Firoz Mahmud
Artist
Firoz Mahmud is a Bangladeshi conceptual artist known for his large scale and long running art projects which reflect on refugee and immigrant histories, and narratives of colonial Bengal. For Jamaica Flux 2021, Mahmud will delve into the histories of “Ship Jumpers” or “Tarzan Visa migrants”: refugees from Bengal and South Asia who traverse high-risk geopolitical borders, most of whom settled as immigrants throughout Queens, including Jamaica. As part of the Queens-based artist’s long-term practice focused on migrants, refugees and displaced people, Migrational Influx: Promised Land will research and collaborate with immigrant community members to create a series of multimedia works celebrating Bengali legacies, traditions and subcultures.
Mahmud was the first Bangladeshi fellow artist at Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. He has exhibited at Bangkok Art Biennale, Lahore Biennial, Dhaka Art Summit, Aichi Triennial, Sharjah Biennale, Office of Contemporary Art, Oslo, MAXXI Museum of 21st Century Arts Rome, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan Contemporary Art at Asia House London, Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art, Mori Art Museum Tokyo; Metropolitan Mostings Hus Copenhagen, Sovereign Art Foundation, Exhibit320 in Delhi, National Museum and Bengal Gallery in Dhaka. Recently, he has exhibited at Asia Art Initiative, Twelve Gates Arts Philadelphia and Hunter College East Harlem Gallery in New York. In 2011, he was a recipient of Asian Cultural Council (ACC) Fellowship in New York and in 2009, he received Art project Ideas prize from Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art Japan. [Photo by Efaj Efti Haque]