This is one of 20 samosa packets gifted to the V&A. Sofia Karim's Turbine Bagh project makes samosa packets in collaboration with activists and artists working globally.

Sofia Karim

Sofia Karim is an architect, artist and activist based in London. She invites artists and thinkers to design samosa packets that engage with local and international struggles, in protest and solidarity. Across South Asia, samosa packets are made from scrap paper, and Sofia's project began when she bought a packet in Dhaka that was made of court listings, detailing cases between the state and its citizens. This struck her as an inadvertent portrait of Bangladesh's broken justice system, and when her uncle Shahidul Alam was imprisoned for his activism, she began making her own packets to tell stories of resistance.

The project is titled Turbine Bagh after a demonstration Karim planned for Tate Modern's Turbine Hall in solidarity with Shaheen Bagh - the vast and historic resistance movement led by Muslim women in 2019, against the Indian government’s Citizenship Amendment Act. The act is part of an alarming rise in anti-minority attitudes and legislation in India. Sofia creates the packets on her mum's printer, from waste paper she has at home (old drawings, song sheets, her daughter's schoolwork), designing each one based on the images, statements and poetry sent to her by artists, writers and campaigners from Bangladesh, India and beyond.

Turbine Bagh has since evolved into a platform for political art and activism, its scope expanding to address a range of interconnected stories and struggles from South Asia, the Middle East and the rest of the world, including the Palestinian struggle against occupation, the Black Lives Matter movement, the plight of Rohingya refugees, and individual cases of illegal imprisonment or censorship.

In 2021, Sofia was a finalist of the V&A's sixth Jameel Prize, and 90 packets were displayed in the exhibition Jameel Prize: Poetry to Politics.

ME.15:11-2022