নিজেরে মাবুদ মনে করে

“নিজেরে মাবুদ মনে করে” critically interrogates the violent hubris of unchecked power. The title, translating to “thinks themselves a God” reflects on the delusions of omnipotence that derive from power without accountability. The installation’s central provocation—a chilling admission, “মাইরাই তো ফেলসি, এখন কি করবা?” (“We have already killed him [the student/protester]; now what will you do?”)—intercepts this audacity, the banality of evil.

Drawing from viral footage from the 2024 July People’s Uprising in Bangladesh, spotlighting the impunity with which high-ranking officials—the prime minister, her ministers, law enforcement officers—deploy violence, the project maps how authority perpetuates itself through spectacle and fear. Stripped of accountability, they wage holy wars on their own people with convictions that border on divine right.

Foregrounding these unguarded moments of arrogance, “নিজেরে মাবুদ মনে করে” confronts the moral void of control systems. Echoing the state of exception, it reiterates: power thrives by stripping its subjects—and itself—of their humanity, implicating us all in its perpetuation.