Zakkir Hussain’s current body of works emerge from his need to expose the structural biases that exists in human societies that allows for exploitation of the weak and misrepresentation of their contribution to the larger workings of the system thereby keeping differences in check. Hierarchies have been ruthlessly enforced in different societies historically through ownership, slavery, segregation, profiling and various other covert means, and yet our contemporary knowledge of these systems has not helped us find solutions to these human problems. In fact, what Zakkir Hussain ruthlessly comments on, is the abject apathy that exists today that has only been cemented in place by the popular and digital media. He examines the farce that makes man the guardians of this planet as it is the very exploits of the guardian that has resulted in atrocities such as “nameless people being scattered across the globe, killings in the name of religion, ethnicity, caste....countless trees, birds, insects made extinct, and millions of lives forced into exile from their homeland or murdered.”
The exhibition is aptly titled Translating the Silence, bringing into focus the humungous, and perhaps futile, task of speaking about the silenced. The human body is the protagonist in Zakkir’s explorations on violence, disturbances and prolonged abuse. Employing his distinctive visual language Zakkir produces works that refuse to aestheticize the visual imagery of brutality brought upon the body of the marginalised. Zakkir yet again reinforces his identity a prolific image-maker who upholds the spirit of an iconoclast.