Mahtab Hussain is an award-winning international social commentary artist, born 1981. Working mainly in portraiture, Hussain sees his practice as an exchange between artist and sitter, placing considerable emphasis on the empowerment of the sitter, to create portraits that force and represent a vital interaction between sitter, spectator, audience and the public.
Hussain studied a BA in History of Art at Goldsmith College specialising in fine art photography and received an MA in Photography at Nottingham Trent University with the support of the Arts Humanities Research Council.
Currently Hussain’s You Get Me? series is being jointly published by Autograph ABP and Dewi Lewis Publishing with the support of Arts Council England, contributors include Charles Guice, Dr David Dibosa and Dr Les Back. Dewi Lewis Publishing also recently published The Quiet Town of Tipton, which was a commission by Multistory.
Hussain has been recipient of numerous awards and commissions including, Arts Council England; Arts Humanities Research Council (AHRC); winner of the Curators Choice Award, Culture Cloud at New Art Exchange and of Format 13 Portfolio Review Award for most significant review. He was selected as the 2015 Light Work + Autograph ABP Artist-in-Residence.
In 2016 the artist will be exhibiting You Get Me? under the prestigious Discoveries Award at Houston FotoFest chosen from 500 international artists. The series will debut in the UK at Autograph ABP, London, curated by Mark Sealy. You Get Me? will then tour to Impressions Gallery, Bradford later that year.
Hussain's PhD research will produce a body of work that will extends the enquiry established by You Get Me? and will be formed through the critical frame of ethnography, self-reflection and participant observation which will interrogate current work on Muslim identities in Britain. His thesis is currently titled Power, Portraiture, Masculinity and Identity - The Performance Crisis of the British Muslim Male.