Osman Yousefzada
b. 1977, United Kingdom
Osman Yousefzada (Urdu: عثمان یوسفزاده) is a British interdisciplinary artist, writer and social activist, and research practitioner at the Royal College of Art, London and a visiting fellow at Cambridge University. He is also commencing a role at the Birmingham School of Art in September 2023, as Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice. His work has been shown at notable international institutions including: Whitechapel Gallery, London; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (solo 2018); Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Wapping Project, London; Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio; Ringling Museum, Florida; Lahore Museum, Pakistan; Design Museum, London; Lahore Biennale, Pakistan; and Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh.
In his first book, ‘The Go-Between’ (2022) published by Canongate, is set in a closed immigrant community in Birmingham in the 1980s and 1990s. The book explores alternative masculinities competing with strict gender roles, seen through the eyes of a child. This book was long listed for the Polari Prize, winning the Biographers Club Prize and reviewed by Stephen Fry as ‘one of the greatest childhood memoirs of our time’.