My Newsletter

Of Other, And Possibility – Samir Mahmood

An Exhibition in partnership with Backwater Artists Network

Opening Saturday 11th March at 1pm.

Runs to Friday 24 March

Wednesday – Saturday, 1.00pm to 6.00pm

The MART Gallery, 190A Rathmines Road Lower. – map link

Curated by Rachel Botha.

Of other, and possibility is Samir Mahmood’s first solo exhibition of new and existing artwork including painting, digital collage and photography. The exhibition explores experiences of identity, migration and spirituality. Mahmood bravely uses the queer body to consider human vulnerability and assess its connection to the world. In doing, the work is an attempt to offer a liberating new reality. Summarised in the words of José Esteban Muñoz “Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world.”

‘Ghair‘, the Urdu word for ‘other’ or ‘stranger’ and is articulated throughout the exhibition – it is an attempt to confront the negative distance and separation a person or group experiences in society. In this context, there’s an ownership over otherness. At the centre of Mahmood’s art practice is the philosophy of ‘non-duality’, the human experience of oneness with all things and the importance of interdependence. This exhibition is an opportunity to reflect and imagine new ways of looking and thinking about how we live, in the hope to transcend it.

Samir Mahmood is a Backwater Artists Network member and studio member at MART Studios, Galway.

Kindly supported by The Arts Council, Cork City Council, MART Gallery and Backwater Artists Studios.