Discussing Naeem Mohaiemen’s latest three-channel film, Through a Mirror, Darkly (2025). What are the legitimate bounds of student protests? What happens when the state unleashes violence on university campuses? These are pressing questions of the current moment. Returning us to the killing of students by the National Guard at Kent State University, Ohio, and Jackson State, Mississippi in May, 1970, amidst Vietnam anti-war protests, Mohaiemen delves into which deaths are mourned, and the burden of what is forgotten. Through this filmic archive we consider how the present crashes into these historical events, and the conjunctural thinking that enables new meanings and political horizons to emerge. Those who would like to access the film for educational purposes may contact the producers, Artangel: info@artangel.org.uk
Naeem Mohaiemen was born in London, UK, grew up in Dhaka, Bangladesh and currently lives and works in New York, USA. He is Associate Professor of Visual Arts at Columbia University. He works in film, photography, drawing, and writes essays. Forms of utopia-dystopia within families, borders, architecture, and uprisings beginning in South Asia that radiated transnationally after 1945 are all focuses of his work.
His film Two Meetings and a Funeral (2017) premiered at Documenta 14, and was then nominated for the Turner Prize (2018).
