Asuf Ishaq

My practice examines the post-colonial body as an archive and historical geographical places as sites of cultural and political meaning. I investigate themes of migration, embodiment, transformation, displacement, and memory. Excavating personal narratives and testimonies of my family's migration experience, re-thinking traumatic episodes in history, where meaningful knowledge is located and discovering new knowledge.

I draw on my own experience of migration as a child and the stories of my parents. I unfold the geographical and cultural dislocation, by revisiting personal archives and reimagining the experience in a new way by weaving memories and imagined time, place, and relationships. I incorporate land and soil, recognising the symbolic significance as both the beginning and endpoint; a transtemporal portal, an archive of migration. 

I work with sculpture, sound, images, text, language, moving image, 3D and installations to communicate my ideas.

Asuf completed his MFA Fine Art at Goldsmiths College of Art in 2020. Recent exhibitions and awards include;  Solo exhibition Articles of Home, Reid Gallery, Glasgow (2023), Group exhibitions, The London Open, Whitechapel Gallery, (2022), Image Behaviour, ICA (2022), New Contemporaries, South London Gallery, London (2021/22), Groundings (online film screening), Goldsmiths CCA, London (2021), London Grads, Saatchi Gallery, London (2020)