Shared Ecologies is pleased to announce Zishaan Akbar Latif as the awardee for the Shared Ecologies Photo Grant 2022-23. With the grant, Zishaan will be furthering his investigation into the unique topography and climate of Assam, as he addresses the ecological realities of vulnerable communities in the region who have been termed “Climate Refugees” with time. The project eloquently raises the questions of hostility surrounding belonging and identity, ecological specificity, and existing precariousness to prove one’s association to a piece of land as the only concrete mark of their authenticity. Zishaan, having previously worked in the region, is keen to initiate a fresh discourse that highlights the cause and impact of seasonal flooding in the unique border state and its undisputed connection to citizenship.

Through photographs, video, and audio testimonials, Zishaan looks to probe and truly comprehend the extent of the climate refugee in present-day Assam, with land and identity politics playing out in real-time, which have a lasting psychological impact. The artist also emphasizes the three ‘sensory mediums’ as essential to communicating people’s existential battle, to take charge of their own narrative. The Jury appreciated the layers of intersection being considered that Zishaan wishes to address through recorded local folklore complimenting the ecological specificities of the region, with a multimedia output, in a region where visual records can be precarious. They noted his treatment of brutality in the ‘natural’, particularly the Brahmaputra and the embankments in Assam as violent, unpredictable forces that speak of uncertainty and the fragility of existence. While the ‘treacherous ecology’ of Assam is not new, his treatment through this project in its escalation brings a new dimension to these realities. Zishaan’s proposal attempts to counter the brutality of a lived reality through the poetics of its folklore.

This grant will help Latif continue his work in Assam, where he began, spending time in earnest from 2017 to 2019 documenting the ‘Withering’ of Asia’s largest riverine island, an ecological marvel – Majuli, to people grappling to prove their citizenship through debilitating floods in 2019 and 2021, to now proposing to initiate a new discourse that highlights the cause and impact of seasonal flooding that gives birth to a “climate refugee” in this very unique border state.