Osman Yousefzada and Ian Francis

Osman Yousefzada discusses the films that have influenced his interdisciplinary art practice. Clips from Merchant Ivory productions and documentaries about British Asians are considered alongside Yousefzada’s own films – Her Dreams Are Bigger (2018) and Spaces of Transcendence (2022).

This talk is preceded by a free talk, A Joyful Noise with artist Faisal Hussain.

This event is part of The Migrant Festival 2022 and Ikon’s Arrivals programme for Summer 2022, concerned with the international movement of people and ideas and organised to coincide with the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.

About the speakers

Osman Yousefzada has a interdisciplinary practice that revolves around modes of storytelling, merging autobiography with fiction and ritual. His work is concerned with the representation and rupture of migrational experience and makes reference to socio-political issues. These themes are explored through moving image, installation and text works, sculpture, garment making and performance. Yousefzada had his first solo exhibition, Being Somewhere Else, at Ikon in 2018. In 2021, co-commissioned by Ikon he wrapped the iconic Selfridges Birmingham building in Infinity Pattern 1, a bold pink and black tessellated design. His formative experiences are explored in his book, The Go-Between (Canongate, 2022).

Ian Francis is the founding director of Flatpack Projects, a charity which produces moving image events across the West Midlands and beyond. The organisation’s most significant project is the Flatpack Festival, an eclectic week of screenings and events which takes place in Birmingham every spring and has developed a national reputation for its multidisciplinary programming and imaginative use of different venues. A film graduate from Warwick University, Francis has twenty years experience of programming and delivering events and has written for publications including Sight & Sound and Little White Lies. He is a trustee at Multistory, and an honorary research fellow at the University of Birmingham.