alam
Photographer, writer, and human rights activist Shahidul Alam has been a long-time campaigner for social justice and has also challenged the global dominance of white western media. Alam’s resistance has been through his art and his activism, but also through the institutions he has built. This has often led to a confrontation with the powerful elite of his native Bangladesh. Over the last three decades, he has had a loaded gun pointed at his head and been stabbed. On 5th August 2018, after a critical interview on Al Jazeera, he was picked up by Bangladeshi security forces, blindfolded, handcuffed and tortured and eventually spent 107 days in incarceration. After a global campaign for his release by more than a dozen Nobel laureates and world personalities, he was released on bail but still faces up to 14 years of imprisonment if convicted. He continues to resist.