Commission
Water Commission
For the first Prix Pictet the theme was Water, and Pictet & Cie supported the UK charity WaterAid that manages projects in the developing world which help communities gain access to clean, safe water, and sanitation and hygiene education.
Building on Pictet & Cie’s support for WaterAid’s work in Bangladesh, shortlisted artist Munem Wasif was commissioned to visit the Satkhira region of south-west Bangladesh where there are severe water issues and where WaterAid is working to introduce water and sanitation facilities to the area of Shyamnagar Upazilla.
The powerful images that Munem Wasif made for this commission were first shown at the exhibition Salt Water Tears: Lives Left Behind in Satkhira, Bangladesh at the Mall Galleries in London. Writing in the catalogue Leo Johnson, sustainability adviser for the Prix Pictet says:
What he [Wasif] has offered us in this series is a gaze that is without apparent register, atonal on the topic of grief, neutral on the subject of child mortality. What he has offered, in other words, is not just his gaze. It is also a rendering, in its dispassion, of ours. And the cumulative force of the images is this, not just to evoke our response but to awaked us to a harder reality, the fact that we do not respond.
Listen to Munem Wasif interview with Mark Coles on The Strand, BBC World Service.
Click here to read about the Commission Exhibition
