Throughout his career, the multidisciplinary artist Osman Yousefzada consistently shines a light on the migrant experience using a range of different art forms as his tools. In 2018 he shared his first solo art exhibition at the Ikon Gallery titled Being Somewhere Else, featuring a series of installations and the film Her Dreams are Bigger, a body of work designed to give a voice to migrant communities at home and across the globe. More recently, Osman has turned his hand to writing a memoir on his multicultural upbringing titled The Go-Between: A Portrait of Growing Up Between Different Worlds – a book that acts as a window into the world of the tight-knit Muslim Pashtun community as told through the eyes of Osman as a child.
To continue to tell Osman’s story and celebrate Birmingham’s vibrant creative communities, we’ve commissioned him, in collaboration with our friends at the Birmingham-based Ikon Gallery, to transform the iconic 32-metre-tall Selfridges Birmingham building into an abstract artwork featuring a series of tessellated pink and black shapes – a piece inspired by communities working together.
We caught up with Osman to hear more about the story behind the installation…