Buried Waters

Artist’s Note

in this visual poem, i return to my journeys with dhaka’s rivers, all of which are under unceasing violence from land developers filling the rivers with sand to produce saleable urban land. the cracked lines in this piece were digitally traced from a photograph i took when walking along sand plots on the turag river. i grew up close to the turag river and have walked the length of it over the years. as a child, i would accompany father to the temporary fish markets along the river; though, now the river is ecologically devastated and its fishing communities can only fish there for a few months. since i am reflecting on my relationship to bengal delta’s rivers while standing on the unceded homelands of nipmuc peoples, i placed the traced lines on a piece of paper that represents my being-with the land here. this paper was created, under the guidance of an elder, as part of our meditations on land kinship with a land-loving collective. the texture carries the marks of local grass that make this paper. folded within this process of re-engaging with photographs and making papers, i wrote and integrated a poem into the visual.