What Came Before

After the Turner Prize nod, NAEEM MOHAIEMEN is all the global Contemporary art world can talk about. He tells JYOTI DHAR how Satyajit Ray novels and old magazines shaped his oeuvre

“Do you notice anything strange about this photograph?” asks the ever inquisitive and quick-witted artist Naeem Mohaiemen. A small group of us have gathered at a philosopher’s home on our way back from a curatorial conference in Kolkata. Mohaiemen—whose practice often incorporates films, photographs, and installations—has ushered us into a room to analyse a black-and-white image of what we presume to be a family portrait of a mother and son; the woman is seated and the man is standing next to her. As we peer closely, looking for evidence of the uncanny, it becomes apparent that this is an example of ‘death photography’. The lady in the portrait has passed away; her corpse has been dressed and propped up, only to be recorded one last time. This momentary gesture of foregrounding and questioning the historical record, listening to the silence of an archive while asking what stories have been left untold, and appreciating the slippage between fact and fiction that both photography and film allow for, gives us a glimpse into some of Mohaiemen’s interminable preoccupations.