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‘Looking Back Forward_Quip Nayr’ is based on the Aymara concept of time and space called ‘qhip nayr’. As the Bolivian sociologist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui refers to it, ‘quip nayr’ is a way of looking into the past to orient your path to the future. I use this concept to reflect on processes of change, concerning language, identity and place. Expressing identity on fabric recuperates my ancestors’ tradition from the Andean region in Abya Yala (Latinamerica). The layering of textiles is inspired by Gloria Anzaldúa, who uses fabrics as a synonym to talk about the construction of identity in her concept ‘Haciendo Caras’.

In a set of para-fictional texts which interweaves the life of cultural historian Dr. Shahidul Zaman with key moments in the ruptured history of Bangladesh, the artist Omar A. Chowdhury, builds a reflexive mirror to examine the nature of memory, of historiography, and the processes of the art system. Recounting the history of an exhibition that was censored and closed down in Dhaka in 2016, Chowdhury constructs a narrative that doubles back on itself along multiple axes of the personal and public as he and Dr. Zaman delve into the uncertainties in the presentation of identity, the recollection of history, and the compromises of political commitment.