Oliver Husain

SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) and the Centre for South Asian Critical Humanities (CSACH) are pleased to welcome Oliver Husain as the winter 2025 artist-in-residence at the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM). Over the next three months, Oliver will develop  a body of research through site-responsive and site-specific artistic investigations, culminating in a non-permanent installation on campus. 

Oliver Husain is a Toronto-based artist and filmmaker who works across disciplines. His practice builds on collaborations with artists and friends, often starting from a fragment of history, a personal encounter, a rumor, or a memory. He cheerfully confuses art world orthodoxies and the conventions of cinema; deploying dance, puppetry, costume, and special effects as tools to transform his research into narratives that charm viewers into intricately constructed complications.

The residency will invite art into the academic spaces of the university and give students and faculty a place to think about the role of contemporary art in public conversations. CSACH brings together the University of Toronto’s outstanding tri-campus South Asia faculty and graduate students for workshops and research activities. With the diverse student body of UTM and the larger Mississauga area, the program will help to develop an appreciation of contemporary art as practiced by racialized artists in the wider community while contributing significantly to UTM’s cultural landscape. 

As the artist develops their creative work at UTM, discussion of their practice will be integrated into courses in History, History of Religions, Women and Gender Studies, Visual Culture and Communication, Art History, Art Studio, and/or Cinema Studies. Interested classes will invite the selected artist to come and speak about their work and engage the class in participatory/experiential activities related to artmaking as a response to political and social transformations in contemporary South Asia and the South Asian diaspora

Artist Statement

During my residency I want to continue working on two interconnected projects related to Indian history. Both are linked by two controversial figures of the Indian independence movement, Sardar Patel and Subash Chandra Bose.

The first centers on The Statue of Unity, the world’s tallest statue at 182 meters, built under PM Modi in 2018. It depicts Sardar Patel. My planned project focusses on the Adivarsi who were displaced by both the statue’s construction and the earlier Sardar Sarovar dam project. Their stories of displacement and resistance, set against this colossal monument, touch on crucial themes of indigenous rights, ecological impact, and historical revisionism. 

The second research starts with a remarkable discovery in my family’s basement: an archival 16mm film showing the Free India Legion, established by Subhas Chandra Bose in Nazi Germany. Given the current global rise of right-wing movements, this complex history demands careful examination. I’m excited to invite students to an experimental workshop around this footage, culminating in a performance that could take on the form of a livestream broadcast.