Visual artist Sumi Anjuman portrayed the struggles and wounds of women migrant workers in her series ‘Unhealed Beneath Grieving Skies’ currently under way at Chobi Mela International Festival of Photography in the capital.

Her work is part of the exhibition section ‘Rights of Passage’, presented alongside six other artists and curated by Indian photo editor and curator Tanvi Mishra at DrikPath Bhobon at Panthapath.

Her series consists of nine artworks and research materials including the victim’s passport, air tickets, medical reports and death certificates.

Through staged photography, stitched gestures, textual traces and archival fragments, she depicts victims and their families, mostly physically injured.

‘Every year, thousands of women from Bangladesh, burdened by economic precarity, climate-induced loss, and an education system offering no real escape, move to Gulf countries, especially Saudi Arabia, and  they face violence, psychological torment, and sexual violation, some even pay the ultimate price - their life’, said the project note.

One of the photographs shows a toy airplane which symbolises their dream and another shows two children of a migrant worker as they spend time together at a field in absence of their mother.

Sumi’s work was based on research and conversation with women who returned from working in the Gulf and she used stitching to hide their faces.

Sumi is currently based in Dhaka, where she teaches at Counter Foto and holds an MA in Photography and Society from the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague.

The exhibition will end on January 31.