Portraits of Resilience

Through her evocative portraits, Ashfika Rahman unravels the persisting crimes against Bangladesh’s indigenous community.

- Ashfika Rahman

Ashfika Rahman A multidisciplinary artist, her practice involves extensive research on power and structure of society and social issues. Currently she teaches at the Pathshala South Asian Media Institute in Dhaka.

When I was a child, my mother, a social activist, brought a young indigenous girl to our house. She was a sexual violence survivor who was in search of a shelter home and was as old as my sister and I. Perhaps as a result of how rape survivors were portrayed within our community and in the media, we assumed she would behave in an unusual manner. But after spending a few days with her, my sister and I realised that she was an ordinary girl, like us. Our interactions left a deep impression on me. Decades later, when I was studying photography at the Pathshala South Asian Media Institute in Dhaka, I was asked to work on a personal project. I instantly knew I had to chronicle the indigenous community that the girl belonged to. In 2016, I began work on Rape is Political, a series of portraits of indigenous rape survivors residing near the Khagrachari hills. The area is located closer to the complex borders of India, Bangladesh and Myanmar.