Tue 10 March 2026
18:00 – 20:00
POST, Second Floor, Industrial House, Conway Street, BN3 3LW
Booking essential: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/post/2019568
Our third Artist Talk of 2026 will be a real treat as we welcome British artist Mahtab Hussain (b. 1981) who will discuss his unique practice which explores the important relationship between identity, heritage and displacement.
Title — What Did You Want To See?
In this talk Hussain will will reflect on his career to date, which uses photography to investigate the relationship between identity, heritage, and displacement, particularly concerning the British Muslim experience.
He will also present work from his 2025 exhibition at Ikon Gallery, developed in collaboration with Photoworks as part of a major institutional presentation. Through portraiture, video and a suite of 160 images of Birmingham mosques, What Did You Want To See? explores how surveillance cultures including Project Champion – a counterterrorism initiative in which hundreds of covert CCTV and ANPR cameras were installed in two of the city’s predominantly Muslim neighbourhoods in 2010 – and other institutional and media-driven initiatives continue to shape the Muslim experience in the UK.
Hussain received his BA in History of Art at Goldsmith College specialising in Fine Art Photography; his MA in Museum and Gallery Management, City University, London; awarded an Arts Humanities Research Council (AHRC), he completed a MA in Photography at Nottingham Trent University. He has received numerous awards and commissions and has published four artist books: You Get Me?; Going Back to Where I Came From; The Quiet Town of Tipton; and The Commonality of Strangers.