Oliver Husain

1969–

Oliver Husain (1969– ), was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany to Indian and German parents. He studied Fine Arts at the University of Baroda in Gujarat, going on to receive a B.A. in Film, and an MFA in Media Art at the Offenbach University of Art and Design.

Husain uses a wide range of cinematic languages and visual pleasures — such as dance, puppetry, costume, special effects — to animate his research and fold the viewers into complex narrative set-ups. Translated into cinema and gallery spaces, his installations, performances and film projects set up narratives that charm or fold the viewers into questioning their role as a spectator or subject. Husain has called his pieces “attractive traps,” for how they offer up an initial interpretation to the viewer which is eventually revealed to have been misleading.

Husain featured in AGYU’s exhibition Hovering Proxies (Winter, 2010), comprising a mixed media installation spanning two galleries which included photography, text, sculpture, performance and film. The AGYU published the first monograph of Husain’s work, Spoiler Alert (2012), in conjunction with the exhibition.

Husain is represented by Susan Hobbs Gallery in Toronto and Marieta Clages in Cologne. His films are distributed by Vtape in Toronto. His work has been featured at Solo exhibitions at Gallery TPW, Toronto; Western Front, Vancouver; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Germany (with DaGroup); and group exhibitions including Form Follows Fiction: Art and Artists in Toronto (2016), Art Museum at the University of Toronto; Depth of Perception (2015), Oakville Galleries; Qual und Wahl (2013), Kunstverein Wolfsburg; Blowing on a Hairy Shoulder/Grief Hunters (2011), ICA Philadelphia; and Q (2005), Para Site, Hong Kong. His films have been screened at the Toronto International Film Festival; Experimenta Festival, Bangalore; Malaysian Video Awards, Kuala Lumpur; New Generations Independent Indian Film Festival, Frankfurt; and San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival.