Keynote

VLC Forum 2024: Naeem Mohaiemen: Prisoners of Shothik Itihash

Oct 25, 2024

6:30–8:00pm ET

The New School, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center/Parsons
Kellen Auditorium, Ground Floor, 66 Fifth Avenue
New York City

The phrase correct history has many meanings. An early, sardonic use can be found in Naeem Mohaiemen’s 2014 exhibition and book Prisoners of Shothik Itihash (Prisoners of Correct History), presented at the Kunsthalle Basel and curated by Adam Szymczyk. For the VLC Forum 2024, Mohaiemen revisits this project in the present, inviting us to think about the corrosive state-enforced obedient and hagiographic history being churned out of universities and publishing houses—a form of historiography that insists on a single narrative at every bend of Bangladesh’s journey since the partition of British India—while considering the power-pleasing mania for enforcing “shothik itihash” (correct history).

The Vera List Center Forum 2024 is presented as part of the center’s 2022–2024 Focus Theme Correction*. It is curated by Eriola Pira with Carin Kuoni, with research support by Ariana Kallinga and is convened with the support of Tabor Banquer, Re’al Christian, and Adrienne Umeh.

This event is supported by the Barbara Jordan Lectures: The State of Democracy and the Helen Shapiro Lectureship fund.

The Fall 2024 programs of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School are generously supported by members of the Vera List Center Board, individual donors as well as the following institutional funders:

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
The Boris Lurie Art Foundation/The Schaina and Josephina Lurje Memorial Foundation
Dayton Foundation
Mellon Foundation
Native Arts and Cultures Foundation
New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature
Terra Foundation for American Art
and The New School