Shahidul Alam, Tanzim Wahab and Munem Wasif will curate the Biennale 2024
Shahidul Alam, Tanzim Wahab and Munem Wasif have been appointed as curators of the Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie 2024. Together with four other potential curators, they were invited to make a presentation and were able to convince the board and team of the Biennale as well as the directors of the six participating exhibition houses with their approach. With the three curators from Bangladesh, the Biennale is being conceived for the first time by a trio from outside Europe.
The next Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie will take place from 9 March to 19 May 2024. In terms of content, it will deal with diverse forms of collaboration, plurality of voices between the Global North and the Global South.
About the 2024 curatorial team
Shahidul Alam (b. 1955) is a photographer, writer, and curator. A Time Magazine "Person of the Year" 2018 and "National Geographic Explorer at large", Alam obtained a PhD in chemistry before switching to photography. Alam's work has been exhibited in the most prestigious galleries worldwide. He has chaired the international jury of World Press Photo. John Morris described his book “My journey as a witness” as “the most important book ever written by a photographer”. Alam founded the Drik Photo Agency, the Pathshala Media Institute and the Chobi Mela festival of photography and introduced email to Bangladesh.
Tanzim Wahab (b. 1986) is a curator, researcher and lecturer. He is the director of Chobi Mela International Festival of Photography. He has headed several curatorial research projects and exhibitions including Breaking Ground – featuring works of the modernist forerunners of Bengal, (Dis) Place – an exhibition about displacement; looking at the possibility of a post-historical space and function as a symbolic “act of discharge” (with Hadrien Diez) and currently co-editing Primary Documents – The Museum of Modern Arts’ (MoMA) publication series on international art. He has also been a fellow of several programs, including Art for Social Change, United States, and Art Think South Asia (ATSA), India, among others.
Munem Wasif (b. 1983) is an artist, curator and educator. His work examines the concepts of 'documents' and 'archives' and their corresponding influence on politically and geographically complex issues. He has been a co-curator of Chobi Mela since the festival’s eighth edition, and has curated three major survey shows for the festival: of legendary Bangladeshi photographer Anwar Hossain (2015), Nasir Ali Mamun (2017) and Rashid Talukder (2019). In 2020/21, Wasif was a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. His works have been shown in institutions worldwide, including the Centre Pompidou, Whitechapel Gallery, Victoria & Albert Museum, Fotomuseum Winterthur and the Chobi Mela Photo Festival.