Shabnam (2023) presents a cinematic dramaturgy on muslin—the fine weave produced in undivided Bengal during the Mughal empire [MOU1] and then transferred into the hands of colonial mercantilism and British company rule in the nineteenth century. The portraiture of masterful weavers’ ties into a materialist inquiry of cotton as a body in motion from raw to processed. The weavers’ loom emerges as an instrument that echoes traumatic pasts and unsettles imperial records frozen in museum archives and libraries in England; it also invites examination into global flows of garment trade in the present day from Bangladesh to the world.- Sharjah Art Biennial ‘25