The Glasgow School of Art

Articles of Home
Asuf Ishaq
2 - 22 February 2023

Preview: Wednesday 1 February, 5 - 7pm (Book on Eventbrite)
Exhibition: Mon - Sat, 10am - 4.30pm

‘Articles of Home’ is the first solo exhibition in Glasgow by Birmingham-based artist Asuf Ishaq. His wide range of practice encompasses sculpture, video and sound which unravels personal narratives, emotions, sacrifices and adventure.

Ishaq draws on his experience of migration as a child and the stories of his parents of migration. He unfolds the geographical and cultural dislocation, by revisiting personal archives and reimagining the experience, weaving memories and imagined time, place and relationships. He incorporates land and soil, recognising the symbolic significance as both the beginning and endpoint; a transtemporal portal, an archive of migration.  ‘Articles of Home’ explores Ishaq’s personal journey of becoming, inventing and re-inventing himself, through film and installation. The exhibition is an entanglement of displacement, fragmented, narratives and technologies, and a weaving of fiction, and non-fiction to unravel and reimagine experience.

Ishaq's film ‘Mother’ weaves relationships with his mother and unravels memories between their recollection, in a conversation centred around a fifty-year-old photograph. The photograph is treated as a family archive; an object that carries its own story. The film ‘Tape Letter’ is reimagining the voice letter between his mother and her mother. ‘Not Quite Alive’ is a sculptural installation combining moving image, sculpture and sound. This work explores reinvention, hybridity and belonging, with an alien figure, waiting patiently, sitting near a monstrous seed.  Ishaq's sculpture ‘Becoming Nature’ is a representation of his own diasporic body. The body limb becomes a seed to plant in new soil in new ground.  His recent film ‘Articles of Home’ is a commission by ICA London for Image Behaviour. It explores a geographical space of his mother's home in Kashmir, Pakistan, that is submerged underwater for part of the year. During the dry season, the land is available for farming. ‘Articles of Home’ explores what happens when this space can only be accessed temporarily, just as a recollection of memories.

This exhibition was selected from an Open Call for proposals from GSA staff and students. Ishaq teaches on the BA (Hons) Sculpture & Environmental Art and Master of Fine Art courses at GSA. 
 

Asuf Ishaq grew up in Birmingham and works between Birmingham, London and Glasgow. He graduated with MFA Fine Art from Goldsmiths College of Art in 2020. Recent exhibitions include Image Behaviour film commission from ICA London (2021-22), Bloomberg New Contemporaries at South London Gallery and Firstsite in Colchester (2021-22), Grounding onlinegroupfilm screening at Goldsmiths CCA (2021). Inside the Country of the Skin, Stryx Gallery, Birmingham (solo) (2021). The London Open exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery (2022).