About the work

Osman’s practice revolves around modes of storytelling, merging autobiography with fiction and ritual. His work is concerned with the representation and rupture of the migrational experience and makes reference to socio-political issues of today. These themes are explored through moving image, installations, text works, sculpture, garment making and performance.

Date and country of birth

1977, GB

Career Highlights

Yousefzada has shown at international institutions including: Whitechapel Gallery, London; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio; Ringling Museum, Florida; Lahore Museum, Pakistan; and Design Museum, London. Lahore Biennale, Pakistan and Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh. Recent solo shows include; Queer Feet (2024) at Charleston House, Embodiments of Memory (2023) at the Ceramics Biennale, Potteries Museum in Stoke on Trent and More Immigrants Please (2023) a nationwide series of billboards with Artichoke.

His large-scale series of solo interventions What Is Seen and What Is Not at London’s V&A in 2022, was commissioned by the British Council in partnership with the V&A. In Conjunction with the 60th Venice Biennale, Yousefzada presents ‘Welcome! A Palazzo for Immigrants’ at the Palazzo Franchetti in partnership with the V&A and Fondazione Berengo. In May 2024 he opens the prelude to Bradford City of Culture 2025 with a solo show at Cartwright Hall.

He is a visiting Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice at the Birmingham School of Art, BCU, a visiting Fellow at the Jesus College, Cambridge University and a Research Practitioner at the Royal College of Art. Yousefzada is also the author of The Go-Between: A Memoir of Growing Up Between Different Worlds (2022), a coming-of-age story described by Stephen Fry as ‘one of the greatest childhood memoirs of our time’.