As part of the Inclusive Practice Scheme to increase awareness of culturally rich and diverse exhibitions, provide accessibility and create belonging within the School of Art and Media, the Inclusive Practice Leads are organising trips to exhibitions around Sussex and London. These trips will be funded by the university and open to all students at the School of Art and Media. This trip was funded by Belong at Brighton Extra.
For our second trip, we took the students to see Osman Yousefzada exhibition at Charleston House, Firle. The exhibition comprised of large-scale textile works to prints and drawings. Yousefzada’s work engages with the representation, rupture and reimagination of working-class migration experience and makes reference to current socio-political issues.
Yousefzada is a British-born South Asian multi-disciplinary artist whose work merges autobiography with fiction and ritual.
The mixed media monoprints were created as part of Yousefzada’s printmaking residency at BCU, Birmingham School of Art from 2020-2023 and are partly inspired by characters in the Falnama, book of omens used by fortune tellers in Iran, India and Turkey during the 16th and 17th centuries. People seeking insight into the future would turn to a page of the Falnama at random, and interpret the text and colourful drawings to predict their future. Yousefzada creates these prints as talismans or magical objects that protect or heal and work as guardians of the immigrant experience.
A new series of large-scale textiles titled ‘Queer Feet’ was on display. These textile works represent defiant queer bodies and are embroidered with found objects and Afghan rugs, reflecting Yousefzada’s own cultural heritage, his search for a place to belong and paying homage to his mother, who was a talented maker.
A gifted storyteller, Yousefzada’s work merges autobiography with fiction and ritual.
The trip was well attended with students from a range of courses. We plan on hosting another trip in the summer term.
Review by Kyle Casey (Inclusive Practice Partner):
The next room presented someone donning a leather jacket my immediate association was with rebellion, punk, and queer subculture. The figure with bright yellow and black stripey jeans. The eye is lead by a long black rope to a black image the longer i look the more I see shades of blue, zig zag patterns and finally a mysterious face hidden by the shadows, it made me think of the secrecy of the queer community having to fight years to no longer have to hide in the shadows.
I see a figure tied up in this rope as threads cascade down from them laying helpless on a patterned rug. Patterned rugs are shown consistently through many images reminding me of home, comfort and decoration.
I’m shown a series of lino prints of figures with long pigtails and tounges spilling from their mouths some bold and standing out whilst others skewed and smudged and painted over. One in particular stood out to me with its bold red colour’s it’s harsh paint strokes distorting the image and a black arm and hand almost calling for help to escape this painting. It makes me ponder if it’s presenting fear of being silence as a queer person or masochistic joy of submissiveness that the other paintings entangled in ropes echo.
I overall related to seeing the duality of queer pride, rebellion and secrecy and shadows and was given new insight into what it may have been like to fight as a queer immigrant whilst moving belongings you hold dear and help build your identity around from house to house.
