‘The idea of Bangladesh remains contingent and contested. Cultural workers can reinforce essentialist ideas around this, or they can choose to challenge majoritarian views,’ wrote the artist in the introduction of Midnight’s Third Child (2023), a new anthology of his essays. As art scenes from the Global South assert their presence, Mohaiemen’s writing and his essayistic films on leftwing struggles in the region offer a blueprint to imagining a new structure beyond the established neoliberal norm. His work screens internationally, with fans in activist-academic circles as much as gallerygoers. Most notably Jole Dobe Na (Those Who Do Not Drown) (2020) was a key moment of the Gwangju Biennale this year, while the newer, more personal feature film Grace (2022) premiered at his solo at Colby College Museum of Art, in Maine, which closed in April; the Documenta 14-commissioned (and Turner Prize-nominated) Two Meetings and a Funeral film (2017) was shown at Kölnischer Kunstverein. ‘The people, projects, and conversations in this anthology frequently take on a role of speaking back to power,’ he wrote. The same can be said of the rest of his oeuvre.