Monon Muntaka: Blending Diversity Into Visual Storytelling

Monon Muntaka is a self-taught Bangladeshi artist and filmmaker from Dhaka. She works on gender and other social issues and cultural diversity through the lens of cross-disciplinary art. By fusing art and documentation, she aims to spark dialogue and change perceptions through storytelling. Her passion for visual narratives inspires her to explore the many-layered lives of underrepresented people and communities.

As a social commentator, Monon works on issues of women, gender, and culture. Her work often defies convention, moving beyond the centers of film and video art, photography, and mixed media to offer different ways of seeing. Every piece of her work challenges the viewer to see, ask questions, and engage.

Monon's involvement with diverse multi-talented personalities such as artists, curators, writers, filmmakers, musicians, educators, and scholars greatly influenced her life. She always sought a medium to talk about things she faced or related to. With the urge to tell stories, she found the visual medium to be the most powerful way to express herself. Monon participated in different exhibitions, fellowships, art residencies, and collaborations nationally and internationally. She is an Adenauer and CCP Fellow. Also, VII Academy Alumni. Winner of "Breaking the Silence," short film grant competition in 2022, 12th Photoffee Fine Art Photographer of the Year (2022), and Prince Claus Seed Awards recipient in 2023.

In 2021, Monon embarked on one of her most intriguing projects while traveling to Dinajpur. Participating in an artist-led initiative called Kahichal, she began documenting the lives of Oraon, Marwari, and Bihari communities. What started as a simple research and exploratory activity slowly became a deep artistic process. Her artistic journey spans from 2021 until March 2023, continuously documenting these communities and exploring the layers of coexistence.

With her camera, Monon documented the nuanced ways in which different societies coexist over the ages, encompassing various genders, religions, castes, and languages. Though vastly different, these communities have managed to sustain and survive through the unifying bond of shared experiences, respect, and resilience. The spirit of this coexistence became a recurrent theme in her work, capturing the essence of unity within diversity.

As an artist, Monon drew inspiration from the colors, textures, and fading architectural details of people's homes within these communities. Such elements served as metaphors for the vanishing identities and stories that stand to be lost without proper documentation. In addition to preserving these narratives, her works have also amplified their voices and bridged the gap between contemporary society and memory.

The idea that surfaced from this project reveals Monon's fundamental artistic belief: documenting with compassion and transforming that documentation into visuals that invite contemplation. As the artist, she views storytelling not only as representation but as a form of dialogue that compels the audience to engage with what is typically overlooked.

Monon's work is artistically and socially significant because she seeks to safeguard cultural differences using modern methods. She remains a work in progress as a visual storyteller shaped by deep curiosity, compassion, and a desire to narrate stories that have been muted.

Through her practice, Monon Muntaka stands as a living testament to the ability of art to capture the essence of a place and its people. She transforms neglected and overlooked corners of society into places of dialogue, transformation, and reverence. She is crafting her story frame by frame, brushstroke by brushstroke, and community by community.