Torn’ explores mental sides of the ordinary patients in Bangladesh during covid outbreak, where I staged situations that are absent in mainstream media. As my primary research, I have collected newspaper images of the suffering of ordinary people in hospitals and reconstructed the situation in my pop-up studio at home. I have started archiving the newspaper-cuttings as a collage with my staged photographs, but also realized that the mainstream media often ignores the complexity of pandemic in local perspective. Working class societies are facing multiple layers of problem including social negligence, food crisis and domestic violence due to growing fear and anxiety on the spread of virus.

The world after covid 19 for the commoners would probably not be the same, and perhaps, the ‘new normal’ would not have anything expected. My experience with the pandemic is personal as I had to stay in the hospital with my dear ones who all were covid affected, including me. One died and the others had no time for grief as they had to continue the battle with deadly virus. At one point, all these moments became unreal to me when white dressed health workers looked like aliens of science-fiction with no facial expression or emotion. I found chaos in light and order in the dark when my vision was subsequently affected by an eye-inflammatory disease. It was a muddle of pathological motion and sentimental moments. During my hospital days, I started seeing mental anxiety and trauma of ordinary people but not only for the disease, also for growing social frictions, fear mongering and inadequate care. Torn attempts to be a testament, collective memory or personal moments during the pandemic which are often unexplainable or psychosomatic experience.