OSMAN YOUSEFZADA

AT SELFRIDGES BIRMINGHAM

Words: Chekii Harling, Photography: Ashley J. Bourne

Join us to discover the story behind artist Osman Yousefzada’s colossal art piece for the Birmingham skyline, exclusive products inspired by his work and a series of special events.

OSMAN YOUSEFZADA

AT SELFRIDGES BIRMINGHAM

Join us to discover the story behind artist Osman Yousefzada’s colossal art piece for the Birmingham skyline, exclusive products inspired by his work and a series of special events.

To celebrate the unveiling of Osman Yousefzada’s Infinity Pattern 1 installation at our Selfridges Birmingham store, which now wraps the landmark building, we join the artist on a journey through Birmingham to explore his upbringing in the city and the vibrant mix of cultural communities that continue to inspire him. Brought to life in collaboration with the Birmingham-based contemporary art venue Ikon Gallery, we’ve curated a thought-provoking events programme and exhibition that explore the core of themes of diversity and identity.

Read on to meet the artist, reserve a space on the events programme and to shop the exclusive-to-Selfridges product range inspired by Osman Yousefzada’s first major piece of public art.

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Osman X Selfridges

Take home part of the installation with this exclusive collection featuring Osman’s bold, tessellated pattern

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WATCH NOW: ‘I TOO, I’M HOME GROWN’

We journey through Birmingham with Osman Yousefzada as he shares his ode to the city that shaped him.

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…

Osman’s Infinity Pattern 1 artwork, Selfridges Birmingham

Osman’s Birmingham

“Birmingham is a semi-international city, it’s an amazing melting pot – it’s one of the most diverse cities in England. For me, Infinity Pattern 1 is about community – there’s a really strong migrant community where I grew up in Balsall Heath. Back then, it was a red-light district area, and there was lots of corner shops and hustle and bustle – it wasn’t very glamorous. At our house we had a lot of my mum’s customers coming in and out as she ran a dressmaking business from our home. There was a real sense of people trying to create a new life, or a new idea of life.”

Osman Yousefzada, Selfridges Birmingham

The installation’s inspirations

“The artwork covering Selfridges Birmingham is an antidote to Her Dreams are Bigger film I created for my first solo show at the Ikon Gallery – I wasn’t ready to do some weird kind of retrospective, but I was excited to do something in my birth city. I went to Bangladesh to interview garment workers – with a translator who spoke Bengali – and one of them said to me: “I can only dream as much as I can afford,” I thought ‘wow!’ This reinforced this hierarchy of colonialism where maybe you have aspirations and dreams, but you know that they’re not really going to come true. With the print, I created a happier narrative, a story of endless possibilities, social mobility, and a dialogue between the global south and the global north.”

SPECIAL EVENTS AT SELFRIDGES BIRMINGHAM

In collaboration with Ikon Gallery’s 2021 Migrant Festival

To celebrate the launch of Osman Yousefzada’s artwork at our Selfridges Birmingham store, we’ve teamed up with the Ikon Gallery to bring you a series of events inspired by the themes explored in Osman’s installation as the 2021 Migrant Festival (19–22 August) comes to Birmingham. Enjoy DJs and live performances, an inspiring discussion with the artist himself, and collaborative textile workshops as we honour the city’s creative community.

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Moor Street Railway Station, Birmingham

The roots of his belonging

“In the west we are told that we can dream, it’s the same idea as the American dream, then there’s the immigrant dream – the thought that the path to London is paved with gold. When my parents moved to Birmingham, they were both illiterate, it’s the notion of ‘I’ll come and find my fortune.’ My interest in this lies in Empire. I always think that creativity is a middle-class luxury, yet class is something that we never really talk about. My upbringing gave me persistence, but I’m not a satisfied person, I can always be better, so I don’t know where my upbringing starts and my personality ends.”

For me, the pattern symbolises a place without borders, it’s utopian in a way.

– Osman Yousefzada

Sari shop, Birmingham

The infinity pattern: a place without borders

“I wanted to bring these peripheral spaces of colour – which symbolise communities – into the centre of Birmingham. I’d been looking at infinity patterns for a while in Islamic art and geometry. They create this meditative feeling where they just carry on. The way the shapes interconnect and tessellate – together they become a mathematical equation – the more you look at them the more they seem to keep going, particularly with the height of the Selfridges building. For me, the pattern symbolises a place without borders, it’s utopian, in a way.”

Osman’s Infinity Pattern 1 artwork, Selfridges Birmingham

The colour palette

“The black spots are meditative, and each of the shapes is about eight feet tall so they really consume you. When you contrast that with a shocking pink, and another [pink] that’s kind of pastel it’s trippy and trance-like, you can imagine the pattern wanting to go beyond outer space, and I love how you can see it from all different locations across Birmingham.”

Osman’s Infinity Pattern 1 artwork, inside Selfridges Birmingham

With the print, I created a happier narrative, a story of endless possibilities, social mobility, and a dialogue between the global south and the global north.

– Osman Yousefzada

Birmingham, England

The Ikon Gallery

“The Ikon Gallery is a place of contemplation. When you go inside a museum or a gallery, it’s the equivalent of this meditative state, it’s like going to a church, a mosque or other places of contemplation. The Ikon is a free institution which is amazing, nothing is ticketed, and they’ve had some incredible internationally recognised artists show in the space.”

Osman Yousefzada, Selfridges Birmingham

Osman X Birmingham City University

“I’m doing a residency at the university and creating some paintings and a ceramic sculpture. I’m going to be teaching the students there who have been creating work inspired by Infinity Pattern 1, they’ve been documenting the build of the installation at Selfridges and we’re going to be working on an anthology of migrant stories which should be really exciting.”