India World

Owais Husain to present at art fair in London

Contemporary Indian artist Owais Husain is all set to present a solo booth at the START Art Fair in London from September 14 to 17.

Following his participation at START Doha in March, Husain has produced a new series of works on paper specially for the fair.

Interestingly, Husain, who is the son of renowned artist M.F. Husain, works in a variety of media, using film, photography, painting, sculpture, installation and poetry — in various combinations or on their own — to create visually textured works that both reference his roots in a traditional Indian figurative style and embody his constant pursuit to evolve and contemporize that iconography.

His work explores identity, iconography and urban mythology and it’s evolution from one generation to the next.

“Most of my works are all about identity and displacement. We live in a very transient world and it’s not something new that I have discovered,” Hussain said in a statement on Tuesday.

“We live in an interesting time when the world is shrinking in so many ways in terms of communication and access to information. It is most exciting to be living in these times because the role of an artist is to find relevance and create maps of relevance and of contexts of his or her time,” he added.

Having travelled extensively and exhibited his work throughout Asia and North America, START Art Fair is expected to be an ideal platform for Husain to re-engage with London where, he is best known as a filmmaker, having debuted his documentary “Letters to My Son About My Father” at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2014.

Continuing this duality as both a filmmaker and an artist, Husain’s work explores the notion of the artist as a storyteller charting the visual lexicons of the present time for the next generation.

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