Nanur Basha: A Lost Queer Sanctuary

In this archival project, we digitally archive Nanur Basha, the residence of Xulhaz Mannan. Xulhaz Mannan was a Bangladeshi LGBT+ rights activist and the publisher of Bangladesh’s first LGBT+ magazine, Roopbaan. From [year], Xulhaz’s apartment in Dhaka served as the physical sanctuary for Bangladeshi gay, koti, lesbian, hijra, and trans people for regular hangouts, parties, and later a site of political organizing and activism. Xulhaz’s queer kins called him khala (aunty) and they fondly named the apartment Nanur Basha (grandmother’s home). Nanur Basha played a crucial role in the production of Roopbaan Magazine and other significant queer activism in the country. In 2016, the local Al-Qaeda chapter attacked Nanur Basha and murdered Xulhaz and Tonoy, another activist. The attack led to many community members fleeing the country, severing them from this beloved sanctuary of kinships, shelter, leisure, care, eroticism, and political organizing.

Since the 2016 attack, Nanur Basha has been largely off-limits to most queer individuals. Those seeking asylum due to the attack have no practical way to visit the place, and even those living in Bangladesh can’t physically access it. The space holds no cultural or historical value for mainstream society, and it is slowly deteriorating and is set to be remodeled. We initiated this archiving project to honor the memory of Xulhaz and Tonoy, and to create a digital access point for experiencing Nanur Bahsa spatially and affectively. 

We use an innovative spatial archiving method where we deploy photogrammetry technology to capture the textured space of Nanur Basha. Using photogrammetry, a technique that involves creating precise measurements and 3D models from photographs, we took thousands of overlapping images of Xulhaz’s entire apartment from different positions to capture the information of its shape, spatial position, and other artifacts present in the apartment.     

This photogrammetric archiving will shed light on the messy place-making dynamics of queer organizing leading up to Bangladesh’s contemporary gay and lesbian visibility and at the same time memorialize queer joy and reclaim the site of our injury.