Joydeb Roaja

Joydeb (b.1973, Khagrachari, Bangladesh) has an interconnected performance, painting, and drawing practice that highlights the challenging social and political landscape of Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts. The area is home to eleven indigenous groups including Roaza’s community, the Tripura. His works are tied to the experience of indigeneity, often emphasising the deep and symbiotic connection of these groups with their lands as well as the fight for recognition and rights in a state that has denied them. In Roaza’s line drawings, figures are entwined with the natural world and at times, share the pictorial plane with army personnel, guns, and ammunition recalling the historic military occupation of the hill areas. This presence remains imprinted in the communities’ collective memory with Roaza’s works forming an empowering call to demand autonomy and ensure preservation of these minority cultures.