Celebrate the stories of people from around the world living in Berkshire County. Selected short-form stories will be told in Osman Khan: Road to Hybridabad from 6 to 7pm. (Do you have a story you’d like to share? Submit it here!) Stick around afterward for an open house in Road to Hybridabad; mingle and bid farewell to Khan’s exhibition with light snacks and a cash bar. MASS MoCA’s Road to Hybridabad story hour is produced in collaboration with Berkshire Community College.

About the Exhibition:
In Road to Hybridabad, Osman Khan re-reads the magical and fantastical figures found in folktales and lore, with a particular focus on those from South Asia, the Middle East, and other Muslim and immigrant traditions. Khan interprets these figures through contemporary technologies and concerns: this new body of work includes an animatronic djinn, drone-operated flying carpets, a wall-destroying sound system/cannon, and a storytelling Scheherezade AI. This sprawling and wryly funny exhibition invites us on a journey across borders, through time, and between legend and history, encouraging us to reconsider — and perhaps rewrite — the narratives around identity, difference, and power reflected and recounted in the tales we tell ourselves.

About the Artist:
Osman Khan is a Detroit-based artist interested in constructing artifacts and experiences for social criticism and aesthetic expression. His work plays and subverts the materiality behind themes of identity, migration, and decolonization of knowledge and technologies through participatory & performative installations and site-specific interventions. He is currently a professor at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan.

Khan’s work has been shown at MASS MoCA; the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MoCAD); the Cuenca Biennial, Ecuador; the Chicago Architecture Biennial, USA; the Shanghai Biennale, China; the Zero1 Festival, San Jose; Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; Ars Electronica Center, Linz; Socrates Sculpture Park, NYC; Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids; and Centro Internazionale per d’arte Contemporanea, Rome; among others.

Khan is a recipient of a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship, an Art Matters grant, Ars Electronica’s Prix Ars Award of Distinction, and an Arctic Circle 2009 Residency. Articles about his work have appeared in numerous publications including Hyperallergic, Artforum, Art in America, I.D., LA Times, and The New York Times, among others.

In addition to his artistic practice, Khan is also Co-Director of the Indus Detroit Artist Residency + Culture Lab, co-curator of Halal Metropolis, a series of exhibitions and programs exploring Muslim identity in southeast Michigan, and a member of the cosmic jazz group the Astro Mystic Sama Ensemble.

Installation view of Osman Khan: Road to Hybridabad, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA (August 25, 2024 – April 6, 2025). Courtesy of the artist, made with MASS MoCA. Photo: Jon Verney