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ABSTRACT
Recently, two deadly garment factory disasters in Dhaka, Bangladesh – the 2012 Tazreen Fashions factory fire (117 killed; over 200 injured) and the 2013 collapse of Rana Plaza, an eight story complex including garment factories (1,135 killed, over 2,500 injured) – inspired a series of artworks addressing globalisation, gendered labour exploitation, memorialisation, and the power of empathy. This essay explores the work of four visual artists: Robin Berson, Taslima Akhter, Reetu Sattar, and Dilara Begum Jolly. Each engages in physically and/or emotionally challenging creative processes, including enactments of repetitive garment labour, weaving the names and faces of deceased workers into textiles, and displaying personal effects such as family photographs salvaged from the ruins of the destroyed factories. In this way, the artists call attention to the human cost of so-called ‘fast fashion’ and agitate for moral responsibility in the face of these disasters. More universally, this essay offers examples of how visual art can expose the causal dimensions of structural violence and socio-economic power imbalances while also memorialising, expressing solidarity, and aiding with community healing.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19472498.2024.2327222
Notes
1. Bocella, ‘From Triangle to Tazreen’.
2. Saxena, Ed, Labor, Global Supply Chains, and the Garment Industry.
3. Alandro-Vico, Semova, and Bailey, ‘Artivism: A New Educative Language,’ p. 9–18; Sandoval and Latorre ‘Chicana/o Artivism,’ p. 82–83.
4. Turner and Webb, Art and Human Rights, p. 36–37.
5. Ahmed ‘Happy Objects,’ p. 29.
6. Doss, ‘Affect,’ p. 4–5.
7. Rizvi, ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Secondary Witness, p. 5.
10. Mediating Memory in the Museum, p. 40–41.
11. Sherlock, ‘Piecework: Home, Factory, Studio, Exhibit,’ p. 1–8.
12. Sherlock, ibid, p. 8.
13. In 2016 the industry was valued at 25 billion (Rina Chandran, ‘Three Years after Rana Plaza Disaster, Has Anything Changed?,’ Reuters (April 21, 2016): http://www.reuters.com/article/us-bangladesh-garments-lessons-analysis-idUSKCN0XJ02G)
14. Saxena, Labor, Global Supply Chains and the Garment Industry, p. 1.
15. ‘Fast fashion’ refers to garments rapidly designed and cheaply produced, and marketed to consumers, who discard with unprecedented turnover.
16. Blair, Anner, Blasi, ‘Sweatshops and the Search for Solutions,’ p. 29–57.
18. Saxena, ibid, 2.
19. Saxena, Labor, Global Supply Chains and the Garment Industry, p. 5; Siddiqi,”Spaces of Exception,” p. 100–101. See also Saxena’s essay in this edition.
20. Munni, ‘RMG workers lose $500 m in wages’https://thefinancialexpress.com.bd/trade/rmg-workers-lose-500m-in-wages-in-three-months-1597115935Accessed 04/11/2021.
21. Such practices are also referred to as ‘relational’ and ‘conversational’ art. Conversation Pieces: Community + Communication in Modern p. 9–10.
22. For more on Berson’s process, see: Islam, Akhter, and Ahmed, trans. ‘Triangle to Tazreen and Rana Plaza,’ http://www.athousandcries.org/cul/Ariful.html, Accessed 04/11/2021.
23. MacDowell, Worrall, and Swanson, et. al, eds., Quilts and Human Rights p. 182.
24. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), 24.
25. Regarding the Pain, 26.
26. Recuber, p.33.
27. Roy, ‘Why the “Eternal Embrace” Photograph From Bangladesh Haunts Its Photographer the Most,’ HuffPost (Dec 06, Roy Citation2017): https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bangladesh-factory-fire-photograph_b_3355872
28. Conversation with Taslima Akhter. See also Akhter ‘Remember the Dead, Fight for the Living,’ p. 9–10. Poulomi Saha briefly discusses the exhibition. However, although she cites Berson’s role, she does not address Akhter’s role in the project, Saha, An Empire of Touch, p. 247–250.
29. Making Kantha, Making Home, p. 8–9.
30. Businessman and owner of Rana Plaza, Sohel Rana is widely blamed for the disaster, for which he has yet to be indicted.
31. Bryan-Wilson, Fray, 264.
33. MacDowell et al., Quilts and Human Rights, 108.
35. Linda Pershing, The Ribbon around the Pentagon (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press) p. 3–5; Kirsty Robertson. “Quilts for the Twenty-First Century: Activism in the Expanded Field of
Quilting” In Handbook of Textiles, eds. Janis Jefferies, Hazel Clark and Diana Wood
Conroy. London: Bloomsbury Press, 2014, pp. 197–210.
36. ‘Threads of Hope: The Living Healing Quilt Project,’ ibid. p. 97.
37. MacDowell et al, ibid, xv.
38. Mallgrave and Ikonomou, Empathy, Form, and Space, p. 17–29; 89–125.
39. McLaren, The Art of Empathy, p. 18.
40. Bryan-Wilson, Fray, 185.
41. Tangled Memories, p. 13; Machida, Unsettled Visions, p. 130.
42. At the time, general consensus was that the number of fatalities was 1134. This has since been revised to include one more. See for example: Paul, ‘Bangladesh charges 38 with murder’ https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-bangladesh-disaster-trial-idUKKCN0ZY1GXFor a more detailed description of the exhibition, see the following reviews: Betancourt, ‘Atlas Dhaka: A Changing Picture,’ https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/atlas-dhaka-changing-picture-63543/; Murtuja, ‘Reading a Catastrophe’ https://departmag.com/index.php/en/detail/349/Reading-a-catastrophe-set-against-causalityandcasualty-by-number
43. Murtuja, ‘Reading a Catastrophe’
45. Showtime Desk,” Reetu Sattar”
46. For more on the performance, see Reetu Sattar’s website: https://reetusattar.com/works/performance/1134-numbers-not-lives/
47. For a more detailed examination of Jolly’s garment-factory art, see Belli Bose ‘Made in Rana Plaza’
48. Selim, ‘Magic for Change,’ pages not numbered; Zaman, ‘Performing the Self,’ p. 90.
49. Robertson Citation2014, ibid, p. 197.
50. During the Pakistan period (1947–1971), the Pakistani government marginalised Bangla, the regional language of Bangladesh (then, East Pakistan) in favour Urdu (the regional language of then West Pakistan). On February 21st, 1952, a group of Bengali intellectuals assembled to participate in the Bangla Language Movement. They were shot and killed by Pakistani police and are honoured for their martyrdom every February 21st. Black represents writing and white both paper and the colour of mourning. See: Naznin, ‘Uphold significance of 21st February’ https://www.observerbd.com/news.php?id=244256 Accessed 05/06/2021.
51. Diez, untitled catalogue entry, pages unnumbered.
52. Berson and Akhter used the photo transfer process. Jolly wet a Xeroxed poster and pressed it to the surface of the paper to reproduce the image backwards (Sharif, ‘Presence/Absence,’ pages unnumbered.).
53. Showtime Desk, ibid.
54. Ibid.