Oliver Husain, 2025 Artist in Residence
Biography
Oliver Husain is a Toronto-based artist and filmmaker who works across disciplines. His practice builds on collaborations with artists and friends, often starting from a fragment of history, a personal encounter, a rumor, or a memory. He cheerfully confuses art world orthodoxies and the conventions of cinema; deploying dance, puppetry, costume, and special effects as tools to transform his research into narratives that charm viewers into intricately constructed complications.
Recent exhibitions include: DNCB (in collaboration with Kerstin Schroedinger) at ICA Los Angeles (2025); Trafo, Budapest (2025) and MOCA, Toronto (2024); The Beauties of Lucknow, Massey College, Toronto (2023); lenticoolers (with Malik McKoy) Susan Hobbs, Toronto (2023), drip-drop.tv (multiple performances, with Amy Lam, 2023). Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at Remai Modern, Saskatoon; Western Front, Vancouver; and Art Gallery of York University, Toronto. Festival screenings include Berlinale International Filmfestival; Oberhausen Short Film Festival (awards 1998 and 2012); and Experimenta Festival, Bangalore (award 2017). A monograph on his work, Spoiler Alert, was published in 2012 by AGYU. Nang 8, The Loud Mess Issue - a magazine on cinema in Asia edited by Oliver Husain and Shai Heredia was published in August 2020.
Website: husain.de
Artist Statement
During my residency I want to continue working on two interconnected projects related to Indian history. Both are linked by two controversial figures of the Indian independence movement, Sardar Patel and Subash Chandra Bose.
The first centers on The Statue of Unity, the world's tallest statue at 182 meters, built under PM Modi in 2018. It depicts Sardar Patel. My planned project focusses on the Adivarsi who were displaced by both the statue's construction and the earlier Sardar Sarovar dam project. Their stories of displacement and resistance, set against this colossal monument, touch on crucial themes of indigenous rights, ecological impact, and historical revisionism.
The second research starts with a remarkable discovery in my family’s basement: an archival 16mm film showing the Free India Legion, established by Subhas Chandra Bose in Nazi Germany. Given the current global rise of right-wing movements, this complex history demands careful examination. I’m excited to invite students to an experimental workshop around this footage, culminating in a performance that could take on the form of a livestream broadcast.
