Osman Yousefzada

He is a politically led artist, and is concerned with the representation and rupture of the migrational experience and makes reference in his work to socio-political issues of today.

[3][4] Since 2013, Osman has been making a 'zine' called The Collective - a cross disciplinary publication of themed conversations, between writers, artists, and curators, including, Milovan Farronato, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Nicola Lees, Celia Hempton, Anthea Hamilton, Prem Singh and others.

These socio-political issues are explored through mediums of moving image, installations, text works, sculpture, garment making and performance.

The exhibition was made to demonstrate the inequalities in the factory systems of mass production, as well as exploring marginalised voices and experiences within migration.

[17] Yousefzada created a short film in 2020, named Her Dreams are Bigger about garment workers in Bangladesh which was shown at the Whitechapel Gallery in London.

A rope, evoking long hair, trails from a mannequin display head, around the carpeted floor of the installation, leading to a wall-based textile.

On the floor are a bed, a tower of saucepans wrapped in clingfilm, a makeshift wardrobe and stacked laundry bags in which an immigrant’s whole life might be contained.

[21] Yousefzada's show 'Queer Feet' (2023) at Charleston house, Firle, the heart of Bloomsbury escapism, included textile compositions feature painted canvases and collaged barricade tape, Afghan, Balouch and Turkish rugs, as well as found materials that are reminiscent of the embroidery the artist’s mother, a talented maker, would stitch onto table cloths.

They are overlaid with depictions of male figures found in 1950s physique magazines, rendered in the distinctive black and yellow hazard tape, representing defiant queer bodies.

Depicting powerful intersex guardians, Yousefzada creates these works as talismans or magical objects that protect or heal, and act as guides through the immigrant experience.‘It’s a meeting of worlds:’ Bringing the immigrant experience to the English country house Yousefzada also conceptualised and curated the first Migrant Festival at the Ikon gallery, inviting activists, writers, artists, creatives to bring forward voices that are not often heard.

The migrant festival is still a core part of the Ikon galleries programming and subsequent participants have included artists Hew Locke, Keith Piper and writer Sathnam Sanghera.

American vogue wrote ‘Yousefzada’s multidisciplinary work spans clothing, publishing, sculpture, video, and installation art, all broaching themes of inclusivity and social justice through the medium of fashion long before they became industry buzzwords’.

Instead he invited a diverse audience and the press to the Whitechapel Gallery on the Sunday of fashion week and showed the short elegiac and intense film ‘Her Dreams Are Bigger,’ about Bangladeshi garment workers response to ‘made in Bangladesh’ clothing.

Bangladesh National Museum, Dhaka Design of the Year Awards, Design Museum, London Jerwood: Fashion, Film and Fiction, The Wapping Project, London Infinity Pattern 1, Ikon Gallery & Selfridges Birmingham In 2020, Yousefzada created an installation putting the conversation of Migration into the heart of the city - titled Infinity Pattern 1.

Osman Yousefzada’s More Immigrants Please aims to reimagine migration discourse by introducing positive vocabulary and subverting the visual language of barricade tape usually associated with exclusion.
The pink and black interlocking design, Infinity Pattern 1, was co-commissioned by Selfridges and the city’s Ikon art gallery. Created by multidisciplinary artist Osman Yousefzada
The black-pink pattern (Infinity Pattern 1) installation by Yousefzada at Selfridges Building, Birmingham
From the show ‘Queer Feet’. These textile works represent defiant queer bodies and are embroidered with found objects and Afghan rugs, reflecting Yousefzada’s own cultural heritage.