অঙ্গার . Awngar
Sarker Protick
After Nature, The Ulrike Crespo Photography Prize
at C/O Berlin
14 September 2024 – 22 January 2025
Focusing on the historical region of Bengal, which today includes India and Bangladesh, Bangladeshi photographer Sarker Protick transfers an examination of the colonial history of the British Empire to a photographic study of the present. In this exhibition of new works titled অঙ্গার . Awngar, at C/O Berlin. Protick studies the expansion of the railroad and the development of coal mining in the nineteenth century. While traveling through the region, he created a body of photographs that addresses the global geopolitical and historical dimensions of imperialism and its impact on the climate crisis using a visual language that is precise and atmospheric.
Sarker Protick is one of the first receipients of the After Nature, Ulrilke Crespo Photography Prize which he shares with Laura Huertas Millán. Their prize winning works both look at our relationship to nature that has been shaped by modernity, and its deeper connection to history and our current environment. অঙ্গার . Awngar is Protick’s first exhibition in Germany.
Protick’s unique perspective explores the history of this area and its aftermath in both still and video formats, sharing a range of visuals from the depths of the earth taken in the dark tunnels of the coal mines, to vacant offices where time has stopped, along, and the blaze of fires that have been burning underground for decades, a legacy of bad mining practice.
Traveling extensively through the region, Protick has created a body of photographs that addresses the global, geopolitical, and historical dimensions of imperialism and its impact on the climate crisis, using a visual language that is precise and atmospheric.
“Protick’s productive obsession with the passage of time across all his work comes through particularly powerfully in this project… bringing into focus the indivisible process of industrial production and decay. It is decaying wood and plat matter after all the produces coal, compacted by heat and pressure over millions of years…” — Sria Chatterjee from the exhibition catalog.
Sarker Protick (b. 1986, Bangladesh) is a photographer, lecturer, and curator. He studied at South Asian Media Institute – Pathshala in Dhaka and is currently director of their international program. He is also co-curator of the Chobi Mela Festival, the longest-running photography festival in Asia. His works often thematize the transience of time and focus on Bangladesh and the historic region of Bengal. His work has frequently been shown in international exhibitions as well as winning several fellowships and prizes. Protick was a Foam Talent and received a Magnum Foundation grant. He lives and works in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
More works by Sarker Protick can be found on this site and on his website at
www.sarkerprotick.com
The After Nature . Ulrike Crespo Photography Prize is a joint project of the C/O Berlin Foundation and the Crespo Foundation. Every year, the prize enables the realization of two research-intensive projects and honors artists or groups over the age of 35 who explore new concepts of nature in photography and visual media through their work. The prize carries a cash award of 40,000 euros for each winner as well as an exhibition at C/O Berlin with an accompanying publication. The exhibitions then travel to the Open Space of the Crespo Foundation in Frankfurt am Main. see more at C/O Berlin.
