Unsaturn (2018–24)

Unsaturn (2018–24) is an evolving long-form performance in which Omar Chowdhury repeatedly reconstructs the disputed closure of Age of Saturn, his 2016 exhibition in Dhaka. Each manifestation is given a new title and performed as though the story were being told publicly for the first time, whenever Chowdhury feels he is beginning to forget things. Using films, photographs, diagrams, correspondence and shifting recollections, he moves between testimony, confession, accusation and tribunal.

Chowdhury appears simultaneously as witness, unreliable narrator, injured party and author implicated in the conflict. Political censorship, institutional self-protection, collaborators’ withdrawal and disputes over consent remain possible, overlapping causes. Hesitation, humour, contradiction and audience interruption are part of the work: spectators question the evidence, challenge his account and propose how he might proceed. No manifestation arrives at a stable verdict.

From 2023 onwards, recordings of every preceding performance play on monitors beside the live telling. The room therefore contradicts its claim to first disclosure, while Chowdhury’s earlier selves become witnesses the present narrator cannot fully control. As memory recedes, the archive grows. Repetition preserves the event while altering it, testing whether an artwork can survive ethical rupture without turning that rupture into further material.