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Nadira Husain

19 August 2020 / 7–8 pm CEST

Beugen Strecken, 2014, installation view
Beugen Strecken, 2014, installation view, Künstlerhaus Bremen, Bremen (DE), photo: Björn Behrens



Husain will introduce her concept bâtarde, which is specific to her working method, as well as to other key motifs of her practice, such as Femme Fondation. She will also address the notion of expanded painting and raise questions around such notions as the gaze, appropriation, cultures of migration and feminism.
Nadira Husain, born in Paris in 1980 and working in Berlin, Paris, and Hyderabad (IN). She describes her painting practice as bâtarde (bastard). According to her, this approach provides for a mind space which questions and subverts the normativity imposed by the ideas and figures that are formed and iterated by western centric art and art history. Bâtarde practice strives to emancipate the artist from these structures and embrace various forms of hybridity, mimicry and ambivalence.

Husain’s paintings bring together a multitude of symbols and forms from various cultural registers, with an eye always on drawing associations between these elements. References to Mughal miniatures meet European comics and join anthropomorphic beings from furry fandom who immerse themselves in Sufi Islamic culture. These have followed Husain since her multicultural upbringing and form a polyphonic world where the artist tries to eliminate the hierarchical structures of power – conveyed through fore- and background, occlusion, scale. Husain creates a space for the harmonious and sometimes dissonant coexistence of figures and elements that seldom if ever meet elsewhere. Husain’s paintings also unfold in space as installations where the notion of centre is swept away. This can be considered as an expanded form of painting, where the artist solicits the performative character of this practice.

Solo exhibitions (recent) 
2020 TBA, WERK.Stoff Preis für Malerei, Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg (DE). TBA, Galerie Isa, Mumbai (IN). 2019 Blumen und Elefant, Galerie Tobias Naehring, Leipzig (DE). 2018 Pourquoi je suis tout bleu, Villa du parc Annemasse | Centre d’art contemporain, Annemasse (FR). Solo presentation at the Armory Show (with PSM Gallery), New York, NY (US). 2017 Rider, Path, and Vehicle, PSM Gallery, Berlin.

Group exhibitions (recent)
2019 ACAW Asia Contemporary Art Week, Dubai (AE). Body in Pieces, KAI 10 | ARTHENA FOUNDATION, Düsseldorf (DE). Doing Deculturalization, Stiftung Museion, Bolzano (IT). Global National, Haus am Lutzöwplatz, Berlin. 2018 Mess with Your Values, n.b.k., Berlin. Innenleben, Galerie Tobias Naehring, Leipzig. Pissing in a River. Again!, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin. Works on Paper, Galerie Tobias Naehring, Leipzig.

www.nadira-husain.com
Nadira Husain, portrait
Portrait photo: private