Ai Weiwei’s Rohingya (2021): A Rohingya Critique and Community Review of Representation

Rohingyatographer
1 day ago
8 min read

By Ahtaram Shin, Maung Emdadul Hasan and Sahat Zia Hero. Edited by David Palazón.

Produced with the support of the Global Statelessness Fund.

For a stateless people, the image is often the only site of citizenship we possess. In the absence of a sovereign state to recognise our rights, visual representation becomes a strategic tool for political survival. This dynamic is best understood through what Ariella Azoulay terms the civil contract of photography, a framework in which the photographic act creates a space of civil relations independent of state power.

Ai Weiwei’s 2021 documentary, Rohingya, emerges at the volatile intersection of high art, global humanitarianism, and the digital distribution of suffering. While ostensibly intended to foster global empathy, the film serves as a critical site where the aesthetic mastery of a global celebrity artist meets the lived reality of the world’s most persecuted community.

Our core argument is one of caution: while visibility is frequently equated with humanitarian aid, representation without participation risks becoming a sophisticated form of erasure. When our identity is used to serve global brands, whether artistic or humanitarian, while we remain in a state of protracted vulnerability, the civil contract is effectively broken. This review is not merely an aesthetic critique: it is grounded in a community-based evaluative framework, drawing on a comprehensive survey of Rohingya youth across the 33 camps of Cox’s Bazar. The survey included 18 questions, organized into 6 thematic sections, with engagement reaching a peak of 193 participants on some questions. All response options were recorded, including those that received zero votes, ensuring a complete and transparent representation of the community’s voice.

Ai Weiwei’s choice of an observational, un-narrated style in Rohingya is a strategic aesthetic decision with profound ethical implications for us, the subjects. By employing a silent camera-eye, the film eschews traditional narration to focus on the daily rituals of the camp. Media critics often praise this purity, yet the community notes a technical stagnancy where many shots last for long time from the same angle, creating a repetitive visual field. For those of us behind the wire, this silence feels less like tribute and more like documentation of bare life, life that is included in the political realm only through its exclusion and abandonment to the power of death.

The amplification of the refugee narrative through Ai Weiwei’s global prominence further complicates this gaze. While his name and platform bring visibility, they risk decontextualising the specific political causes of the genocide. The focus on our biological survival reduces us to what Achille Mbembe terms a death-world population. In these spaces, necropolitics, the study of how sovereign power dictates who may live and who must die, transitions from the biopolitical mandate of making die/letting live to a regime of making live/letting die. By framing our existence through the silent eye, the film documents survival at the outer edge of life without acknowledging the sovereign power that manufactures this exclusion.

“The film is functional, but it feels repetitive because many of the shots last for nearly 30 seconds from the same angle,” said a survey participant.

The meticulous focus on daily rituals risks inadvertently normalising the small doses of death that define our existence. When systemic neglect and the absence of political rights are framed as a meditative aesthetic experience, the visceral reality of our struggle is transformed into a commodity for the global art consumer. Empathy becomes a substitute for political action, and the silent eye becomes a tool that documents our exclusion rather than our agency.

The question of who holds the camera is politically significant. In the context of international NGO partnerships, the production of Rohingya reveals a stark representational void. While the film bears our name, the creative and linguistic mediators were entirely outsiders. The production was facilitated by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and key roles were filled by individuals such as Shahidul Haque and Md Rafique.

Shahidul Haque’s involvement is particularly significant. As a former Foreign Secretary of Bangladesh during the 2017 crisis, he was the primary architect of policies classifying Rohingya arrivals as “forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals” (FDMN) rather than refugees. This designation limited legal recognition, curtailed asylum claims, and left the Rohingya in a precarious limbo, restricting work, mobility, and access to state protection. Later, as a Senior Advisor to the IOM, Haque became directly involved in the facilitation of the film, placing him in a dual role of authority over the very population whose narratives the film seeks to present. In effect, the film’s production is entangled with the bureaucratic and structural forces that maintain Rohingya statelessness.

“Rohingya photographers, videographers, and volunteers should have been involved in the filmmaking process to make it truly effective,” mentioned a survey participant.

Additionally, the use of non-native translators, such as Collins Santhanasamy and Pragna Jui Chakma, results in filtering our voices through multiple layers of external interpretation. Without native Rohingya mediators, the cultural nuances, internal resistance, and political subtexts of our speech are flattened, reinforcing the image of a passive, voiceless victim. As our survey confirms, 98.26% of participants believe Rohingya should have had key creative roles, underlining the community’s demand for representational sovereignty.

The Rohingya youth survey serves as an act of civil negotiation and subjugated knowledge. By polling participants living in the camps, we move from being objects of the camera to critics of the narrative. Total questions numbered 18, categorized into 6 thematic sections, with engagement reaching up to 193 participants in the highest response questions. All response options were included to ensure transparency and a complete representation of community choice. The findings reveal a community deeply engaged yet structurally excluded:

Thematic Area	Key Statistical Finding	Community Sentiment/Implication
Awareness	95.09% had not heard of the film	Highlights the massive disconnect between global art and the subjects themselves
Authorship	98.26% believe Rohingya should have had key creative roles	Strong demand for representational sovereignty and agency
Impact of Agency	98.28% believe Rohingya involvement would have significantly changed the film	External gaze misses critical nuances of resilience and internal resistance
Overall Rating	73.28% rated the film as "Excellent"	Visibility is appreciated despite deep critiques of production

This paradox is striking: while the film is appreciated for visibility and artistic quality, distribution excludes the community. 83.90% believe the Rohingya community is the primary audience, yet the very people it depicts often cannot access it.

The film’s inaccessibility to its primary subjects reveals a cruel irony. Platforms like Vimeo and Avant Arte require high-speed internet and passwords, which are incompatible with camp connectivity and digital literacy constraints. The Vimeo password acts as a symbolic border, echoing the barbed wire that surrounds us. Many participants reported difficulty or impossibility in accessing the film, generating a clear demand: it should be freely available on YouTube.

“As a Rohingya person, I am proud of the filmmaker for highlighting our situation, but the film must be made available on YouTube,” a participant said during the survey.

Barriers to representational justice include: technological requirements incompatible with camp connectivity, language and platform literacy challenges, and a model where the humanitarian brand serves external legitimacy rather than community benefit.

The intolerable gaze manifests when the camera lingers on grief without offering political agency or economic recognition. Azoulay distinguishes between the event of photograph (the encounter) and the photographed event (the image). Facilitated by the IOM, which manages camp life, informed consent becomes nearly impossible. Awareness generated rarely translates into material improvement, turning humanitarian visibility into a symbolic exercise rather than transformative action.

“After watching the film, I became very emotional and cried for my community,” one survey participant mentioned.

A decolonial shift is emerging within our community. Internal photographers like members of the Rohingyatographer collective offer a gaze that is politically grounded, specific, and resistant, contrasting sharply with Ai Weiwei’s external perspective. While the external gaze emphasises universal flows of humanity, the internal gaze documents precise conditions, systemic failures, and cultural resilience.

Dimension	External Gaze (Ai Weiwei)	Internal Gaze (Rohingya Collectives)
Primary Motivation	Global awareness; personal artistic inquiry	Self-determination; national rebuilding; documenting injustice
Technical Style	High production value; drone footage; silent observation	Intimate; handheld; grounded in daily survival and rituals
Impact on Identity	Frames identity through the "Refugee" brand	Negotiates complex, transnational identities and imagined communities

The principles of Photovoice empower youth to produce political leverage. Unlike the silent external eye, internal images are vocal, capturing health risks, bureaucratic failures, and cultural continuity that outsiders cannot perceive.

This critique underscores a clear principle: representation without participation is exclusion. Moving forward, media producers must transition from making films about the Rohingya to films with and by the Rohingya. True inclusive storytelling requires protagonists to hold authorship, direction, and editorial power.

The civil contract of solidarity demands that we are no longer viewed as a brand of despair to be consumed in ephemeral art trials. The right to the image is a fundamental component of the right to life. Only by representing ourselves can we begin to rebuild our nationhood. The image must become a site of liberation, directed by the Rohingya towards a future of dignity, agency, and peace.

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Further Reading