Professor Naeem Mohaiemen Makes US Debut of Acclaimed Three-Channel Film

Associate Professor of Visual Arts Naeem Mohaiemen's critically acclaimed three-channel video installation, Through a Mirror, Darkly, is making its US debut at the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University. The film is being shown as a part of Corinthians, an exhibition that places the film in the broader context of scripture and morality from which Mohaiemen pulled the title of the film.

Corinthians 13:12, "through a glass, darkly," refers to humanity's inability to understand divine truth; Mohaiemen applies this phrase—replacing "glass" with "mirror"—to how time displaces memory. The film places side-by-side two events that occurred in Ohio in May, 1970: the shooting at Kent State University on May 4, in which four students were killed—and its subsequent memorialization—and the shooting at Jackson State College, a historically Black college in Mississippi, where two students were killed on May 15—and the ensuing silence.

Mohaiemen, who also serves as Concentration Head of Photography and Director of Undergraduate Studies, first encountered images of the Kent State shooting as a student at Oberlin College, about an hour from Kent, Ohio. Produced by UK arts organization Artangel, Through a Mirror, Darkly was commissioned in partnership by the Wexner Center for the Arts with Video Umbrella and is being presented along with related works from Ohio State's permanent collection and the Columbus Museum of Art. Mohaiemen and curators at the Wex selected rarely seen works from regional institutions' collections, placing Mohaiemen's work into the broader context of the era’s intermingled conflict, inequity, violence, and patriotism. 

In an interview with Adam Szymczyk for BOMB, Mohaiemen spoke about his combination of archival and contemporary footage:

"The left and right channels of Through a Mirror, Darkly are 4:3 to accommodate the aspect ratio of the archival footage, so they’re also smaller—wings attached to the center screen. It also offers a physical representation of how the present is bracketed by the past."

The power of Mohaiemen's work is its willingness to reside in the gaps—to leave in the pauses and awkward angles. "The farther away we get in years," he said, "the more hazy the many meanings of events in the mirror of memory become."

Corinthians is on view February 14–August 9, 2026 at The Wex at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.