In Road to Hybridabad–his first solo museum exhibition–Detroit-based artist 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 through a new body of multimedia work that includes a ten-foot-tall animatronic djinn head, a forest of telephone poles with djinns atop them, drone-powered flying carpets, a boundary wall-destroying sound system, a fountain of endlessly flowing honey, and a robot-like sculpture that is in fact a storytelling “Scheherazade AI.” The sprawling exhibition invites visitors on a journey across borders, through time, and between legend and history, encouraging reconsideration and rewriting of narratives around identity, difference, and power reflected in the tales we tell ourselves.
In-process work by Osman Khan for Road to Hybridabad, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA (On view beginning August 24, 2024).
Photo: PD Rearick