বিদীর্ণ / Fragile

[2025 – Ongoing]

Md Fazla Rabbi Fatiq documents sluice gates across Bangladesh that have collapsed under decades of neglect, corruption and mismanaged development.

Most of Bangladesh sits in the world’s largest river delta, with roughly eighty per cent of its land low-lying floodplain. Sluice gates—movable steel and concrete barriers installed at the junctions of rivers and canals—are indispensable infrastructure that regulate water levels for irrigation, releasing flood water during the monsoon and, in coastal regions, blocking saltwater that renders farmland barren. When they fail, they cause crop loss and water scarcity, degrade fisheries and undo the livelihoods of farming communities.

These sluice gates were promised to farming communities as guarantees of water security, yet are left unfinished or damaged beyond repair. Here, the artist renders them as bearing witness to a broken infrastructure of flow, where the failure of a gate is also the failure of a promise.