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13/9/2011

Mahtab Hussain

Subway Gallery, London

Curated by Gabriella Daris

On the 15th of September 2011, Subway Gallery in London will launch Building Desires, the debut solo exhibition by British Pakistani photographer, Mahtab Hussain. Curated by Gabriella Daris, Building Desires showcases one part of the artist’s ongoing photographic project, a documentary series of portraits of a [diverse] group of young British Pakistani males in Birmingham. Both the title and the content of the exhibition, find associations with René Girard’s theory of the “mimetic desire”. Mahtab Hussain’s photographic documents offer an insight into the cultural conflict of a younger generation of British Pakistani males; a conflict that was initiated together with their desire to assimilate a Western self.

The British Pakistani community has been moulded by a complex and cohesive system of cultural and religious practices; a system that strives to put the collective [whole] before the individual [one]. Surrounded by what is considered by some as, ‘the forbidden pleasure of the western world,’ the majority of young British Pakistanis are suffering a profound ‘internal conflict.’ Building Desires looks into this internal conflict, which the artist calls, ‘crisis of the individual’. For René Girard, “mimesis coupled with desire leads automatically to conflict”. A flâneur himself of his own clan, Hussain penetrates the Asian gyms and streets of Birmingham, where his camera seeks to capture how these young Pakistani males are becoming men, while struggling with their own understanding of what a man should be within this conflict of being a traditional Pakistani, in a post- modern British town.

Following Victor Turner, one could say that Hussain’s photographic subjects experience a cultural liminality, remaining constantly puzzled. They ask themselves: “Are we British? Are we Pakistani? Can we speak English? Can we speak Urdu?” The confusion and the struggle to re-locate themselves, to identify, and to engage with the world around them, is what lead them to this state of mimetic crisis. The gym becomes a place where liminal rites are performed, where the initiated males follow a sequence of physical exercises, and via the technologies of the body, their desire to become an-other builds up, together with their body building up. Their body is changing every day. It is growing, becoming bigger, and eventually they cross the threshold of a magical cultural transformation; they re-enter society with a totally new identity and a new self. In that new state, the young male initiates hold the belief that their status has changed, and that their body looks in their eyes like a western body. Inevitably, the formation of their identity - their becoming - evolves through their mimetic desire as “liminality”.

Hussain’s photographs reveal how this group is internally split and confused by this emerging new identity, which on the one hand is profoundly at odds with his own collective religious belief systems, and on the other, struggles with westernizing influences. An ethical issue arises when these liminal periods of cultural re-location produce aggressive individuals, both in the Asian gyms and the cityscapes, affecting society as a whole. René Girard in his Violence and the Sacred states that, “violence is always mingled with desire [...] for desire is wholly directed toward violence itself.” The idea of a ‘performance of masculinity’ has become apparent for Hussain whilst photographing the Pakistani male community. This performance is a show of aggression, of ‘acting hard’, and it questions firstly, why there is this need to show such a front and secondly, why it has become their definition of what a man should be. One could argue such a front has derived from adopting stylistic and idealistic elements from other marginalized communities who are considered to have a higher social status; in essence, it attempts to break down the stereotypical notion of the Pakistani male as being weak.

There is a tendency with mainstream media to concentrate on one aspect of the Asian community, the religious one. Building Desires focuses purely on the cultural aspect of the community and draws attention to an emerging modern, younger generation and reveals that they are not obsessed with religion to the same extent as previous generations have been. Instead this new generation of young male British Pakistanis, in many ways wishes to be free from many other cultural constraints too. The need to reveal this side of the community and its changing cultural practices amongst the younger generation, has never been more important, particularly since so little has been done artistically in the past and because Britain’s second largest city, Birmingham, is home to one of the largest Pakistani communities in the world.

Through photography, Mahtab Hussain emphasizes a minority struggling to find voice and identity in the new hybrid eastern- western world. This minority group is as vulnerable and as mainstream as any other minority group which struggles with locality whilst also coping with the cosmopolitan nation’s liminal perceptions-of it being from elsewhere. Indeed, the artist believes that it is not only these young men that are in crisis, but the community as a whole. His photographs utter as it were, what the repressed community keeps in silence.

Opening Reception 14 September 2011, 6-9 pm

Subway Gallery
Kiosk 1 Joe Strummer Subway
Edgware Rd/Harrow Rd, London
Opening hours Mon-Sat 11-19

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