Artist Osman Yousefzada Takes on Charleston In New Exhibition

Fashion and textiles are woven into artist Osman Yousefzada's DNA thanks to his mother, whose couture-making business in Birmingham still serves as somewhat of a continual influence for the artist today. The inspiration she provided came in abundance to Yousefzada, who still weaves the lessons he learnt from her as a young boy into everything he turns his hand to, whether it be sculpture, design, tapestry or painting.

The artist's latest exhibition brings the multifaceted practices of Yousefzada under the same roof. Presented to the public in Charleston's Wolfson Gallery, work that engages with the representation, rupture, and reimagining of the migration experience is spread across a variety of mediums, including textiles, sculpture, moving image, installation, garment making and performance.

'The exhibition opens a window beyond the idyllic surroundings of Charleston, into its subversive and queer systems', Yousefzada noted when talking about the exhibition. 'By interrogating the notion of 'home' through a lens of class, race, queerness and representation, new conversations and ideas emerge. Working with Charleston on these new commissions has given me an opportunity to further interrogate the power and security that comes from domestic spaces.'

Merging autobiography with fiction and ritual to create a story is what Yousefzada does best. One textile composition titled Queer Feet includes an assortment of painted canvases, collaged barricade tape, and Afghan, Balouch and Turkish rugs found in Pakistan. These contrasting materials are mixed with other found objects, evoking a memory reminiscent of Yousefzada's mother's embroidery, which often manifested in an assortment of stitched tablecloths. Yousefzada's embroidery, however, is overlaid with depictions of male figures found in 1950s physique magazines, rendered in the distinctive black and yellow hazard tape, representing defiant queer bodies.

Other series' present in the exhibition include a trail of paper studies created by Yousefzada during a recent residency at the Birmingham School of Art. Made up of different media, the selection of prints are partly inspired by characters in the Falnama, a book of omens used by fortune tellers in Iran, India and Turkey during the 16th and 17th centuries. Nothing more than simple talismans in the form of 'intersex guardians' that protect and heal, these mythical creatures are reinterpreted as guides through the immigrant experience.

Here, myth meets magic as Yousefzada's penchant for storytelling comes alive. Charleston's values famously follow those who belonged to the Bloomsbury group by championing experimental thinking and social inclusion, two tropes that also lie at the core of Yousefzada's diverse practice, making the Lewes-based house the perfect landscape for dreams to arise.