Monument

"My interest in the issues of memory, archive, surveillance, the panopticon and the politics of representation, is deeply entrenched in the geopolitics and the never-ending conflict that afflicts my native Afghanistan. The relevance of such issues, however, overcome geographical specificities and appeal to a contemporary condition that is globally shared."

Monument takes place at a collective graveyard and memorial, a place where families have gathered the bodies of their loved ones, killed in a suicide bomb attack at a tuition centre, which took more than forty students’ lives. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) the day after the event.

While sensitively depicting the intimate details of a particular site of memorial in Afghanistan, Hazara’s work also functions as a broader meditation on loss and remembrance, the individual and the collective, considering ways that communities come together to grieve, honour, and celebrate lives lost.