11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

লীন , Of River and Lost lands (details) 2011–ongoing / Inkjet prints on archival paper / 12 prints: 50.8 × 63.5cm (10 prints); 50.8 x 40.64cm; 50.8 x 76.2cm / Purchased 2024 with funds from an anonymous donor through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / Images courtesy: The artist and Shrine Empire Gallery, New Delhi NOTES 1 Sarker Protick, ‘ লীন , Of River and Lost Lands’, Sarker Protick , <sarkerprotick.com/ Of-River-and-Lost- Lands>, viewed May 2024. 2 The artist notes the influence of The New Topographics school of photography and its depiction of the man-made on natural landscapes. 3 Protick, ‘ লীন , Of River and Lost Lands’. 4 Protick, ‘ লীন , Of River and Lost Lands’. Sarker Protick practises a form of photography based on dedicated studies of subjects connected to environmental histories and altering landscapes. As a teacher, curator and multidisciplinary artist, Protick has contributed to building poetic visual memories of Bengal, leading him to diverse parts of Bangladesh and across its border with India. Protick’s long-term engagement with the waterways of the Padma River is a preoccupation that has spanned his career. Created over 13 years, his ‘ লীন , Of River and Lost lands’ 2011–ongoing series of photographs chronicles a web of narratives across time and place to reveal what Protick describes as a ‘relationship of intimacy and ruthlessness between nature and humans on the margins’. 1 The Padma River branches from the Ganges, close to the border of India, and continues through Bangladesh to join the vast river systems that flow into the Bay of Bengal. In the 1960s, the Farakka Barrage was built on the Ganges in West Bengal, India, a short distance from the Bangladeshi border. Together with periodic flooding, the barrage’s control of water flow has had devastating effects on the Padma River, resulting in decades of widespread erosion, broader environmental changes and large numbers of ecological refugees. ‘ লীন , Of River and Lost lands’ captures the incongruous river system and reveals the human presence playing quiet witness in the background. 2 The series is split across several groups of images that ruminate on different energies and aspects of the changing river environments. While each suite of photographs acts as a different chapter with its own distinctive tone, the groupings eschew a linear temporality, instead presenting a mix of images across intersecting timelines. The disappearance of landscape and life along the vast river system is a continuing theme. As Protick explains: It is a story of loss which begins with a hostile river resulting in devastating frequent erosion. With these occurrences, the landscape disappears and along with it, its many ways of life. Residents witness the river making abrupt changes in its course, drowning their villages, forcing them to migrate to other parts of the banks which too can erode without warning. Overnight, a stretch of land, and with it houses, farmlands, and livestock, will collapse and flow off in different directions. As uncontrolled sand mining proliferates, erosion increases at a fast pace. Now the River is not only a potential source of hostility, but also of casualty. 3 The series muses on notions of time, change and disappearance, reflected in not only the subjects depicted but also the form of the photographs. Locations and perspectives converse as they are interwoven across the series. The abrupt shifts in the river, its people and the man-made and natural structures that continually tussle at its edge are slowed down to moments of stillness, an evocative atmosphere emanating from the tones of the sky, water and riverbanks. In some images, desolate figures or fallen and abandoned structures heighten a sense of monumentality and isolation. Other images are minimalist and abstract, revelling in the emptiness of fleeting moments when weather, water and horizon intermingle — moments after, or immediately before, the next deluge or flood. Protick’s series bears witness to the immense transformations this mighty environment has the power to affect, and the devastation it can leave in its wake. His photographs signal a broader statement of social vulnerability at the edge of environmental neglect, haunted by the presence of extractive industries far from the megacities they service or the wealth they generate. Simultaneously, the series honours the beauty of the region and its transience. In the artist’s words, his photographs exist ‘as the last remnants of these vanished and vanishing lands. Most places seen in these photographs have ceased to exist.’ 4 TARUN NAGESH BORN 1986, DHAKA, BANGLADESH LIVES+WORKS INDHAKA SARKERPROTICK ARTISTS+PROJECTS ASIAPACIFICTRIENNIAL 170 — 171