Mahbubur Rahman’s installation and performance similarly deconstruct power and the tools that it uses. Two coats, mounted on mannequins, face each other across a field of suspended measuring tapes. One of the coats is made of camouflage cloth that is itself camouflaged under intricate embroidery of guns and roses. It is a discomfiting object, both threatening and alluring. The other coat is a humbler affair of leather, made by stitching together the uppers of black army boots.

On opening night, Rahman wore the embroidered coat with a face mask fitted with binoculars. As he tottered across the gallery, it became clear that the binoculars were obscured; although equipped with special tools to see with, the figure was thrashing about in blindness. Eventually, the figure found the other dummy in its leather coat. There followed a tragicomic drama of measuring the dummy, ‘identifying’ it as enemy, wrestling with it, and tearing it to bits. For the duration of the show, this performance was projected across a field of suspended measuring tapes which suggest the technologies of quantifying, measuring,and apportioning – whether goods, rations or land. The work’s title: All we are saying is give peace a chance: flashes across the field as a depressingly nai:Ve civilian appeal far removed from the centers of power.