New Art Exchange Archives

Mahtab Hussain’s ode to muslim communities

Mahtab Hussain’s major solo exhibition, a joint commission by Ikon and Photoworks, confronts the layered realities of community and belonging. Through portraiture, video and a suite of 160 images of Birmingham mosques, What Did You Want To See? explores how surveillance cultures including Project Champion – a counterterrorism initiative in which hundreds of covert CCTV and ANPR cameras were installed in two of the city’s predominantly Muslim neighbourhoods in 2010 – and other institutional and media-driven initiatives continue to shape the Muslim experience in the UK. The artist discusses the exhibition’s structures and meanings with Anneka French.

Anneka French | Interview | 20 March 2025

Anneka French: Your new commission by Ikon and Photoworks, What Did You Want To See?, documents 160 mosques in Birmingham, each with its own architectural style. Is that your estimation of the total number?

Mahtab Hussain: It’s an incredible number of mosques or masjids. All the masjids in Birmingham have been plotted on Google Maps, so I followed that map, cycling or driving to tick off each one. I’d say I’ve covered about 98-99%, though the number continues to grow. Some masjids are very grand with minarets and huge community funding; others are next to small, run-down shops. The variety reflects the tenacity of the community and the messy identity of Birmingham as a whole. I told myself that if I never picked up a camera in Birmingham again, it would be important to close this chapter with the city’s masjids, playing with photography’s strength within the archival.

AF: What’s the relationship as you see it between photography and the archival?

MH: The relationship between photography and the archive goes beyond mere documentation; it creates a visual record that holds space for stories that might otherwise be forgotten. Archives are not neutral; they are selective and tell us what is deemed important enough to preserve. Photography has the unique ability to shape that narrative. It provides a lens through which we can revisit, reinterpret and reflect on history. The act of photographing isn’t just about preserving the present; it’s about creating a bridge to the future in ways that words or written documents sometimes can’t.

In the context of the masjids, it’s also about questioning how history is archived and who gets to shape it. Often, communities like mine are excluded from dominant historical narratives, and photography gives us the opportunity to shape our own story. By making the masjids part of that narrative, I present an alternative archive – one defined by the experiences of the people who built and use these spaces. This kind of photography isn’t passive; it’s an active engagement with history, placing value on what has long been undervalued and overlooked.

Photography becomes an archival tool that captures the moment and resists the erasure of these communities. These images serve as a form of resistance, a statement of identity and an assertion of belonging in a city that often forgets the communities that shape it. It’s about creating an archive that is dynamic, grows, changes, and responds to the shifting realities of these communities.

AF: How has Project Champion shaped the work?

MH: The cameras are no longer there, and not all their locations are known, but there was a time when the community felt spied on. Some cameras were pointed at masjids, others directly into people’s bedrooms. For the exhibition, I’ve created a large format photograph tiled Neighbourhood Watched (2025), with a crew, which looks into my mother’s home, imagining a camera placed outside. The work features a car, a couple standing outside the home and a young boy looking through the window. I’m using a smoke machine. It’s very cinematic and hyper-staged; it explores the tension between truth and fiction. I’ve often used direction or control within my work but I’ve kept it minimal in the past. This new piece re-creates the moment of discovering surveillance, when the community’s safe spaces were breached. I wanted to transport viewers into that image so they could feel the injustice themselves, and the best way to do that was through my imagination.

AF: You’re best known for your portraits. How have you approached portraiture in other of your works for the exhibition?

MH: I’m a big fan of Richard Avedon. I fell in love with the iconic American West series when I was a student. I wanted to go back to the simplicity and the range of black and white portraits. I don’t think there’s been a series created like that relating to the Muslim South Asian experience. I wanted to have that conversation in my work and celebrate the individual.

AF: Can you share more about the sitters?

MH: I did my usual thing, stopping people in the street and going into community centres, but I also reconnected with people I’ve met over the years and photographed before – though perhaps not shown – whose stories I wanted to share. One chap, Shaf, has a tyre shop and when I used to walk the streets or cycle for shoots in Birmingham. The shop was one of my safe spaces where I would go and hang out. I wanted to celebrate Shaf. I walked around with a white backdrop and had his son or one of his friends help hold it while making the portrait.

AF: They look like studio portraits.

MH: Yes, but they’re made on the streets with natural daylight. When you work with a community its difficult to encourage someone to come to a studio. It’s easier for me to go and try to create the studio in their space. My middle brother is in one of the works, my daughter in another and my mother – she’s the lady smoking the cigarette. I want to share the room with the community and the people I know in Birmingham. I did consider including myself in the show while exploring Avedon’s self-portraits. There’s something deeply reflective and revealing about self-portraiture, and I love how his portraits express the passage of time through his own aging. Ultimately, there wasn’t enough space to include myself, but with my family featured in the series, and given that this work stems from a personal experience. I’m present in every part of it.

AF: You’re present through your family and those friendships, conversations and observations.

MH: The work comes from a deeply personal place, and while there is an intentional international conversation happening, there is also a sense of Birmingham throughout the work.

AF: What goes through your mind when you are making a portrait?

MH: When I’m making a portrait, I’m thinking about the relationship I’m building with the person in front of me. It’s not just about pressing the shutter; it’s about the conversation, the trust and the shared space we’re creating together. I want the portrait to reflect not just how they look but who they are and how they want to be seen. It’s collaboration. This isn’t just my interpretation of them, but a mutual exchange of energy and understanding. I want to celebrate the sitter in front of my lens and help them be seen, while evoking a sense of power and beauty.

AF: Can you say more about the two videos made in collaboration with journalist, filmmaker and novelist Guy Gunaratne and some of other images in the exhibition?

MH: One of the videos is a prayer sequence. The other looks at Muslim hysteria and systematic abuse, exploring what it means to use labels like “extreme” and how these are projected onto Muslim communities in the UK. The video is quite heart-wrenching and gut-wrenching at times. It’s a kind of historical mishmash of images of 9/11 and the July 7^th bombings – world events and images from popular culture that I’ve grown up with and understood – interwoven with family gatherings and birthday celebrations. I hope visitors get a chance to sit with the work and begin to question what it is that we’ve been told, to start to understand each other’s pain a little.

There are also painted statements, declarations in text, framed or in vinyl, along with photographs of graffiti postcode tags displayed throughout the gallery. Some of these are from my archive, going back years. Rather than viewing these tags as gang-related symbols, I see them as connected to ideas of place – sites tagged because the person feels they belong in those spaces. It becomes, in a way, a study of semiotics.

AF: You’ve touched upon it but how are you approaching the exhibition from a curatorial and audience perspective?

MH: I’ve been thinking about how the work can be experienced as a journey, reflecting the themes explored. The installation is not just about individual pieces but about creating a space where the audience feels immersed, where stories come together and allow for deeper connections. I want visitors to feel as if they’re stepping into a living, breathing narrative, where they can look, reflect on and even challenge what they’re seeing. The exhibition’s flow is designed to guide them through different layers of complex emotions – fear, reluctance, scepticism, resentment, compassion, empathy, and hope to name a few – each section contributing a different aspect of the story I want to tell. I want the audience to feel it, both in their body and mind.

AF: In another, separate sculptural commission for The Line, Please Take a Seat (launching in East London, April 2025), developed with members of their youth collective, you further extend the invitation to connect. What does working across different media afford you?

MH: Working across different media allows me to expand the conversation and experiment with how my work can engage people – and me – in varied ways. As an artist, it’s important to experience growth and embrace the resistance that comes with it. Photography has provided me with a powerful tool to communicate and shape my practice. It has allowed me to move beyond the still image and think about how an artwork can interact with its audience. There’s something special about printing and framing a photograph – it transforms into a physical object, a presence in space – and this tactile element has opened the door for me to explore other forms.

Portraiture itself carries a sculptural quality, so it felt like a natural progression to step into this realm with sculpture and installation. With projects like Please Take a Seat – a cast-iron Victorian-style bench that creates a moment of stillness in a busy world – I can invite people into the work in a more participatory, embodied way. It was designed with the idea of inviting conversation on place and reflection. It’s about giving the audience the space to engage and interact, allowing them to become part of the narrative. By expanding my practice, I can create a deeper connection – physically, emotionally and intellectually – between the work and its viewers. Art and photography spark dialogue, enable difficult conversations and build bridges. This is a very big part of my practice.

At Ikon, I’m putting my own experience into the show. It feels quite vulnerable. I’ve always talked before about ideas of community, masculinity and hybridity – about being Pakistani or something –but never really “Muslim”. I’ve danced around this previously. There is a strong focus on that within the work at Ikon but I still find it difficult to find my own label because of how it’s been hijacked and positioned. This is my way of grappling with the uneasiness I feel about the word and the power structures surrounding it.♦

All images courtesy the artist and Ikon. © Mahtab Hussain

Mahtab Hussain: What Did You Want To See? runs at Ikon until 1 June 2025

—
Mahtab Hussain is an artist whose work explores the relationship between identity, heritage and displacement. His themes develop through long-term research articulating a visual language that challenges the prevailing concepts of multiculturalism. Hussain has published four artist books, including You Get Me? (MACK, 2017), Going Back to Where I Came From (Ikon, 2017), The Quiet Town of Tipton (Dewi Lewis, 2015), and The Commonality of Strangers (New Art Exchange, 2015).

Anneka French is a writer, editor and curator based in Birmingham. She is Project Editor at publishing house Anomie and contributes to Art Quarterly, Burlington Contemporary and Photomonitor among other titles.

Images:

1-Mahtab Hussain, Faizal Islam Masjid, Birmingham, 2024

2-Mahtab Hussain, Imtiaz, 2024

3-Mahtab Hussain, Car drivers were monitored via ANPR Cameras, 2010

4-Mahtab Hussain, Eid Prayer in Birmingham, 2018

5-Mahtab Hussain, Alisha, 2024

6-Mahtab Hussain, Acts of Defiance Postcode Tag B12 Sparkbrook, Balsall Heath, 2014

7-Mahtab Hussain, Aqeel, 2024

8-Mahtab Hussain, Bilal Mosque, Birmingham, 2024

9-Mahtab Hussain, East Birmingham Central Masjid, Birmingham, 2024

10-Mahtab Hussain, Daddy Shaf, 2024

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Ekow Eshun – Curator

Africa State of Mind

Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco

For the latest instalment in our Interviews series, we welcome London-based writer and curator Ekow Eshun. Eshun is Chairman of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group, overseeing London’s most significant public art programme, and Creative Director of Calvert 22 Foundation, a leading arts space dedicated to the contemporary culture of Eastern Europe. He is also the former Director of the ICA, London, a position he held from 2005-2010. His writing has appeared in publications including the New York Times, the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Observer, Granta, Vogue, New Statesman and Wired. He is the author of Black Gold of the Sun: Searching for Home in England and Africa, nominated for the Orwell prize, and the editor of Africa Modern: Creating the Contemporary Art of a Continent.

Eshun has recently organised Africa State of Mind for New Art Exchange in Nottingham, an exhibition of 16 artists that subsequently toured to Impressions Gallery, Bradford and then the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, where it runs until November 15th. Here he speaks to photographer and writer Lewis Bush about interrogating ideas of ‘Africanness’ through highly-subjective renderings of life and identity on the continent and the need to reimagine Africa as psychological space as much as a physical territory.

Lewis Bush: Ekow thanks for agreeing to this discussion. I heard you speak at FORMAT Festival earlier in the year, and as always there is never enough time at these things to pick up on all the interesting strands that could be discussed further. Perhaps I could ask you to begin quite simply though, by talking us through Africa State of Mind, your exhibition of emerging African photographers, which opened at the New Art Exchange in Nottingham and is currently on display at Impressions Gallery, Bradford. What was the initial impetus that led you to begin curating it?

Ekow Eshun: There’s a lot of very striking, powerful, artistically ambitious work being created by African photographers at the moment. I wanted to find a way to present some of that work and also do some thinking about the ideas and themes those photographers were engaging with. So the show is both a summation of new photographic practice from Africa and an exploration of how contemporary photographers from the continent are exploring ideas of ‘Africanness’ – along the way revealing Africa to be a psychological space as much as a physical territory; a state of mind as much as a place.

LB: When you delivered your paper during the conference at FORMAT you mentioned your own memories of growing up between Ghana and the United Kingdom. Were there experiences from this time that fed into how you approached this idea of Africa as something which can be as much internal and mutable as external and fixed?

EE: I lived in Ghana for a few years as a young child and what remains most telling from that time isn’t so much specific memories but sense impressions. Taste, smell – red earth, the abrupt vanishing of the equatorial sun at 6pm, the sight of the ocean for the first time, even the very intense odour of open sewers running alongside the pavement in my parents’ home town of Cape Coast. I’ve carried Ghana with me this way since childhood and I guess it’s left me with a continued sense of Africa as an almost hallucinatory condition rather than a place of fixed, ordered realities.

LB: Could you characterise the prevailing trends in contemporary African photography? What sort of themes and approaches are audiences likely to encounter in Africa State of Mind, and beyond it? And in viewing work for the exhibition do you get a sense of different photographic practices and concerns predominating in different parts of the continent?

EE: Yes, and to be clear the exhibition isn’t trying to be a wholesale survey of work from Africa – I’m not sure that would be possible. It’s more an attempt to spy out some of the key thematic tendencies informing the practice of those photographers. The show is oriented around three main themes – Inner Landscapes, Zones of Freedom and Hybrid Cities. Inner Landscapes focuses on photographers whose work offers a deeply personal interpretation of setting or sensibility, in contrast to say, the objective lens of reportage photography. Hybrid Cities documents the African metropolis as a site of rapid transformation. Zones of Freedom brings together photographers whose work explores questions of gender, sexuality and cultural identity.

LB: I’m interested to know why you focused on photography in particular as the main medium for this exhibition – or to put it more broadly and beyond just the context of the exhibition – what do you think is interesting about photography?

EE: Photography is a particularly significant medium in this context. It is the art form that, more than any other, has framed how Africa is represented in the modern era. Colonial period photographs depicted the continent as, in the words of Hegel, ‘enveloped in the dark mantel of Night’, its people only representative of ‘natural man in his completely wild and untamed state’. TV news reports have similarly reinforced an impression of the continent as defined by war and famine. But photography has also enabled the dissemination of contrasting, more affirmative views of Africa. Not least, for example, through the exuberant imagery of master portraitists such as Malick Sidibe and Seydou Keita.

LB: That idea of reclaiming photography as a medium from colonialism is very powerful. Have you encountered any interesting examples of African photographers working even more directly with colonial era photographs in an attempt to reclaim or alter their meaning?

EE: Yes, there’s a considerable amount of work in this territory. An important point to consider is that African photographers are perfectly aware of how the continent and its people have been misrepresented in the West historically. So of necessity they’re grappling with that legacy as soon as they pick up a camera. You see less of a dealing with the specifics of an archive than interrogating the history of Western representation. I’ve included work in the exhibition by the very talented Angolan artist Kiluanji Kia Henda which looks very sardonically at the role of the colonial explorer, among other issues. But there are many others exploring some of that territory either explicitly or obliquely, including Edson Chagas, Omar Victor Diop, Shiraz Bayjoo, Lalla Essaydi, Namsa Leuba, Lina Iris Viktor – it’s really a long list.

LB: Returning to photography’s role in Africa briefly, I wonder if there is also a sense of modernism about photography that might be important to projecting a positive, dynamic view of the continent in contrast to those colonial tropes of timelessness and wildness? I remember hearing James Barnor speak about going to the United Kingdom to practice photography shortly after Ghana became independent, and in his words to learn and bring that up to date knowledge back to Ghana. There was something very exciting about the way he talked about photographic knowledge as something that could be as valuable to the forging of a new independent country as the expertise to build infrastructure or run a government. Do you have any thoughts on this?

EE: That’s certainly an approach you can see animating the work of the Malick Sidibe and Seydou Keita – their images speak of the exuberance of independence-era Africa. And that ideas of documenting a nation and its people also informed the practice of an earlier generation of studio photographers, people like SO Alonge who was taking photos of the middle classes in Benin City, Nigeria from the 1930s onwards.

Just as important to highlight though, is the work of photographers whose images create a kind of counter-narrative that runs contrary to what could be described as an officially-sanctioned narrative of nation building. I’m thinking here of someone like Samuel Fosso, whose self-portraits in the 1970s, experimenting with representations of masculinity and gender, marked an act of personal resistance against the authoritarian regime of Jean-Bédel Bokassa in the Central African Republic.

More recently, you can look at the very flamboyant imagery of someone like Athi-Patra Ruga in South Africa, and also see a critique of the failure of the post-apartheid state to live up to the dreams of liberation that inspired people during the decades of white minority rule.

LB: You are also creative director of Calvert 22 and founder of The Calvert Journal. This which interests me both because of the photographic emphasis of that organisation, but also because it seems that eastern Europe has also been subjected to a set of western European fantasies about it, particular in the post-Cold war era. I was wondering though if you see resonances across the two regions?

EE: Yes, to the extent that as you say, both territories continue to be caricatured in the Western imagination. With both The Calvert Journal, and the exhibitions programme at Calvert 22, I’ve concentrated on photography as a means to try to establish a different narrative about what contemporary Eastern Europe looks like and feels like. We’ve presented a number of exhibitions and projects on that subject, including Post-Soviet Visions: image and identity in the new Eastern Europe, which I curated in 2017. And the curator Mark Nash did a fantastic exhibition in 2016, Red Africa, that explored the legacy of the cultural relationships between Africa, the Soviet Union and related countries that flourished during the Cold War.

LB: That’s a really fascinating history, as is the US involvement in Africa and the extent to which parts of the continent became battle fronts between both powers in the Cold War. Lastly, I wonder if you could outline what’s next for you, what new projects are you currently working on?

EE: I’m finishing off the Africa State of Mind book, which will be published by Thames & Hudson next Spring, with contributions from over 50 African photographers. I’ve just recently curated a solo show by the wonderful Moroccan-British photography Hassan Hajjaj, at New Art Exchange, Nottingham. And I’m curating a new photography exhibition, Kaleidoscope: Immigration and Modern Britain, at Somerset House this June. The Africa State of Mind show is still touring and travelling to the US before returning to the UK in 2020. Then there are a couple of museum shows coming up on the horizon which are already demanding attention. It’s a bit of a busy time… ♦