Osman Yousefzada Charpai’s Sculpture, 2022 Harwood, Textile Waste twined as Rope, Salvaged Colonial 1930’s Doors
Osman Yousefzada’s works explore themes of displacement, movement, migration and climate change. In creating this work the artist returned to Pakistan, the country from which his parents migrated as a means to weave his own narrative into the violent birth of the country.
His piece 'Charpai's Sculpture', explores the traditional and contemporary techniques of Pakistani and European workshops. The work takes the charpai, a daybed typically found across South Asia, and reimagines it utilising salvaged and handmade elements. Repurposed colonial doors and woven fabric sourced from waste materials on factory floors combine in this work. The door, which for the artist stood as gates in their original context, are shifted on their axis from vertical to horizontal transforming into a component of the bed. Symbolising where spaces were once divided according to race and class - the door is dropped from a vertical to horizontal axis, shifting the power dynamic from a hierarchical to communal architectures.
