Featured Artist: Mussarat Rahman

Mussarat Rahman is a community artist and poet. For the last few years she has been experimenting with 3D art and installations with a variety of community groups and festivals. She runs social action projects, and delivers community programmes with different communities, and in particular with refugees and asylum seekers.

"My work addresses themes of migration and movement, religion, spirituality, materialism, politics, and gender. I have designed projects around local and global issues which affect society and particularly affect communities. My projects are designed to create a reaction and be interactive to engage audiences.

I often work with the refugee and asylum seeker organisation, Biasan who are based in Bradford, where I devise and deliver arts and cultural activities. Biasan are an Arts Together partner with Opera North in Leeds and a community partner of Bradford Literature Festival.

My work utilises a range of recycled and eclectic materials. For example one of my projects 'The Boat' was a large scale sculpture created using reclaimed wood and fabric, 'Humanising: Stories, Art, Photography' was created using sand, collage and board, and my installation 'The Peace Tree' was made from plywood.

I am currently working on a new project called 'Dawning of a New World', creating artistic responses to Covid 19 and the pandemic using household items. This project has been a lifeline for me during lockdown. It has given me a focus and an opportunity to continue with my practice. I am combining visual art along with my poems to create crossover pieces. At the moment I feel like I am documenting the social changes of the pandemic through my artwork and my aim is to create larger pieces having been successful with an Arts Council Grant."

You can see more of Mussarat’s work on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

CuratorSpace are currently featuring articles by artists, curators and organisations who want to share their experiences of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, whether that is artists using their practice as a way of exploring new boundaries of isolation, or as a way to connect more broadly with their communities. We are also interested in hearing from curators and organisations who are offering support to artists.

Contact us at louise@curatorspace.com to share your story.

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